“Stories are in our DNA” – local publisher, Charles Siboto, on South Africa’s reading culture

An article I wrote for BooksLive:

Local publisher, Charles Siboto, on our reading culture, competing with international titles and reading as tool to raise our standard of education

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The South African publishing scene is a strange one, consisting of many peculiarities and oddities. The first thing that you notice is that it’s not representative of the country and its diverse range of cultures. There are many factors that lend to how lopsided our reading statistics are. The biggest factor is that as a nation we don’t read much and there are no books in most households, so a reading culture is never fostered. I have worked in publishing for four years and can testify that books are luxury items for most households because they are expensive, especially local books. Publishers would love to make books more affordable but the reality is that publishing books is expensive, with the highest cost being printing. In order for publishers to survive, they have to print enough books to cover the cost of producing the books when most of that print run sells. The more books publishers print the cheaper the cost of printing and thus the cheaper the book for buyers, but if those books don’t sell they sit with excessive stock and pay warehouse costs for that stock, which eventually will have to be pulped. The South African publishing scene, thus, is a fine balancing act of publishers trying to make books as accessible as possible while making enough money to continue existing so as to publish more books. Now, as both publisher and reader, I am thinking we can all do more to promote diverse South African literature, especially as readers.

South Africa already has a model of what a healthy, local reading culture looks like in the form of Afrikaans books. Afrikaans publishers are the biggest in the country and Afrikaans readers buy books. The Afrikaans community does have more buying power than most other language groups in the country but the other thing they have is pride in their language. Afrikaans speakers can still largely get by in our economy without having to learn English. Parents know that the country is constantly becoming more and more English but they still don’t stop placing an emphasis on children speaking and reading Afrikaans. In many cases, English is more the supplementary reading. With the other language and culture groups in the country the emphasis is more on English than on the mother tongue, and for the most part, we all know why and I will touch on this later.

Having spent some time reading books by local black writers in English, I know this is by no means a bad thing and it allows for more people being able to enjoy those books. There is an increase of the black middle-class and publishers realise that they have to tap into this market. Young, black and especially female writers are also on the rise and this makes for a great recipe to produce local books that are entertaining, informative, address social issues, expands minds and are just straight up ‘woke’. The problem with publishing in English is that people still buy more international titles than local ones in English. I am one of those people and I have made conscious decision to buy more local titles and readers who can afford to should do this. Afrikaans publishers usually do publish in English and to a smaller scale some of the other local languages but they have realised long ago that they cannot compete with the international market and have opted to focus on their strength, publishing Afrikaans books. Competing with international publishers is difficult because as a country we are not yet confident enough in the power of our own stories and this should not be so. South African publishers publish books of a high caliber that can compete with titles from the UK or the US but they get lost in the crowd. Publishers have had to be much more creative in their marketing a can continue to do so, but as readers, we should also come to the party.

We have great stories as a nation, our cultures are rich in stories that deserve to be shared with the world. I am in no way asking people to stop reading international titles but simply saying that you can read both local and international. It is refreshing to read stories where the heroes and villains are people you can relate to and people that you can imagine meeting when you walk down the street, stories where the lovers and their secrets are people like you. Local books are still expensive to produce but if we all do a little to support the local reading scene it goes a long way. We can do a lot simply by each person in a circle of friends buying one book and then swapping the books among themselves until everyone has had a chance to read every book in the circle. These are things that help to nurture our reading culture. The stronger our reading culture becomes the cheaper and more accessible books will be and publishers will be able to work with more new writers adding their voices to the tapestry of our stories.

