Publishing in South Africa

South Africa is an emerging market for publishing; it has a number of small and medium-sized local publishers but is dominated by publishing groups and multinationals that import international trends. Along with textbooks, imported trade books are the heart of South African publishing. The major obstacles the industry faces are linked to the poor distribution network as well as the lack of access to financial resources for local publishers, and a readership characterized by the plurality of official languages and an educational gap left over from the social inequalities of the apartheid era. Digital publishing, although not yet thriving, appears to be a promising opportunity to deal with both production costs and distribution and may provide a pathway towards the democratization of reading. A number of commercial platforms and non-profit initiatives are already in place in South Africa to support the development of the publishing market.