Some companies offer a low cost for publishing books and sell them as ebooks for equally low prices. 30° South is a South African company that publishes and sells ebooks, specifically on South African topics.

On the other hand, other sites allow writers and readers to connect for free legally, whether uploading or downloading ebooks. EbooksGo.org is a database of free e-files with 45 categories on their homepage and also contains several South African literature pieces. Obooko.com is an international database with 34 genres of ebooks, ranging from history to erotica.

KliekClick is a new local company that offers free publishing of short stories, novels, poems and essays, or book selling for low prices in an array of genres. KliekClick was launched by four women of different training backgrounds that identified a shortage of literature and realised the only way to encourage reading is by providing content and publishing amateur writers’ work online for free. Two partners of this homegrown initiative are Samantha Buitendach, a Publishing lecturer at Tuks and Andri Nel, a current student at the university.

If your story is good enough, KliekClick also gives you the opportunity to be paid for your writing work.“We work on a social publishing model, which means we get our content or stories from the community. Young and old are encouraged to write and submit their stories. Our youngest writer is ten years old and older, [up to] 80 years old. The stories are then published on the electronic site and the author earns royalties on their sold stories. Thus it is a process where stories are received from the community but are again plowed back in the form of royalties,” explains Buitendach.

There are also online writing communities where writers can post their work and interact with each other. WritersCafe. org, Figment.com, Writing.com, Authonomy.com and Scribophile.com are some websites where writers can post written work and receive reviews, comments and critique from other writers. These sites also offer workshops to help improve your writing and to generate new ideas. With these sites, you can create your own profile, communicate with and follow other writers and their publications.

Posting written work across numerous platforms provides strength in numbers so joining as many communities as possible will increase the chance of becoming discovered and will also allow numerous crowds to be exposed to writers’ work.

Many find euphoria in the smell of ink and pages, and it is any author’s dream to see their work in physical print but for now, it is a start and a platform to get noticed.

Image: KliekClick’s Facebook page

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