Carolyn Raphaely
16 April 2008
Johannesburg — SOUTH African bookworms can thank literary Voortrekker Dusanka Stojakovic, Macmillan SA MD, for the glut of slick, locally produced titles clogging booksellers' shelves.
Four years ago, anticipating the needs of a rapidly changing market, Stojakovic launched Picador Africa in an attempt to kick-start literary publishing in SA, and on the African continent. Other publishers such as Random House, Jacana and Penguin followed suit, propelling the publishing industry into top gear. Since then, sales of trade or consumer books have soared, educational book sales have skyrocketed, and the local literary landscape has changed beyond recognition.
"We really punched above our weight," Stojakovic recalls. "Until we started Picador, South African books were amateurishly laid out, the paper wasn't in line with international standards, the look and feel was second- or third-rate and the jackets unappealing.
"Today, the quality and standard are as good as anything published in the first world. It's almost impossible to differentiate between imported and South African titles and last Christmas most bestsellers were produced here."
Picador Africa, a local imprint owned by Pan Macmillan, publishes African fiction and nonfiction books written by Africans and aims to raise awareness, both locally and internationally, of the importance and value of African writing, Stojakovic explains. Launched with re-issues of classics such as Steve Biko's I Write What I Like and Ellen Kuzwayo's Call Me Woman, she publishes only five or six high-quality new titles a year that she believes will sell.
All Picador's 25 published titles have been commercially viable -- including Alexandra Fuller's Don't Lets Go to The Dogs Tonight, Chris van Wyk's Shirley, Goodness and Mercy, Jonathan Kaplan's The Dressing Station and Peter Godwin's When a Crocodile Eats the Sun.
In the case of "Crocodile," however, she admits to having stuck her neck out. Engaging in a bidding war, she paid a seven-figure advance based simply on Godwin's synopsis. "It's the most money I've ever spent on a book," she says. "To date, it's sold 38000 copies."
According to Stojakovic, if a title sells 5000 copies in SA, it's considered a bestseller. Selling more than 10000 is exceptional: "Jake White's autobiography, In Black and White, which sold more than 200000, is extraordinary. It's the best-selling South African book ever.
"The average South African print run is 2000 for fiction and between 3000 and 5000 for nonfiction. In the early 2000s, sales of 1500 were considered good for South African fiction. Prior to 2004-05, bestsellers were published elsewhere and imported. That's changed. In the last three years more people are writing and reading, and the quality of writing has improved dramatically. Creativity in writing, art and music has never been more evident in SA."
Nonetheless, Stojakovic says 99,9% of manuscripts received aren't worth the paper they're written on: "When we started Picador we actively solicited the submission of local literary manuscripts. Very few were worth publishing. An aspirant writer should examine publishers' websites to check whether their manuscript is compatible or they're wasting their time."
As for overseas publications, African books are generally not of interest to northern hemisphere readers -- with a few exceptions, such as Penguin's Spud, which has been successful in the UK and the US, and Pan Macmillan's Oliver Tambo Remembered.
Stojakovic has consistently been ahead of the game in catering to the needs of increasingly demanding and sophisticated consumers: "The South African book market has changed over the last four years," she says. "Struggle literature" and "worthy" books no longer form the backbone of the local publishing industry. Black women's book clubs, which buy mainly fiction, are just starting to take off and self-help, religious, business and kids books rather than fiction are bestsellers in the new Exclusive Books in Soweto's Maponya Mall.
"In 1995-2000, consumer book sales totalled about R500m-R600m. Today, they're hovering around the R1,5bn mark. In addition, the 2007-08 education budget for books was about R1,5bn, with R1bn allocated for libraries and library materials over the next two years."
Clearly, this has enormous implications for the book trade , and particularly for Macmillan's educational arm, Macmillan Boleswa, with subsidiaries in Mozambique, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and SA. "After 1994, government was expected to increase spending on educational books. A R2bn budget was expected for 1997-08 but little more than R500000 was spent. Things are different now."
Not all is rosy, though. A weakening rand is likely to hurt trade-book sales, as will a projected 15% paper price increase. However, Stojakovic believes educational book sales will not be as affected.
Unsurprisingly, Macmillan Boleswa is a major player in the Macmillan stable internationally. "The government is spending more money on educational books than ever before and focusing on reading, literacy and the provision of library books. The tragedy is that the policy is in place but the mechanisms to spend budgeted money are not. It's rumoured that the Eastern Cape department of education and training spent only 5% of its available budget on library reading materials last year."
The children's book market is another growth area. "We already have a 42% share of this market and are lucky to have really good children's book illustrators and writers in this country. Also, government plans to introduce all educational books in mother-tongue languages from grades 1-7, which implies major opportunity."
Though Stojakovic entered the publishing industry "in order to read", these days she spends most of her time dealing with human resource issues involving her staff of 220 and travelling locally and abroad for discussions with education officials, to attend book fairs and meet her principals.
Before her 2005 appointment as group MD of Macmillan Boleswa, possibly the largest publishing group in southern Africa, Stojakovic was MD of subsidiary Pan Macmillan's consumer division and involved in manuscript selection. She also started publishing mass-market fiction under the Pan Macmillan imprint. The range of literary books and mass-market fiction was enhanced and children's books were produced in 11 languages.
Pan Macmillan SA is a subsidiary of Macmillan UK and also represents international agencies such as Guinness World Records, Walker Books, Hodder Consumer Education, Frances Lincoln, Priddy Books, Boxtree, Hachette Children's Books and Franklin Watts.
Half Bosnian Serb, half-British, Stojakovic is a born-and-bred South African but spoke only Serbo-Croat until starting school. Intending to join the diplomatic corps, she did a language degree at Wits before spending a year studying Italian at Perugia -- a milestone event she says shaped and changed her. Until then, Stojakovic, who grew up in the Russian Orthodox Church, had always been chaperoned by her older brother and never been alone with the opposite sex.
Back in SA, she joined Macmillan as assistant school- book manager. It wasn't long before the talents of this determined woman were recognised and she was made international product director for educational books. When Macmillan merged with Hodder and Stoughton, a nine-months-pregnant Stojakovic was appointed international product director of the merged company.
Reading into the future
DUSANKA Stojakovic recently spearheaded a broad-based black economic empowerment initiative whereby 23 Gauteng schools acquired a 15% stake in Macmillan SA, administered by nongovernmental organisation Read. A further 10% of company profit flows into an Author Trust, which was established to develop black authors, and an Employee Trust, which comprises all Macmillan SA employees.
"The objective," she says, "is to improve infrastructure, upgrade teaching skills, make available text books and reading books so these schools will want for nothing".
"In most rural schools and many urban schools, books are bought year on year. There's no book- retention strategy and acquisitions aren't managed properly.
"To encourage reading, community libraries must be built and parents have to read to kids," she says. "Many parents don't live with their children and literacy issues must be tackled urgently. Performance standards have declined in South African schools and pass rates have declined due to a lack of basic learning skills and inadequate language skills. We came 40th out of 40 countries in a recent survey of maths performance and literacy."
But Stojakovic is cautiously optimistic about the educational scenario: "We have a great curriculum, which is probably too sophisticated for this market. It assumes a level of expertise and training which only exists in isolated pockets. In the early 90s, many teacher-training colleges were closed, resulting in a current shortage of 18000 teachers. Unless something radical is done to improve the numbers and skills of South African teachers, I'm not sure the current curriculum is sustainable." Carolyn Raphaely
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