African treasure

Earlier in the year our book The Holford Low-GL Diet took off in a big way and was number one on the South African bestseller list for several weeks. Together with the rapidly increasing sales of Nora Roberts and J D Robb novels, and our other fiction and self-help titles in that part of the world, it was clearly an excellent time to view a market I had not visited for some years.
South African bookshops have not yet fallen prey to the ravages of discounts, so I was able to enjoy the very best of book-buying experiences. It was like drinking the finest wine at Christmas: a rare, long-forgotten treat that was absolutely delicious while it lasted. As I walked into each of the many beautiful stores with stock piled high for Christmas, I felt so delighted. They use more display shelving than tables, and the emphasis is on new publications, with as many titles as possible placed face out. Shelf after shelf offered me the best of autumn’s books, and there was absolutely no price discounting or bestseller promotions to distract me from the books themselves.
Central buying is also much more limited in South Africa, and I particularly admired additional shelving around some till counters, which provided opportunities for impulse buys.
South Africans have always been voracious readers, and it is a wonderful market to sell fiction to. Our UK trend of reading groups is fairly new, but South Africans have always got together in informal ’book clubs’ in order to purchase new fiction and interesting non-fiction. Books in South Africa have always been expensive, and each club is given a discount on the books it buys. The South African market is rapidly expanding, now attracting readers from among the black population. Ambitious young people--black and white--are understanding the value of business and personal development titles, and this area of the market is growing fast.
Online bookselling has not yet become a major feature of the South African market. So for the moment the old-fashioned bookshop, which concentrates solely on stock range and title display, reigns supreme. I am not sure how long this will last, but it is still a heavenly relic of a time that for us in Britain--due to the very different way in which our contemporary retail world operates--is just a ghost of Christmases past.
Judy Piatkus is founder and m.d. of independent publisher Piatkus