Publisher rocks the boat

Jacana's new imprint — Rock the Boat — is based on a crowdfunding model in which authors and publishers share responsibility for the publication of South African memoir and biography.

- Melody Emmett

Publishers across the world are constrained by the soaring costs of paper, together with a constricted market, which makes it increasingly difficult for them to accept manuscripts.

Booksellers, in the meantime, are focusing more on bestsellers and catering for books with a predictable market. Rock the Boat is a creative response to the challenge.

With the crowdfunding model, the book will be offered to the public using the author's and the publisher's networks. Supporters can decide how much to offer, as with any crowdfunding. Benefits will be offered to contributors in the form of merchandise, artwork or even music-related material.

The first book to be published under the new imprint will be Signal to Noise, a memoir and a history of the recording studio Shifty Records, by Warrick Sony.

South African writer, journalist, artist and onetime performer Matthew Krouse's memoir Dark Blue, which will include some of the artwork he produced as a military conscript, is second in line.

"We don't have any coffee-table books on the cards at the moment," Jacana Media's Maggie Davey said, "but Matthew's book, Dark Blue, for instance, includes a lot of images along with his text. And we're looking at innovative ways of presenting the artwork."

Both Sony and Krouse grew up under apartheid and for both compulsory military service marked a turning point in their understanding of their trajectory in the South African arts, music and culture sectors. In their respective contexts, both railed against the status quo and blazed new trails.

Composer, producer, musician and sound designer Sony, who grew up in KwaZulu-Natal, has said his political education was through music.

A Beatles fan who had a particular interest in George Harrison during his youth, Sony learned to play the tabla at a Surat school where he was exposed to the Indian Hindu community.