The last thing I want to mention, especially having spent most of my publishing career working with children’s books, is that we have to promote our children reading in their mother tongues. This is way easier said than done because the resources are scarce. Resources aside, many black households are afraid to focus on children reading in their mother tongue because they might then miss out on learning English. This is not so, children who can read their own language well can better transition into a second language and excel at it. Being a multilingual society is complex but we gain more when we allow people to read in their own language and learn English in addition. This makes for more people who are truly bi- or multilingual, in the sense that they are equally proficient in multiple languages. This will take some time and resources to fully implement, though. Some publishers do prioritise publishing books for younger readers in multiple local languages and that is a great start and a process that we should support where we can. I come from a family that does not read but I was lucky to fall in love with books because we lived near a wonderful public library when I was a child so I understand that many families are too busy with the business of surviving from day to day to worry about books. But if we are to raise the standard of education and want to invest in a society of knowledgeable people we have to nurture our reading culture. Resources like public libraries help with making books accessible but all of us can add something to the culture. We can do things like buying local books if we can afford them, sharing books, giving away old books or just telling people about the magic of stories. Stories are in our DNA as a species and adding to that collective pool of knowledge only helps us to progress as a nation and as human beings.

Respect the Hustle

Hello there, you beautiful, beautiful souls :).

I had a chat with the lovely folks over at Freelance Cape Town some months back and they decided to publish the whole affair on their blog! Here I though we were just having a nice chat between friends. But since we are airing laundry you can go check out their post on my life as an editor and freelancer here.

Stay fresh and as the kids say, respect that good ol' hustle.

The Journey Thus Far . . .

Journeys have been an overarching theme in my life of late, whether it’s at work or at home. Journeys are perhaps one of the overarching themes of all life. That and running a race. All my teachers in primary school loved comparing life to running a race. I digress, though. What I want to get at is that when one is on a journey it is good to stop once in a while and take stock. Just stop, catch your breath, relax and look back at the way you have come. A little break also allows you to look at the road ahead and to plan a bit. I recently joined the wonderful people over at Freelance Cape Town as a freelancer (duh!). Marius Vosloo, the guy who heads the team up, immediately made me feel welcome and at home. They recently launched their blog, called Our Voice and it serves as a platform for creative people to be heard. Marius asked me to write something about my journey as a freelancer thus far. I haven’t looked back on the way I have come in a while and this proved to be the perfect opportunity for me to pause, take stock and reflect on my journey as Charles thus far and to add my voice to theirs and see what sort of music comes of it.

Dear Reader and fellow traveller, sit down and rest your feet a while and let me tell you my story.

My name is Charles Siboto and I am a reader and lover of beautiful stories. I haunt places where I can find good stories. My love for stories has resulted in me becoming someone who works with stories, whether they are my own or stories that other people wish to tell. I mainly prefer stories that other people tell because there is nothing better for me than getting so caught up in someone else’s visions that you just cannot help but love and understand that person a bit more than you did before being moved by their story. I grew up as a reader and from early on I knew that stories are magic and that I want to be a part of that magic when I grow up. I never knew in what capacity I would help make and spread more of this magic but at least I had a general direction in which to start looking for where I can fit in.

I am not even all that picky in my love for stories. I love the stories my grandmother told me as a child and listened to Gcina Mhlope on the radio every Saturday morning on a show she had that was sponsored by Joko tea. I can’t remember the name of the show but I loved the monsters she always told of and how the children in the stories always outsmarted them. I read books, comic books, played video games, watched movies and listen to weird radio dramas. I landed up studying English Literature, Linguistics and Literary studies and I loved most of it and hated some of it. I remember one instance in my fourth year of university where I read the comic book, Final Crisis by Grant Morrison and had one of the greatest moments of my life reading a story and it shook me to my core. Final Crisis is a massive story in its complexity and when Zillo Valla (if my memory serves me well), one of the beings in charge of protecting the multiverse utters the following words it just gets me every single time I read that story: "Behold: we monitors who were faceless once . . . We all have names now, and stories. There are heroes and villains . . . secrets and lovers." Things like this unstitch me. Somewhere in that comic book Superman asks that the words, To Be Continued be carved on his tombstone because humanity’s story never comes to an end, it always carries on. I read and love J.R.R. Tolkien and he taught me that some stories can break your heart and yet still strike you with sorrow as sharp as swords, eucatastrophe he called it, the good ending that breaks your heart.

