As part of the Kingston Book Festival, the Book Industry Association of Jamaica (BIAJ) hosted a session entitled The Business of Books: Business and Investment Opportunities in the Jamaican Book Industry . Along with Jamaica Trade and Invest, CaribLit was a co-host of the session, with its guests, English publishers, Michael Williams from BIS Publications and Jeremy Poynting from Peepal Tree Press sharing their insights on publishing Caribbean books for the English market.

High on the agenda: ebooks. Jamaican publishers have begun to embrace the digital revolution both as a means of lowering the cost of providing books to the local market and as a way of tapping into the wider international market. The BIAJ noted that several of its member publishers including the University of the West Indies Press, Pelican Publishers, Ian Randle Publishers and LMH Publishing have made major strides in launching their ebook catalogues, while Jamaican self-publishers are independently launching ebooks in growing numbers.

Christine Randle from Ian Randle Publishers and Ronald Robinson from the Office of the Deputy Principal at the University of the West Indies gave updates on their digital publishing initiatives.  Robinson outlined UWI Mona’s initiatives which began with a project in the Faculty of Medicine. The University licensed ebooks from the publishers of the textbooks used and now offer them to students on a UWI-branded electronic reader. The project has expanded to include smart classrooms and a library app that allows electronic borrowing.

UWI is now doing a pilot with Jamaica College to provide sixth form textbooks electronically.

Read the full story in the Jamaica Gleaner.

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.