Kala-Modiro Publishing
What does your company do?
We are a publishing house that was founded in 2022 and has been in operation since 2023. We pride ourselves in working with authors of colour (black, indian, coloured and asian) who possess great literary talent. Moreover, we dedicate our resources and services to publishing books that are written or dictated by illiterate authors. This allows us to create opportunities catered to this market; it also allows us to play our part alongside different government initiatives to advocate for literacy in the country and essentially, the African continent. In addition to publishing, we also offer literacy (reading and writing) classes as well as coaching/mentorship to these potential authors, both young and old, who are classed as illiterate and are passionate about pursuing a life and career in the literary landscape.
What is your biggest success?
We are officially publishing our first title this year in the June-July period. This means, we currently are unable to point to a book on a shelf in a bookstore and say "this is our biggest success", but we are able to celebrate the progress we have made in pushing this project and our vision forward. So much so, we are ready to go to the recording studio to record the audio version of this first book. Internally, this marks a significant achievement for us. Launching our social media marketing is another event we always regard as a mark of great achievement, allowing us to confidently identify and testify to the growth of our company. It allows us to see that what was once an idea is now an actionable, fully operational business. We have also celebrated creating collaborations with organisations in the Hammanskraal area that are as concerned as we are about literacy in our communities.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
Our biggest hurdle has been getting the financial support that we need to ensure that the projects we have scheduled for this year are successfully published. Because publishing requires a lot of interdependent processes that can get really expensive especially with addressing issues of illiteracy, the funds we have had, which have solely come from my personal capacity as founder, have not being able to carry us through to where we envisioned ourselves to be at this stage of the process. This has highlighted for us, the struggle in acquiring funding at this stage of our infancy. Although a number of funding opportunities exist, there is a common lack of confidence in working with newly established/operational entities like ours.
