Win great Homebru 2006 books with Exclusive Books & LitNet!

Homebru 2006 - Celebrate South Africa!

Batya Green-Bricker at the launch of Homebru 2006

Good morning everyone. Welcome.

I am Batya Green-Bricker, of Exclusive Books, and I'm delighted to introduce to you this morning's Homebru presentation. The idea of today is to provide you with a preview and taste of the Homebru campaign to feature in our stores in May, and to give you a broad view of the book context in which we currently work.

Homebru is a celebration of South African writing, and we've selected 25 books that capture South Africa now - 25 books from the 140 titles submitted by publishers for consideration - that's quite a feat.

After five years of running Homebru, we are not taking ourselves quite as seriously. There is a certain lightness, a sense of humour and ease about the books we have featured. In selecting the shortlisted books, our focus was on entertainment, and because entertainment means different things to different readers, we have covered everything from travelogues to romance, historical biography, poetry and even CDs for children. From being books you "should read", Homebru has become books you will simply want to read.

Homebru is one of Exclusive Books's, and indeed one of Book South Africa's, most important promotions. Amidst trends of Sudoku, E-books and i-books, Google and Froogle, plagiarism or accusations thereof, Dan Brown and Harry Potter, here are books that give you something to laugh about, something to cry about, something to think about.

"Books are ideas made physical." So I'd like to share with you some of the ideas behind the selection on Homebru this year. Homebru is both a catalyst to change reading habits, and a response to readers and their preferences.

Bear in mind, though, that trends do not emerge full-blown, nor do they vanish suddenly. It's a slow-burn. But here are some themes we have seen emerging, and their reflection in Homebru:

• The female voice
  Ian McEwan contends that if it weren't for female readers, the novel would have long met with early death. At Exclusive Books we can see what people buy and who buys what, and we note that that 65 percent of our regular book buyers are female - so good news for the future of fiction. And it's not just the readers, but the writers too. The female voice features prominently on the Homebru list - half the books are written by female authors. We have Gcina Mhlophe with her Songs and Stories of Africa, Pamphilia Hlapa's journey of self-discovery in A Daughter's Legacy, Zarina Maharaj's life story, Rozeena Maart's evocative experiences of growing up in District 6, poet extraordinaire Antjie Krog, as she "ekes out the language of old age". The list goes on.
  
• The prevalence of multimedia
  The average person will interact with five or more different media a day - a laptop, a cellphone, a radio, TV, an iPod, and then perhaps a book, a magazine or a newspaper in bed. This prevalence of multimedia shows even in our reading habits. Take Red Car Diaries, for instance - the success of the SABC3 TV series Going Nowhere Slowly was the inspiration for this travel journal. So now you can page through the book slowly, exploring all the nooks and crannies of our country, the same way you do on the telly.
  
• Range
  "Range takes precedence over volume" - that has always been the Exclusive Books motto, and its what customers want. As always, the Homebru list covers a wide range -from poetry to biography, fiction to history, light romance to children's songs. Everyone's got a book in them, so the saying goes - well, the range of Homebru authors is testament to this. We have travellers and IT consultants, housewives and models, game rangers, journalists, historians and musicians telling their stories.
  
• Freshness
  Customers do not want cheap imitations of international counterparts. They want new, original and inventive books. So we focused on freshness in the list - more than half the books release only in May and will be hot off the press for Homebru.
  
• Relevance
  In an age where we are bombarded by messages of every kind, the key to real communication is relevance. The Homebru books reflect South Africans - what's on our minds, on our tongues - subjects diverse but topical: the environment in Ecological Intelligence, or redefining history in a book like Myth of Iron, the first comprehensive biography of Zulu leader Shaka Zulu.
  
• Award-winners
  Any title that has won awards, or is on bestseller lists locally or overseas boosts sales, and that is where the importance of the Homebru list cannot be underestimated. So we are very pleased to announce that, together with the EU and Jacana Media, Exclusive Books has now incorporated in Homebru the annual European Union Book Award that recognises debut South African novels written in English. This year's prize was awarded jointly to Gerald Kraak for Ice in the Lungs and Fred Khumalo for Bitches' Brew. Of Khumalo's novel Prof Bhekizizwe Peterson of Wits University's Department of Languages says, "A heady brew of off-beat characters, encounters and inventive language … evokes memories that speak to the present." Of Kraak's work he said, "Its bold narrative and taut writing make for an assured and compelling novel."
  
