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Ebooks in Africa
June 4, 2009 | 1:27 pm
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By Paul Biba
Came across this article today. It seems that this area of the world might be more suited to Wattpad then to the ebook distribution methods we have in the developed countries:
The conference so easily could have been the same old thing we have all been hearing about for the past couple of years, but was added with a fresh set of challenges that mean ebooks and digital publishing in South Africa, and indeed the continent as a whole, are likely to be substantially different than in the UK.
There are two main challenges. Firstly is the low level of bandwidth in the country as a whole. The low capacity of the data cables in and out of SA creates expensive and slow broadband, which in turn has meant broadband penetration is slight. In the first half of the nineteenth century Cape Town was at the heart of global trade; in the 21st century only a new cable coming into effect this year is bringing SA into the terabyte, let alone petabyte, age. General desktop access is also low, reflecting this infrastructural blockage.
Secondly is that the distribution of internet access is heavily weighted towards mobile (as many as double the number of people have access to the mobile web against desktop) with this trend continuing apace. However for most South Africans the internet is way down the list of priorities, given endemic poverty, the AIDs epidemic, world beating crime statistics, mass unemployment and a host of other issues largely alien to the populations of North America or Europe. That said people are willing to spend large portions of their income on “cellphones” and the phenomenal growth in this area is expected to continue.
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e-book, e-books, ebook, ebooks, Paul Biba, Wattpad
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Comments:
Websites in the developed world tend to be big and flashy, in order to get eyeballs and attention… but in many cases, they don’t need to be. Tailoring e-book sales to smaller-bandwidth markets of the developing world is often only a matter of just doing it. Most of this is simply extra work that sellers have to weigh against the expected profit.
In fact, the issues raised by financial and cultural differences in other markets are far greater than the simple task of creating a low-bandwidth website to sell products.
It is hard for us to imagine but it is true. Many people in these developing countries read books on good old candy bar Nokia phones with tiny 128×128 pixel screens that can only display a few lines at a time. This is their only mean to access the world’s literature.
Not hard for some of us to imagine. I use a Motorola RAZR2 cell phone, and I probably do more Internet stuff with it than some people do with their so-called smart phones. I’m always twittering with it, checking the Twitter website, checking my Gmail, checking mobile Yelp, mobile Accuweather, sending rudimentary e-mails, texting UPC numbers to FruCall to see what the best price is, and so on.
About the only thing I haven’t done is try to read e-books on it, and I should get around to trying out Wattpad sooner or later.
I understand that people in Africa go even further, conducting banking through the phone the way some of us do through the desktop, simply because it’s the only net terminal device they’ve got.
It’s certainly interesting to consider that there are approximately two cell phone accounts for every three people in the world. And lots of those are in the “developing” world.
Funny just how fast the world develops.