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Staying in the Eye of the Storm |
Coping in Challenging times
For Nadine and me it has been rather tricky lately to keep the little ship Kima Global safely on the path to port. We are confident that we will get there (no threat of closure), but we have been keeping very alert so as to avoid the many pitfalls and to take advantage of every opportunity presenting itself. Along the way there has been good news and some challenges and we would like to update you briefly on what we have been up to.
Also please be reminded that Nadia's correct email address is nadia@kimaglobal.co.za
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Recent Trade Fairs
The Celebrate Life Festival in May was a great success, chiefly because we had three speakers. A big thank you to Jimmy Henderson for taking the time and spending the money to come down from Durban for this.
We cannot say the same for the Cape Town Book Fair (at nearly eight times the cost). Sales were absolutely miserable (less than R1 000.00 compared to last year of over R5 000.00) . Be assured that it is nothing to do with the quality of the writing. There was plenty of interest, but people simply do not seem to have the money to buy.
Nevertheless, we did gather email addresses and it looks like we will be doing a really nice deal to publish a series of books by an internationally known and highly regarded Spiritual Teacher. More on this later when the agreement has been signed!
See
photos of our exhibits here |
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A disappointment
Nadia went to quite some trouble to set up special Author Pages on our web site where you can up date your activities and even post news about your forthcoming workshops, lectures and other activities. She did this as a service to you the author to give you a wonderful tool to help you market yourself and your book.
Only TWO of you responded even though it was for free. Have you ever felt unappreciated? Yes? Then that's what she is feeling right now. If you would still like to take advantage of this great opportunity then please email nadia@kimaglobal.co.za and she will resend the link. Otherwise we reserve the right to take this section down.
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Royalties
Royalty time has come around again and for those hoping that their ship might have come in, sorry but it might just be a yacht this time. Still, even a yacht can take you around the world. It just takes longer and is not as comfortable. As explained in the lead article, Kima Global has been having to trim expenses in view of the recent big increases in costs. In effect that means that Nadine and I have cut down on an already frugal lifestyle.
Partly due to technical and banking problems in paying Pamina Mullins Stress Slaves who is in the UK, we decided to pay her in kind (books). We will send her free books to the value of what we owe her and she will even earn a profit on the deal as well. We intend to do the same for you. It will also help to get books out into people's hands while helping to limit our cash outflow at a time when we need every Rand, Dollar or Euro that we can get. We appreciate your co-operation on this.
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Frankfurt
The good news is that we will definitely be exhibiting at Frankfurt again this year. We were on the point of pulling out because the budget came to more than R50 000.00 this year.
Like most of you we have been hit hard by the recent increases in costs, interest rates, fuel, food, electricity etc. so didn't see ourselves being able to afford it. Last year we paid for the airfares on budget over six months and that was also tough. Out of the blue we had a donation of the cost of the stand, airfares and ground travel in Europe this year! What a blessing.
The budget represents an investment of more than R8000.00 per each of the new titles. Kima Global authors are very fortunate to have their book in full view of more than 11 000 book publishers and book buyers from countries around the world at this, the biggest Book Fair in the world. All our back list titles also get the same exposure year after year and also throughout the year on the rights database. (We go this length because we believe that we have what is known as a 'sleeping best seller' hidden on our back list.)
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Recent sales stats
In these hard times it might be both sobering and refreshing to revisit what now constitutes a 'Best Seller' in this extract from another publishing newsletter.
"I get a lot of calls and e-mails from the subscribers to this newsletter that start off with a comment like 'My book is a guaranteed best seller'.
"If you say that to me on the phone, my response is likely to be curmudgeonly. If you write that to me in an e-mail, it decreases the chance that I will respond to you.
"Nobody knows that a book will make the best seller list, especially by an author who isn't well known.
"Here are some sobering statistics from Nielsen Bookscan, (who run the international bibliographic database) a company that in 2007 tracked the sales of 1.2 million books in the United States:
- Of those 1.2 million books, 950,000 sold fewer than 99 copies
- Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies.
- Only 25,000 books sold more than 5,000 copies
- Fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000 copies
- Only 10 books sold more than a million copies each
- The average book in the United States sells about 500 copies
Reprinted from the Levine Breaking News, USA. Bear in mind that the American market is very different to ours. For a start they have more than 300 million potential customers with a high level of education and at least some disposable income.
From these figures it may seem desperately bad, but in these terms Kima Global is actually doing quite well, selling somewhere between 500 and 1000 on average, and some many more. This is probably because we are highly exposed on the internet, getting high rankings on Google for instance.
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A warm welcome to Luis Falcao
We are delighted to welcome Luis Falcao to the Kima Global family of authors. We have accepted Luis' book The Reawakening of the Christ Consciousness for publication.
His subject is perfect for us and Luis himself , psychic from an early age, is a powerful and committed teacher of Universal Truth. You may have read the feature article on him in a recent edition of Renaissance Magazine. Luis was born in Portugal and came to South Africa via Mocambique as a young man. He currently lives in Johannesburg.
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A Café of Conversations
We are planning to host what we call a Café of Conversations at Zenatude in Johannesburg in September. The participants will be Chris Page Life in Your Hands, Mark Lockwood Auto Therapy, Nadine May The Awakening Series of three novels and a workbook, and Luis Falcao The Reawakening of Christ Consciousness.
The program for the evening will be that each author will have about 5 minutes to speak about their work and their book, followed be a themed conversation between them for around 30 minutes. The theme has yet to be decided, but will be of relevance to people's spiritual and mundane lives in today's world.
After this, the panel will discuss or answer questions from the floor for as long as there is lively interest, followed be refreshments. There will be a sales table at the back of the room and the authors will be available to sign books.
Some of our authors will remember that we have hosted a large Café of Conversations at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town 2002 with great success. We would be delighted if you can support us for this one too.
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photos of this event |
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A Favourite Quote
"I am Heaven"
Jim Carrey (American comedian and film star) |
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