Jamaica’s leading publishers and booksellers turned out in full force for the Kingston Book Fair – the highlight of the nine days of activities of the Kingston Book Festival. Among the sixty exhibitors was tech venture eBooksCaribbean, on hand to launch its downloadable ebook card – a marketing tool for publishers and authors.

eBooksCaribbean is a social commerce platform for Caribbean publishers and authors. The company offers publishers and authors a turnkey service for digitizing and selling ebooks in multiple formats through eight of the web’s largest ebook distributors. The company also creates online stores for authors and publishers who wish to sell ebooks through their own sites.  

The downloadable ebook card is an extension of the social commerce platform, allowing authors and publishers to sell their digital publications in brick and mortar retail points of presence. The cards can also be used in off-line marketing campaigns. Similar in size and format to pre-paid phone cards, the download cards carry the cover art of the book on the front, while the back has a PIN code that the reader uses to redeem and download the book from the author’s or publisher’s website or from the eBooksCaribbean site.

“The download card is a tangible representation of a digital product,” says eBooksCaribbean co-founder, Lloyd Laing. “It allows the publisher to have a physical product for customers to touch and feel. They can distribute the cards at book festivals and major events and it gives them a product to sell in real world bookstores. One of the challenges for authors with ebooks is getting attention for their books in the offline world. The card gives them a solution.

“It also gives traditional bookstores a way to participate in digital sales. For everybody in the industry it’s win win.”

The cards come in different grades of paper and plastic, to facilitate publishers who want to promote their cards as collectibles.

The cards were launched at the book fair with Pelican Publishers’ Caribbean Calorie Counter, which first appeared as a print book, is now available as an ebook and will soon be converted into an interactive app.

“We want to make this book available as widely as possible,” says Latoya West Blackwood, Senior Assistant Manager at Pelican. “But identity theft and credit card fraud are issues that Caribbean publishers trying to sell online have to deal with. The download cards allow us to reach the segment of the market that’s afraid to use credit cards online as well as  people who don’t have credit cards but have access to online books.”

For more information on the download cards, visit ebookscaribbean.com.

One of the highlights of this year’s Havana Book Fair was Lecturas en La Red (books on the network): an impressive digital collection of electronic books available for reading and download at the fair.

Organized by Cuba Literaria, Cuba’s digital publishing house, the collection boasted 1,500 titles available online for the duration of the fair. Visitors to the fair were able to download as many books as they liked to their jump drives or portable devices. The collection covers a broad range of disciplines including fiction, children’s books, science, arts, the social sciences, essays and journals as well as visual and audio projects. The works are classics from the public domain and original titles from contemporary authors who have made their work available for free. Some of the ebooks are also made available for sale through ruthtienda.com, a Cuban and Belgian company that serves as a partner to Cuba Literaria.

“Cuba’s participation in the world of new technologies is very recent, especially for writers,” says Paola Rigal Collado, Director of Cuba Literaria. “[ebooks] are a way for writers to promote their work.” The partnership with ruthtienda.com also gives Cuban writers a rare chance to promote their books in foreign markets. Thus far, Cuba Literaria has published 22 ebooks. Other Cuban publishing houses, including Letras Cubanas, have also begun to release digital titles.  According to Collado, Cuban publishers are increasingly embracing ebooks because they cost less to produce and have a lower impact on the environment.

The response from the Cuban public has been strong. “The general public is always happy with free access [to books],” says Collado. “People here are always willing to read.”

While private internet access is not common in Cuba, electronic books have long been popular. Cubans are able to access ebooks through the many computing clubs across the island.

Cuba Literaria also operates the website cubaliteraria.cu, a portal for Cuban Literature. Its goal is to promote the collective work of the island’s authors and to report on the most important happenings in the literary word at the national and international level.

Cuba Literaria plans to expand into the production of multimedia products, animation, audiobooks and educational video games – all subsidized by the state. The agency is also interested in bilingual books and products to meet the growing interest in English language content.

For more information on Cuba Literaria, visit cubaliteraria.cu.