Local Publishers Power Worldreader
“The war has taken everything from these poor kids, the least we can do is give them some books,” says Nora Shawwa, Rimal Books. As the founder of Rimal Books in Cyprus, Shawwa understands the power of reading. She provided nine Arabic books for our early reading project in Jordan because she felt a connection to helping Syrian refugees.
A mother and daughter try out the Worldreader Kids app at Umhuthaifa School in Amman.
300 Million Kids
There are many reasons that publishers partner with Worldreader. One powerful motivation is harnessing digital to reach more readers.
Geeta Dharmarajan, the founder and president of Katha Books in Delhi has an ambitious goal with her 300M Challenge. About 300 million children attend school in India and 50% are reading below grade level or cannot read at all. She wants every child in India to read and enjoy books.
Katha provided 100 books in Hindi and English for our Read to Kids India mobile app to foster pre-literacy skills before children enter kindergarten. She knows that her organization can’t reach all 300 million kids without partnering with organizations like Worldreader.
“I believe that when children enjoy reading, sustained reading follows,” says Geeta. “We see technology and digital resources as a lever for a huge country like India. This partnership for our 300 million challenge is a great way to strengthen and enlarge the ebooks and app offerings of the 300M alliance.”
Publishers everywhere want to connect with new readers. Most feel their job is not done until their books are in readers’ hands. Digital technology presents an unprecedented opportunity to do just that.
Good for Business
Sometimes partnering with Worldreader is just good for business. Peter Muthui of Focus Publishers in Nairobi said, “The avenue opened by digital makes publishing more exciting. I am already publishing books that would have taken years to do in print for financial and marketing reasons.”
Worldreader converts publishers’ print files to ebooks, uploads to our platforms, and provides the files back to them to distribute on their own or via Amazon. These ebooks from emerging authors might not otherwise be available to global audiences and for publishers this provides access to entirely new markets.
Local Stories
Partnering with locally-based publishers from around the world is essential to the Worldreader approach. We need to provide content that speaks to readers. If they see a reflection of themselves in the books, the connection is deeper and the result can be transformative.
That’s why we partner with publishers in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to source commercial-quality books in English, Arabic, Hindi and 40 other languages. Books with characters that look like our readers and reflect experiences from their world. Books that strengthen and preserve local culture.
Our Library allows us to reach over 600,000 readers each month with high-quality ebooks, and we couldn’t do it without the support of the publishers with whom we work.
Are you our next publishing partner? Get in touch with us publishing@worldreader.org.