• Fearlessness
  There is a fearlessness in many of the Homebru books, in the writing and the issues they confront. The two EU Award-winning books are bold explorations of sex and physicality, as is Melinda Ferguson's Smacked, the story of her addiction to heroin and her harrowing recovery - courageous, raw and bold.
  
• Regional appeal
  Our stores cater to a variety of customer profiles which differ quite markedly according to region, city or even suburb. So in Homebru 2006 we've included books with specific regional appeal - books like Praba Moodley's A Scent so Sweet, which, although universal in its theme, will entice KwaZulu-Natal readers; or Rosa's District 6 by Rozena Maart, which will resonate strongly with Cape Town book lovers.

Now we invite you to take a look at the books yourself. The Homebru books will be on full display in the month of May in all our 38 shops nationally. The beautiful display gives you an idea of what to expect.

And what is a celebration without a party? This year we created a Homebru Festival - a month-long party, featuring over 30 Homebru events around the country! These include poetry evenings, children's storytellings, book launches, coffee mornings. Metro FM nights, bookclub evenings, etc spread across the month of May and over seven cities. For the first time, a schools programme has been developed for three cities.

My thanks to the publishers, publicists, authors and booksellers who make Homebru happen. But it is you, the journalists, who can take the message to the people who matter most - the readers. And readers tip readers. I liked what Philip Pullman said, that "when you are reading, you are an equal partner in the making of meaning". The Homebru books, as fabulous as they may be, have little meaning or future if they are not read, swapped, passed on, discussed and debated. So … please get the word out. Get people reading these books.

Let's celebrate South Africa.

Intro to speakers
To give you a broader understanding of the context in which Homebru works, and to pay tribute to the strong female presence on Homebru, I am joined by three powerful literary women:

• Michele Matthews, publishing manager of Oshun books (Struik's imprint for women's writing), who was short-listed for the British Council's 2006 International Young Publisher of the Year Award. She will speak about making the women's voice heard: the trends and challenges, here and internationally.
  
• Nakedi Ribane, a former model, fashion and beauty editor and actress, and now Homebru author of Beauty… a Black Perspective, who will speak on "Why our idea of beauty is no longer just a skinny girl who looks like Kate Moss".
  
• Gabeba Baderoon, winner of the DaimlerChrysler award for poetry in 2005, who will treat us to some poetry from her Homebru book A Hundred Silences.

Homebru 2006 book give-away! Every week Exclusive Books will be giving away a copy of two Homebru 2006 titles. All you have to do to stand the chance of winning is answer a simple weekly question. Click here for more information and keep an eye on the LitNet newsletter.

LitNet: 10 May 2006

to the top / boontoe

Send us your comments. Write to webvoet@litnet.co.za and join our interactive opinion page! The letters page can be found here

Click here to receive our newsletter - your weekly cultural fix! Check out what's sizzling on our newsletter this week

© Kopiereg in die ontwerp en inhoud van hierdie webruimte behoort aan LitNet, uitgesluit die kopiereg in bydraes wat berus by die outeurs wat sodanige bydraes verskaf. LitNet streef na die plasing van oorspronklike materiaal en na die oop en onbeperkte uitruil van idees en menings. Die menings van bydraers tot hierdie werftuiste is dus hul eie en weerspieël nie noodwendig die mening van die redaksie en bestuur van LitNet nie. LitNet kan ongelukkig ook nie waarborg dat hierdie diens ononderbroke of foutloos sal wees nie en gebruikers wat steun op inligting wat hier verskaf word, doen dit op hul eie risiko. Media24, M-Web, Ligitprops 3042 BK en die bestuur en redaksie van LitNet aanvaar derhalwe geen aanspreeklikheid vir enige regstreekse of onregstreekse verlies of skade wat uit sodanige bydraes of die verskaffing van hierdie diens spruit nie. LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf.