Wanna see all the marketing and online experts in video interviews?

Then www.gurutube.net is the place to go.

The lastest worldwide internet penetration stats have just been released on Internet World Stats.

According to the list, the country with the highest internet penetration is Greenland with 90.3%. Though the list is alphabetical, I managed the pick out the top 11 countries:

1. Greenland: 90,3%
2. Iceland: 90%
3. Norway: 86%
4. Finland: 83%
5. Netherlands: 82,9%
6. Sweden: 80,7%
7. Australia: 80,6%
8. New Zealand: 80,5%
9. Denmark: 80,4%
10. Falklands: 76,7%
11. South Korea: 76,1

Though not actually on the African continent but usually part of Africa stats, the best performers in the Africa region are the islands:

• Seychelles: 37%
• Reunion: 27,4%
• Mauritius: 26,7

In the African continent, the leaders are:

• Tunisia: 27%
• Morocco: 19,2%
• Egypt; 12,9%
• Zimbabwe: 11,9%
• South Africa: 10,5%
• Algeria: 10,4%

The worldwide average is 23,8%

See this great compilation on Focus.com

My purpose in visiting the 2009 Cape Town Book Fair was to see to what extent e-books are visible ( as if one can see an e-book) or spoken about by authors, publishers and retailers.

True, I did not have interviews set up with any of the above, so I had to make do with what I could actually see for myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I love books and definitely am one of those people that will buy a book, even if I have 3 that I’m currently reading and yes, I do like to read 3 different books at a time. ( right now it is Tribes, Wild at Heart and Polar Star)

I can’t say that I have read any e-book novels, though smaller topical ones on emarketing and the like.

Having just received the latest Fortune magazine by post, featuring Jeff Bezos and the Kindle phenomenon, I wanted to see where South Africa is positioned wrt to e-books. I also realise that this was not and e-book fair.

Having said that, I found many publishers from Africa, India, China and even Mauritius at the fair, promoting their books to local retailers. Stands selling Dianetics as well as 2nd hand books. I saw stands for department of Arts and Culture, Institute for security studies even one selling mousepads and bookmarks.

So then, I guess if I look really carefully, I’ll find some-one somewhere promoting electronic books.

I found Book Southern Africa, the internet newspaper for SA books. It basically is a news site about books in South Africa. Not quite the e-book thing I was looking for but an online element at the book fair all the same. They referred me to the stand ( also as tiny as the BookSA one) of Electric Bookworks. So, finally I managed to find one company who specialises in e-books.

According to the head honcho, Arthur Attwell, they help aurthors to get their books into e-book format. They will assist you with the design, editing and distribution. He does admit that it is very slow in SA and that most of the big publishers have not even started looking at this avenue.

They have been at this for some 3 year and only in the last 6 months have the publishers started showing an interest. It seems their biggest opportunity now is in actually consulting to the larger publishers, advising them how to go about gettting e-books out there.

To them I say, WELL DONE!

Arthur believes that the iphone will be a big contributor to the growth  of e-books. He also mentions the Sony reader as competition to the Kindle.

According to Arthur the leading SA publisher when it comes to e-books is RandomHouse Struik.

So, there you have it! e-books are still small, but can give you that chance to get out there and write a book and have it published. No more excuses!

With 11 of these “in the field” according to the sales / demo guy, how can anyone argue that print is dead?

11 000 to 13 ooo pages per hour! wow, I want one!

Here I am on a rainy Saturday afternoon at the Cape Town Convention centre at the 4th Cape Town Book Fair. Last year some 50 000 people attended the fair and they are hoping for bigger numbers this year.

When I applied for media accredition, I stated the much - hyped decline in printed media ( though very much news media ) as well the the much spoken about Kindle ( www.amazon.com) as reasons for me to come here to see what, if all, the take from local publishers and authors is on the future of print in South Africa and whether indeed there is scope for e-books, even in “old” fashioned download format in South Africa.

A quick search in Kindle books for 5 authors I see on the programme here, yielded:

• Antjie Krog: 1 Kindle book
• Max du Preez: none
• Adele Parks: 5 Kindle books
• John van Ruit: 2 Kindle books
• Denis Beckett: none

All in all better than I expected, considering that Amazon.com states that there are 300 000 titles on Kindle and I know that includes newspapers too.

Funny thing though is that I only opened the latest Fortune mag that arrived by post this morning, to find Jeff Bezos on the cover, bragging about the new Kindle DX.

So, I’m going to see what I can find about e-books, try to corner some authors and publishers and try to get a general feel for electronic VS print.

With a theme for this year’s fair like ” Education for the future” I hope I find what I’m looking for…

okay, so for 3 days I’m doing non-emarketing stuff, in case you haven’t noticed.

I’m here at the World EconomicForum on Africa in Cape Town. I’ve just attended the launch of the Africa Progress Panel’s 2009 report.

One of the members on the panel, Linah Mohohlo was saying how it is well known in Africa ( and around the world) that Botswana has a great economy.

” Then one morning, we woke up and couldn’t sell a single diamond! We then realised that diamonds are not forever.”

For more on the WEF conference, visist www.jointheconversation.co.za

Have your say and submit your video to http://www.forumblog.org/africaconversation/

So, by now I’m sure everyone has had something to say about the Generation Next survey in yesterday’s Sunday Times.

That’s not what’s on my mind, however.

I decided to look through the main section of the paper ( all 16 pages of it) to see whether SA companies are still spendind big bucks on printed advertising and if they do, how well do they promote their online presence in these mega-bucks ads.

I counted only third pages and bigger and found that out of the total 16 pages, about 48% is made up of colour ads of third page size and bigger! So there goes the ol’ print ads are dying theory. Of course there’s plenty more ads in the business, sports and review sections as well. I did not even bother looking at those.

So, who are these big spenders and do they at least have a url visible (however small) in their ads for the benefit of us 6 million+ that actually go online?

Below see the list of advertiser, size of the ad and a YES or NO with reference to whether there is indeed a reference to a campaign or even corporate web site, size of url reference:

1. Vodacom, quarter page: NO
2. Investec, quarter page: YES, same size as copy in body of the ad
3. BMW, half page: YES, smallest font in the ad
4. Dell, third of a page: YES, same size as other copy and in bold
5. Vodacom, full page: YES, just a little bigger than the terms and conditions copy
6. FNB, double page spread: YES, 3 urls, 2 same size as other copy and 1 smaller font
7. MTN, half page: YES, fair size
8. DSTV, full page: YES, smaller than terms and conditions
9. Hansa, full page: NO
10. SAA, third of a page: YES, bigger than terms and conditions
11. ABSA, third of a page: YES, same size as main copy
12. Cell C, full page: YES, the very last bit of copy at the end of terms and conditions ( at least it is in bold)

All in all the reference to web sites are shocking in these ads. Only 2 advertisers seem to have actually wanted people to know about their online presence: FNB and Investec. The others were either not there at all or very well hidden.

I do believe in print ( and TV, OOH, radio, etc ) when it is actually done in sync with other mediums and especially online.

It seems that the big spenders and their ad agencies don’t share my point of view…