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Tough truths about selling to publishers – Arthur Attwell

http://arthurattwell.com/2013/11/07/tough-truths-selling-publishers

Tech, content, Africa enthusiast. Skip to primary content. Tough truths about selling to publishers. Yesterday, I spoke at the inaugural Footnote Summit. South Africa’s new digital-publishing conference. Here’s my talk. Over the last seven years, I’ve pitched technical or otherwise innovative services to publishers over and over again, and learned some hard truths along the way. Here I list my top five, and what they mean for startups and publishers. We believe we’ve achieved something important here&#46...

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licensing Archives – Arthur Attwell

http://arthurattwell.com/tag/licensing

Tech, content, Africa enthusiast. Skip to primary content. Skip to secondary content. Institutional licensing: the next textbook business model. Right now, in South Africa, the textbook-publishing industry faces a real threat to its future. Because faced with constant non-delivery of books. Government is desperate to change the way it buys them. Other countries. Though I get why they’re fed up. The system is going to change, and publishers can either lead the change or be changed. If I’m a commissi...

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publishing Archives – Arthur Attwell

http://arthurattwell.com/tag/publishing

Tech, content, Africa enthusiast. Skip to primary content. Skip to secondary content. Three things every editor should know about digital publishing. A while ago I gave this talk at the Cape Town Professional Editors Group. Here are my speaking notes. Today, every passage you edit will sooner or later be read on screen. This digital world desperately needs our craft and high standards, but what does that mean for our daily work? So what does this digitisation thing really mean for editors? That said, we ...

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Book Dash: the power of the crowd + hard graft – Arthur Attwell

http://arthurattwell.com/2014/11/28/book-dash-power-crowd-hard-graft

Tech, content, Africa enthusiast. Skip to primary content. Book Dash: the power of the crowd hard graft. For several months I’ve been working on Book Dash. An initiative to create high-quality, low-cost children’s books. We get creative pros to volunteer time to create the books, and help sponsors get them printed and distributed to children. I’ve written elsewhere. On why this is commercially important in the long term, but right now it’s all for the love of children’s literacy. We’ll probably end...

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Arthur Attwell – Page 2 of 30 – Tech, content, Africa enthusiast

http://arthurattwell.com/page/2

Tech, content, Africa enthusiast. Skip to primary content. Skip to secondary content. Newer posts →. Why I won’t run another startup. Earlier this year, I closed my startup. So now I get to reflect on what I’d have done differently. Hindsight is unfair and inaccurate, but I still enjoy its lessons. This is one, a note to my future self:. Don’t call your projects ‘startups’. It’s a semantic trick, but a really important one. Here’s why. Here are five new rules for myself. 1 No more startup events. Startup...

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The weakest links in schoolbook publishing – Arthur Attwell

http://arthurattwell.com/2012/07/09/the-weakest-links-in-schoolbook-publishing

Tech, content, Africa enthusiast. Skip to primary content. The weakest links in schoolbook publishing. Last year, Macmillan was fined over eleven million pounds. In the UK for corruption in East and West African educational publishing. Essentially, they bribed officials to get their books preferred over competitors’ books. A year later, Oxford University Press has been fined. For similar practices, also in East Africa. In South Africa today, we have a major textbook crisis in Limpopo. We will never be fr...

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textbooks Archives – Arthur Attwell

http://arthurattwell.com/tag/textbooks

Tech, content, Africa enthusiast. Skip to primary content. Skip to secondary content. Institutional licensing: the next textbook business model. Right now, in South Africa, the textbook-publishing industry faces a real threat to its future. Because faced with constant non-delivery of books. Government is desperate to change the way it buys them. Other countries. Though I get why they’re fed up. The system is going to change, and publishers can either lead the change or be changed. If I’m a commissi...

arthurattwell.com

Institutional licensing: the next textbook business model

http://arthurattwell.com/2014/12/03/institutional-licensing-textbook-business-model

Tech, content, Africa enthusiast. Skip to primary content. Institutional licensing: the next textbook business model. Right now, in South Africa, the textbook-publishing industry faces a real threat to its future. Because faced with constant non-delivery of books. Government is desperate to change the way it buys them. Other countries. Face similar challenges. Government officials often cite the ‘high price of books’ as a key issue. Whether you buy the state’s argument or not ( I don’t. If I’m a wr...

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Crunch time for South African publishing – Arthur Attwell

http://arthurattwell.com/2014/09/09/crunch-time-for-south-african-publishing

Tech, content, Africa enthusiast. Skip to primary content. Crunch time for South African publishing. It’s rare that a national industry is confronted with a single threat to its future. That just happened to South African publishing. A few days ago, the South African Department of Basic Education released a policy document, for public comment, that explains how the DBE would like to handle textbooks going forward. (If you’re in publishing, read it, here’s the PDF. Teachers would no longer choose the text...