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At the SCBWI meeting of 20 November 2007, Nicoline Wessels and Hannalie Knoetze, lecturers at UNISA, shared some of the results of their research on the reading patterns of township children.

Many University lecturers have noticed the poor reading skills of their first year students and suggest that these are approximately on a grade 8 level. This means that some first-year university students are reading at the level of first-year secondary school learners. In addition, only 19.1% of South Africans reach a desired level of reading for adults. This has established a need for research.

Nicoline Wessels and Hannalie Knoetze, from the Department of Information Science, are carrying out research in three primary schools as part of an inter-disciplinary project.

The three selected schools are functioning primary schools with interested and enthusiastic principals. English is a second or even third additional language for the learners who come from all over South Africa and even further afield. Schools A and B have 600 learners, with School C, registering over 1400 learners. At least 80% of the children qualify for the feeding scheme and all three schools have been declared non-paying fee schools. One of the schools did not have electricity for more than three months this year .

School libraries have been established in each school and each library has been stocked with books from organisations such as Biblionef. The book stock comprises English, Sepedi, and in School C’s case also IsiZulu books. There are between 1-3 books per child. The ratio of books to learner will move towards a more desirable and internationally acceptable one as more books are added. In each case, a school librarian has been trained and they are supervised by a project manager. In addition, the researchers have initiated a number of reading related activities such as book clubs, book buddies etc. Other interventions include the twinning of schools.

The reading levels of learners have been tested periodically throughout the project.

Although their research has not been completed, it already points to a number of findings, for example:
• Children find it difficult to learn to read in English because the phonetics of English is so different from that of African languages.
• The level of most reference books such as World Books, is too high.
• There are not enough high interest, low level books available.
• Many of the so-called children’s classics are inappropriate.
• There are not enough books available in African languages.
• English books are more popular among the children.

Some books have been found to be more popular than others. These include:
• TV programme spin-off books;
• High interest, low level books;
• Beginning to read books;
• Multicultural books;

Since the implementation of the project, there has been steady improvement in reading levels, the latest level for grade 7 being 48% in School A. This was originally established as 31%. Thus, the implementation of libraries and reading related activities does seem to influence reading skills. However, the researchers express anxiety about what will happen to the school libraries and reading within the schools when the project closes down.

I’ve been following the Simon & Schuster boilerplate contract change with some interest. On one hand I’m surprised that no publishing company had yet to try this tactic given that Print On Demand technology has been heralded as the next new thing (to replace the need for big brick and mortar stores even) for years now. While I’ve never believed that POD kiosks would replace the bookstore experience, the availability of the technology merges nicely with Chris Anderson’s long tail theory. Books previously unavailable because they’d dropped below the minimum number to stay in print would be available for immediate print and delivery through the POD system. You many not sell a thousand or more books at one time, but you could sell a thousand different books to one or two people* (the same idea can be applied to ebooks, which take up a minute amount of space to store forever).

It makes sense then why a publisher would want to maintain control of a title long after it has ceased selling in the thousands. Publishers make most of their income from the backlist titles, and through POD and ebooks, that list can now stretch back forever—a backlist that could make them money for no cost to maintain. No more curriculum changes forced on teachers because they can’t get the right book or students forced to wait on ILL to get the book they need. No more crying because your favorite author’s backlist is unavailable due to being out of print.

The downside to this is, as the Authors Guild states, is “if you sign a contract with Simon & Schuster that includes this clause, they’ll say you’re wed to them. Your book will live and die with this particular conglomerate.” You’re not guaranteed that your book will receive any more advertising (something you might be able to do if you took the project to another publisher) or availability to brick and mortar stores down the road. This also means you would not be able to use an electronic file as a free book giveaway on your site like Michele Albert did to help stir the interest in her newest series or sell her other ebook title through a distributor for just $1.50.

Whether or not you believe that offering free books to your readership helps boost sales is not the issue though, the issue is whether or not this contract takes into account both the author and the publisher’s rights when it comes to the source material. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on the Simon & Schuster debate: do you think (as they do) that the boilerplate change is being blown out of proportion, or do you find that it infringes on the author’s rights to shop their past material around elsewhere?

Do you think that this boilerplate change comes to early given that the use of POD technology is still not wide spread and there’s no guarantee that there won’t be something better that comes along later?

I know it is mean to make you think on a Friday, but I want to hear your thoughts. Has S&S gone too far or simply made an informed business decision given the changing landscape of book publishing?


*I’m pretty sure someone else said this—and said it better—but I can’t for the life of me remember who I’m paraphrasing. If you know the source, let me know so I can cite the correct source.