Who put US in charge of the balloons?
In November 2009 a Johannesburg second-hand bookshop, Porcupine Press emerged from the shadows of its own modest past as a new-style independent publishing house. Its focus was unashamedly on quality, both on the covers and between them. Its focus was also on wider and wider distribution.
Today, Porcupine Press is a significant player in the rapidly changing terrain of publishing. Commercial publishing appears to be increasingly concerned with finance rather than literature. At the other end of the spectrum, vanity publishers (some of the biggest are owned by some of the largest commercial conglomerates) have few qualms about churning out unedited and carelessly designed mediocrity. The middle ground is where the future lies. It will be a future radically different from the past. People are already talking about the democratisation of publishing, which will lead to a new vitality among writers and readers who have often been thwarted by limited publishing opportunities and inflated book prices. The future, we believe, will give rise to a new awareness of a vibrant local literature read by local readers, while at the same time not afraid of playing on the new digital world stage.
In the past five years, Porcupine Press has published more than 80 titles, and has offered distribution services to hundreds of self-published authors. Porcupine Press in the process of opening a branch agency in Australia. Porcupine Press has launched a new imprint, African Narratives, which is controlled by a not-for-profit company whose avowed purpose is to support the growth of a thriving grassroots literature in South Africa.
That’s quite an achievement for the first five years. The next five years could be revolutionary. Join Porcupine Press and African Narratives in the middle ground. That’s where the action will be.
Via: IT’S EXACTLY FIVE YEARS SINCE THE LAUNCH OF PORCUPINE PRESS – MyPR.
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