PASA’s Guide to Publishing 2025 provides an overview of the latest developments and challenges in the South African publishing industry, including updates on the Copyright Amendment Bill, the Competition Commission investigation and the work of the PASA Legal Affairs Committee the Cultural, as well as the Creative Industries Masterplan and the NSFAS.

It also gives an overview of digital publishing and sales patterns in the various publishing sectors. This, together with a comprehensive list of training providers and industry-related bodies, including government department contacts, and a list of international, African and local book fairs and festivals, will enable publishing staff to make informed decisions about publishing trends and issues, marketing opportunities and training providers in the industry.

Publishers, marketing staff and authors should also engage with the section on selling international rights, written by an international expert in the field, to maximise the potential of their publications. Academics and (potential) authors should find the sections on intellectual property and copyright, and ‘how to get published’, as well as key publishing and design terms, particularly useful. The comprehensive PASA membership directory and index of publishers, their imprints and agencies, and their areas of speciality, will be invaluable to booksellers, librarians and academics alike.

South Africa in the 1970s was a divided and increasingly traumatised country, seemingly permanently in the toils of apartheid, and with little space available for open discussion of apartheid policies or awareness of just what those policies were meaning in the lives of people. It was in this context that David Philip, a South African already involved for several years in publishing, became convinced there must be more opportunity for books with informed discussion and debate to be written and published within the country.

He persuaded his wife Marie, also with publishing experience, that they could together set up their own independent publishing company, to publish 'Books that matter for Southern Africa'- in social history, politics, literature, or whatever, good of their kind and ready to challenge mainstream apartheid thinking.

This is an anecdotal account - a memoir - of the lows and highs of a small, cheerful, underfunded but vibrant 'oppositional' publishing company, David Philip Publishers, from the year 1971 through to the birth of the new South Africa.

Exploring the Blackwell Collections (publishing and bookselling archives), Rita Ricketts discovered diverse characters associated with this world-famous company, between 1830 and 1940. There is a tailor's son saving souls, a reluctant radical, a hammerman poet, a spellbound princess, pauper apprentices, pioneering women, profligate printers and patriots publishing in protest against the authorities who sent so many to 'certain death' in the First World War. Some became famous: J.R.R. Tolkien, Wilfred Owen, John Betjeman, Dorothy L. Sayers, Vera Brittain, Edith Sitwell and Laurence Binyon, whose name is recollected wherever For the Fallen is read. Most were obscure, yet their memoirs, letters and journals, often disregarded in recorded history, are preserved here. This is what makes the collections a rarity and so appealing. Family memories of the first B.H. Blackwell and the diaries of his son and first apprentices document everyday life against the backdrop of the book trade, and also present a tableau of nineteenth and twentieth-century history ranging far beyond Oxford. The third B.H. Blackwell (Sir Basil) collected their stories, singling out Rex King whose diaries, 1918-1940, contain an astonishing reading list and a mordant dissection of the texts amounting to a critique of early twentieth-century English culture; rich fodder for any book or cultural historian. Rex King, like all the characters in this book, wrote for posterity. And Rita Ricketts, a consummate storyteller, has ensured that they will be read by a new generation.

Before the advent of television, reading was among the most popular of leisure activities. Light fiction--romances, thrillers, westerns--was the sustenance of millions in wartime and in peace. This lively and scholarly study examines the size and complexion of the reading public and the development of an increasingly commercialized publishing industry through the first half of the twentieth century. Joseph McAleer uses a variety of sources, from the Mass-Observation Archive to previously confidential publishers' records, to explore the nature of popular fiction and its readers. He analyzes the editorial policies which created the success of Mills & Boon, publishers of romantic fiction, and D. C. Thomson, the genius behind The Hotspur and other magazines for boys, and also charts the rise and fall of the Religious Tract Society, creator of the legendary Boy's Own Paper, as a popular publisher.

Jonathan Ball, the founder of Jonathan Ball Publishers, died on 3 April 2021 after a short illness. This collection of essays, commissioned in tribute to him, is edited by Michele Magwood.

Jonathan Ball left a deep impression on many different people in different ways. The forty or so essays reflect the many facets of Jonathan. The chapter headings would read husband, father, businessman, friend, brother, colleague. But it is in the subheads that we begin to understand the shape of him: publisher extraordinaire, history expert, gourmand, liberal thinker, suitor, philosemite and so on.

It cannot be exaggerated how deep an imprint Jonathan has left on the political and cultural life of South Africa, too. The shelves of Jonathan Ball Publishers are weighted with serious history and biographies of eminent figures, with books that other publishers didn’t have the boldness, the sheer guts, to take on. But there are many smaller, more finespun stories that tell us too who we are as a people and as a nation.

This indispensable guide for writers provides details of hundreds of literary agents, book publishers, and magazines; including contact details, types of material accepted, and how to approach them Subject indexes for each area provide easy access to the markets you need, with specific lists for everything from romance publishers, to poetry magazines, to literary agents interested in thrillers. It also provides unparalleled access to international markets. The internet has made the publishing industry more global than ever, with markets increasingly accepting submissions by email (some no longer accept postal submissions at all). Other directories have failed to respond to this, continuing to focus on one single country, but this directory provides you with that all-important access to overseas opportunities that are now just an email away. And by focusing exclusively on what's important to writers - contact details for literary agents, publishers, and magazines - this directory is able to provide more listings at a lower price. There are no adverts, no advertorials, and no unnecessary articles or obscure listings padding out hundreds of pages. Two established alternative directories both run to over 800 pages, yet one has only 204 pages of publisher, agent, and magazine listings, and the other has only 10 pages devoted to literary agent listings This book does better on both counts, and yet remains substantially cheaper than either alternative. The book also includes free access to the firstwriter.com website, where you can find even more listings. You can also benefit from other features such as advanced searches, daily email updates, feedback from users about the markets featured, saved searches, competitions listings, searchable personal notes, and more

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of current developments, issues and good practices regarding assessment in social science research. It pays particular attention to the challenges in evaluation policies in the social sciences, as well as to the specificities of publishing in the area. The Handbook discusses the current societal challenges facing researchers, from digital societies, to climate change and sustainability, to trust in democratic societies. Chapters provide ways to strengthen research assessment in the social sciences for the better, by offering a diverse range of experiences and views of experts from all continents. The Handbook also outlines major data sources that can be used to assess social sciences research, as well as looking at key dimensions of research quality in the social sciences including journal peer review, the issue of identifying research quality, and gender disparities in social science research. This book will be an essential read for scholars interested in research assessment in the social sciences. It will also be useful to policy makers looking to understand the key position of the social sciences in science and society and provide appropriate frameworks for key societal challenges.