Stories lead me to where I am today. My name is Charles Siboto and I am an editor of children’s books by day at one of South Africa’s biggest publishing houses. This is a great honour and privilege for me because it was a struggle for me to get my foot in that door but like any good character in your favourite stories, I persevered and always kept ongoing. I am also a freelancer in the sense that I use the majority of my free time to blog and write about books, movies, comic books, video games, technology, lifestyle events and even a dash of politics for various online media. I also offer my services as a proofreader and editor to almost just about anyone who needs it. Interestingly enough, French engineering students turn up on my doorstep with reports for me to proofread on a regular basis. This led me to my exciting new venture, Charles Siboto Bulletproofreading for Interns Abroad. A bit of a mouthful, right? But it’s all very exciting and I hope the venture does well. I have even dabbled in doing voiceovers, officially becoming the voice of one of our book characters at work, Dogtective William.

This, dear Reader and fellow traveller, is where I find myself currently. I am juggling a publishing career and exploring many avenues as a freelancer. I am learning a lot in both spaces and I love it. I’m working with stories and helping people who tell them find ways to tell them as clearly as possible, whether it’s an author writing a book for children or a company that needs content written to succinctly share their vision. My own story remains, always, to be continued . . .

A Little More Kindness

"More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness." - Charlie Chaplin

A few weeks ago a friend challenged me to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and this got me thinking about how everyone can do something around them to make the world a brighter place. I won’t lie, I’d never heard of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) before seeing all the videos of people pouring buckets of ice-cold water over their heads on my social media feeds. You’d think I’d know that Stephen Hawking suffers from ALS at least but nope, total ignorance on my part. ALS is a disease very far removed from my centre of attention.

The people behind the Ice Bucket Challenge, the ALS Association are looking to create a world without ALS. This, of course, requires money for researching cures for the disease and supporting people already living with it and affected by it. This is a noble cause and they used the power of social media to come up with a fun way to raise the funds they need for this good work. I commend this and it’s great to see a charitable drive gain so much momentum and create a stir. This is the sort of cause that people should donate money to or invest some of their time in whether they do it with a video or not. But you should always know exactly what it is that you are supporting.

The interwebs are a vibrant place where people vehemently share their opinions and very soon memes were making the rounds that people are wasting water whilst many regions in the world don’t have enough drinking water. Some celebrity personalities also declined the challenge on the grounds that there are reports stating that the ALS Association is involved in animal testing. Both these points are valid: wasting water is foolish and supporting an organisation that runs tests for cures for diseases on animals is not something everyone can agree on (and that’s a whole different and important argument).

The former issue made me think of my beloved mother warning me not to waste food or drink as a child because children in China are starving . . . but how would my not wasting the food ease their plight? I always thought. We live in South Africa and there were children starving in our neighbourhood that I could have given that food to. As far as animal testing is concerned, I don’t know whether the ALS Association is involved in this or not but it highlights the point that people shouldn’t blindly donate to organisations. As someone trying to ease the burden of other human beings you must go a bit further than just giving money to an organisation and invest some of your time finding out whether it shares the same values as you. This is also another reason I like the idea of volunteering because it gives you a first-hand experience of work being done by charities and other such institutes.

I took up the Ice Bucket Challenge but I did not support the ALS Association because I felt that there are causes closer to me that I can focus on. The world is in dire need of a lot of cleverness to solve many of its issues. Children should not be starving in China, South Africa or anywhere else when there is more than enough food to go around. There are enough resources for everyone on our planet but the problem is access. Clever minds are needed to enable such access but kindness is also needed. I am intelligent but I doubt I will be figuring out how to solve the issue of a child in China’s hunger anytime soon (sorry, mom) but I sure can give a hungry child who is right down the road from me something to eat. I took up my Ice Bucket Challenge in a spirit of being kind to all my fellow humans and helping where I can. I love food and I am the sort of person who packs a lot of it for work and sport so I will pack just a few more sandwiches and fruit to give to people.

