Welp. I think we can all agree, 2020 was quite the year. And for publishing it was a year of ups and downs. Sales tanked, then rose, then tanked, then rose. Book fairs went virtual, which we can all agree is not ideal, but hopefully can represent some hybrid opportunities in the future. People learned to attend, and like, virtual events with authors from all over the world. For us at Catalyst, this gave us the opportunity to think big when it came to the fourth annual #ReadingAfrica week, and we held two virtual events with participants in North America, Africa, and New Zealand.
In literary news for the end of the year, the Frankfurt Book Fair has announced it will be changing the way it does things in the future, with a stripped down version focusing more on rights sales but still with a public-facing event for book-lovers.
Book sales rose over 5% in the week before Christmas (yay for those of you who give books for Christmas!).
Publishers Weekly did not name an individual as its book person of the year but rather a category of person: the book business worker, claiming, “This year, for the book business…the work was never light. Still, without many hands, there would have been no work at all—no books made or sold or read, no milestones achieved. No individual could stand out in such a year, and no individual should be honored in it either. Instead, it is the collective of book business workers, often overworked and underpaid, that kept the industry afloat and challenged it to live up to greater standards.”
The associate editor of Shelf Awareness mentions how deeply he has missed art this year, and lists some great art books that allow you to “enjoy art from home,” while Anthony Veasna So, who passed away unexpectedly in early December, suggests that we should be promiscuous and polyamorous with books and not read so seriously and so monogamously. The Millions has a whole round up of essays by writers and editors to discuss their 2020 year in reading (including one by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, who included our release, The Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu on her list)—and quite a year it was.
For us, the next year is shaping up to be an exciting one, complete with a new season of releases from a host of great authors. We’re also thrilled to announce that we are the North American publisher of the forthcoming Short Story Day Africa anthology, Disruption.
As we head into 2021, we at Catalyst want to thank you for reading our blog and newsletter, buying and reading our books, attending our events, participating in #ReadingAfrica, and doing all the many supportive things for us and our authors and books in general. To 2021! May it be the best year ever.
