ALIBABA WILL NOW PAY PUBLISHERS HOSTING THEIR CONTENT ON UCWEB..AND MORE EXCITING NEWS
Alibaba will pay you for publishing content on its We-Media platform. Vying to be an alternative to Google and Facebook, Alibaba Group's mobile business unit UCWeb is banking on its content recommendation strategy in the country and will be offering monetary benefits to users who contribute self-generated content on the platform, reported The Economic Times on Monday. In January, Tech in Asia had reported that UCWeb had announced a $30-million investment to develop a content business around the UC Browser in India and Indonesia. And, its ambitions don't appear to be misplaced. Citing StatCounter, a web traffic analysis tool, Bloomberg Quint reported that the browser now has a 57 per cent market share in India, leaving behind other mobile browsers like Chrome, Opera, and Safari. (Full Report Here: https://goo.gl/ujdMTH )
Teenagers in the country are writing way more than just projects and essays these days. If the shelves at major bookstores are any indication, a growing crop of youngsters are writing their own novels, alongside school, exams, and life. A prime example is Anusha Subramaniam, now 16 and a student, who wrote her first novel, Heirs of Catriona, when she was just 12, and recently launched her second book, Never Gone. Publishers are taking an active interest in bringing young voices to the fore. “We have always believed in nurturing young talent. We are focusing on identifying powerful, new voices. That is the larger strategy for us,” says Sohini Mitra, executive editor for children’s and young adult books, Penguin Random House India. (Full report here: https://goo.gl/4HXSzC )
Marwa Al Aqroub, a prominent Emirati writer will be the judge for this year's BolognaRagazzi Award (Braw), one of the most prestigious prizes in children's publishing. This for the first time that an Emirati person has been invited to become a jury member of the annual Italian award. Al Aqroubi, the president of the UAE Board on Books for Young People (UAEBBY) Executive Board, who has extensive experience in the field of children's literature, evaluated more than 1,400 books for Braw, which acknowledges distinctively excellent children's books. The winners will be honoured during the Bologna Children's Book Fair, which will take place from 3-6 April 2017 in Italy. (Full report here: https://goo.gl/io2F6n )
The Kenyan Publishers Association (KPA) has unveiled a new digital system that will fight counterfeit books and protect DRM in the market and block piracy gains which stand at Kshs 7 billion yearly. The CHKTAG system will allow users to verify genuine books by sending a serial number, printed on book copies, to a short code and get a confirmation if the book is genuine. They system has been put up with the assistance of Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and Brand ID Technologies from Europe.Speaking to ITWeb Africa, Enock Maseru, Head of ICT at Moran Publishers in Kenya, explained the benefits of the system. "The CHKTAG system allows law enforcement agencies and content providers to identify counterfeits from the genuine article. In addition, customers and other stakeholders in the distribution chain have an easy way of identifying genuine books. Publishers hope that the public will embrace the system and are looking at ways of providing incentives for buyers to encourage the purchase and authentication of genuine books," he said. (Full report here: https://goo.gl/nsSUkP )
The chief executive of the UK’s largest publisher has warned that the books industry will “become irrelevant” if it continues to fail to reflect the society we live in. Tom Weldon, chief executive of Penguin Random House UK, was speaking as the publisher launched a new scheme intended to discover and mentor authors from the UK’s under-represented communities, whether this means they are writers from some poorer backgrounds, from LGBTQ or BAME (black, Asian, minority ethnic) communities, or writers with a disability. (Full report here: https://goo.gl/WXmJxS )