Stories were my refuge as a child.

Giving sandwiches doesn’t solve the underlying problems though. I don’t have much money to give but I also don’t think that would help as much as me giving of my time. I love books and when I was growing up my family was poor (we’re only a little less so now) and stories were my refuge; they comforted me and taught me some wisdom. In addition to my grandmother and mother I was raised by stories and our local library was my second home. I can share that with children and will do so. I am privileged to work at the Children and Youth editorial office of one of South Africa’s largest publishing houses and to volunteer on the executive board (this is a whole lot less fancy than it sounds) of an organisation that seeks to get rid of the problem of illiteracy in South Africa. These are wonderful platforms from which to help nurture a hunger for learning in children and thus equip them with knowledge to support themselves as they grow older. I pledge my efforts and time to these ventures because that is a role I am most equipped to play in trying to make the world a better place.

I think most people are looking for opportunities to be kind but miss them in their daily lives because they think their acts of kindness may be too insignificant or they are daunted by the really large acts they really want to be doing. Look at all the opportunities on social media that are wasted! People will like and share the crap out of a status highlighting conflicts across the world and how we really should be doing something. Sometimes people even emotionally blackmail each other with posts about how you support something heinous like rape if you don’t share some picture. I hate stuff like that but it shows that people want to be kind, there is a spark of it albeit somewhat misguided. This whole Ice Bucket Challenge proves that social media can be a powerful tool to create awareness of issues and even to raise money for them but you still have to go out and be kind and generous in your daily life. Do small things for people and if you can, do big things. Just try and extend a helping hand whenever you can. That is my challenge to you.

The world is full of injustices like hunger, rape, murder, sexism, racism, corruption, war and many issues like disease and natural disasters. Lend your support wherever you can. You don’t have to be Superman or Wonder Woman (unless you can, then totally do that) but your small acts of kindness and even your cleverness can go a long way.

The Little Boy Lost

"Father, father, where are you going?
Oh do not walk so fast!
Speak, father, speak to you little boy,
Or else I shall be lost." - William Blake, The Little Boy Lost

Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the aerial kisses...
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality! - Percy Bysshe Shelley

You know, having friends is wonderful because they never solve any of your problems. Friends are like physical realisations of the opposite poles of one's mind, they play out the conflict that's taking place in your head and allow you to be an observer of what's going on in your head. Unlike C.S. Lewis I am fortunate not to have been born with a mind that's split perfectly in two, a mind that's an oxymoron (mine's just a plain moron), a mind that is made of two opposing hemispheres: the one shallow and rational and the other filled with magic and stories. My mind is entirely filled with magic and stories. I am not built to be an engineer or a lawyer, but rather a reader and a writer.

I am interested in dusty libraries and old churches. I would love to live in a museum as opposed to a city because there is life... real life in dusty books and old Greek vases. Being the strange being that I am it is logical (what a filthy word) for me to pursue a career in the Classics.

The more reasonable half of my friends, ironically led by a very unreasonable Reuben points out to me that I am a black boy (which is apparently synonymous with a unique sort of poverty that can only be overcome by becoming a lawyer or a doctor) living in a country that does not take kindly to the Classics. The other half of my friends, who believe that I should pursue a career in the Classics, ironically led by a very reasonable Simone, make this simple and undeniably true point: What else can he do with his life? He'd suck at everything else.

This is all very straightforward once you've had your friends enact it. I am not capable of any other career but one that is made up of mythology and literature in some form or the other and so I must become a scholar, forever haunting the halls of academia. I'll take up refuge in some university as an excuse to use their library and use the money they pay me to take cute librarians on dates. This is my idea of an idyllic life. Done. It's over, let's not talk about it anymore, the irrational and mad side (led by the voice of reason herself) wins.