The Literacy Ledger Reflections, findings, stories and the lowdown

Worldreader.org announces deal with African publishers to digitize thousands of books.

October 8, 2010 By

This week thousands of publishers attended the Frankfurt Book Fair and there was quite a bit of noise about e-books in the developed world.  At the same time, Worldreader.org was thrilled to announce an accord with Sub Saharan publishers to make available the first of thousands of e-books by African authors in Amazon.com.  Now available for the first time outside of Africa, children’s and young adult fiction from Ghana can be purchased worldwide, at prices of less than $5.00 each.  All proceeds are split between publishers and with Worldreader.org’s programs offering e-books in Ghanaian schools.  Our partner publishers now have access to a global audience, and new readers will have access to literature from a different culture.

WSJ’s Market Watch, Read Write Web, and TechCrunch Europe all agreed that it is “yet another cool initiative” and needless to say, we are really excited about it.   Publisher’s Weekly took notice and wrote about Worldreader’s ambitious mission – “to bring e-books and e-readers to the developing world and, along with them, a self-sustaining reading and publishing culture.”

It was an exciting week for our publishing division.  And as Elizabeth pointed out in our group meeting today, we are well on our way of not only bringing “Books to All”, but “ALL Books to All”.