PUBLISH'D AFRIKA

Triple Your Chances Of Winning

Since the inception of the PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Short Story Competition, the People’s Choice Award has always been about the people. You, the reader, determines which story wins this award and the R500 prize money.
Now, you have a chance to triple your favourite writer’s chances of winning by casting just one vote. And it will cost you… absolutely nothing!

While readers get to read and then vote for their favourite story on our Facebook page, they now get a chance to triple their votes, ensuring that their favourite writer wins the award and pockets a cool R500. Readers now get a chance to vote for their favourite writer on the Facebook page by means of a reaction, as well as on the PUBLISH’D AFRIKA website. One vote on the PUBLISH’D AFRIKA website, however, counts for two.
How is this going to work? Each story that will be shortlisted this month and onwards will be posted on the Facebook page with a unique link attached, to ensure that each vote cast on the website goes directly to the intended writer. The votes on the page as well as on the website will then be combined and tallied, and just like that, your favourite writer has tripled his or her chances of winning. Ain’t that something?

After winning one of the most lucrative literary prizes in the world, you’d expect publishers to line up to sign the author up. Instead, she still had to do the door-knocking herself with the manuscript in hand

*She is the author of five books, her latest titled ‘All That Is Left’
*She is the winner of the 2018 Minara Aziz Hassim Literary Award for her novel, Comfortable Skin.
*She is the winner of the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for 2016.
Kirsten Miller, a South African Durban-based author, penned the piece below for PUBLISH’D AFRIKA. It offers tips to writers intending to submit their manuscripts to either writing contests or to publishers for consideration.

---

Kirsten Miller writes:
In November 2016 I met Durban photographer for KZN Literary Tourism and clothing entrepreneur, Sbo Dladla, who engaged me in conversation about my writing work. I told Sbo about the competitions I’d entered, how my place in these, by default, consistently seemed to be second, or runner-up. He tilted his head at me sympathetically, but challenged my defeatist stance.
‘Stop telling yourself you’re always second,’ he said. ‘Believe in a different possibility, and I’m telling you it will happen.’
Something in his advice struck a chord in me. Within a few months I won the Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript for my latest novel, The Hum of the Sun. I saw Sbo again soon afterwards at a Durban literary event and thanked him for his advice concerning my perspective.
‘It worked!’ I told him. ‘I came first in a competition. I actually won.’
Winning such an award does change things, but not in the ways people expect. I didn’t become instantly famous, no publisher came knocking on my door (I still had to do the door-knocking myself), and my previous novels are still most often accessed off library shelves. The change is a subtle shift, and lies primarily in the affirmation that that dream you have always had, the conviction and the love of craft that you have dedicated so much time to, has not just been a fanciful whim, and that others have seen some value in your work.
The external value, for that inaugural year of the competition, was an amount of R50 000, which was to be used for travel and research, and to take some time from my day job to write. The prize’s purse for the unpublished section of the competition is now £5000 – around R92 000. This is a significant opportunity for any writer, and nothing would please me more than for another African writer to claim this.
I travelled, on the prize, to Barcelona to chase art and beauty, and to Ireland to find the echoes of the Irish Anti-apartheid movement. These pursuits now lie roughly combined in a still-awkward draft of another novel. The greatest gift the prize afforded to me was this time to write. Nobody understands a writer’s need for solitude and the preciousness of writing time better than other writers. The Hum of the Sun was accepted for publication by Kwela Books and published in 2018, and I hope that winning the award has put some weight behind the marketing of the book. Fiction in South Africa is not easy to sell.
I don’t pride myself on giving advice. Each person takes in life according to their unique needs, but I can share the following general writing guidelines that I adhere to when preparing a manuscript for submission:
Don’t be a chancer. Make sure that your work fits the criteria outlined in the guidelines or on the website. If the genre is specified, make sure your work fits that genre.
Each competition or publishing house has its own character and identity. Do an edit with this in mind. Look at your work again and ask, how will my work be viewed from this particular perspective? Will it challenge the status-quo? Is my work a good fit? Am I contributing anything fresh or new here?
Edit your manuscript diligently for extraneous words and empty phrases. Take out unnecessary words that pepper the work of inexperienced writers such as ‘only,’ ‘just’ and ‘then.’ When a word adds nothing to a sentence, kill it.
Read your work aloud. Good writing has an underlying rhythm and flow that sounds easy on the ear and satisfies the brain. Does your writing read well? Can you enjoy listening to the sound of your own language, your own work?
While reading, check your own emotional responses. If a section made your eyes prickle when you wrote it and you find yourself swallowing a lump every time you read it, it will probably evoke a similar emotion in potential readers. If a passage in your manuscript bores you, it’s probably boring. Rework it, or take it out.
The time for self-indulgence is in the first draft – don’t be precious about anything after that. Strive for a reader’s objective view and edit accordingly. We live in a time-starved world. Value the time of readers and competition judges as highly as you value your own time. Give them only your best effort, and improve your chances of getting more of their attention.
Once you submit, let it go. Get working on your next project. Writing is like fishing – the more lines you put out, the greater the chance of getting at least one satisfying catch. There will be lots of empty casts and near-misses. Do the work, and let the rest take care of itself.
Now whenever Sbo pops up on my Facebook feed or I spot him at the occasional event, the encounter, for me at least, glimmers with the knowledge of the mystery, and wonder, and the possibilities underlying all the chances we take in life. These, and their connection to our very flawed and earth-bound human existence, are surely amongst the most important reasons we write.

---

CORPORATE INFORMATION
PUBLISH’D AFRIKA is a registered B-BBEE Level 1 company.
Contact: +2783 487 4440 / +2784 311 8838
Email: info@publishdafrika.com

Tshidi Monkoe, Author of Bestselling Book, Prison Love, On How She Attained Success As A Self-published Author

For author Tshidi Monkoe, success as a self-published author needs one to always be proactive, to be prepared to shift paradigms, to challenge and not limit oneself.
“As a self-published author, nothing is handed to you on a silver platter,” she says. “One has to go the extra mile to put their book out there.”
Having published Prison Love in 2021, the book has sold well over 1000 copies. The book tells Tshidi’s story about how she fell in love with a man who was incarcerated. In the four years of their relationship while he was incarcerated, they were the IT couple of the prison; he was sweet, caring, thoughtful and treated her like a queen. When he was released, she discovered a different side of the man who had become her pillar of strength and her reason to try the love thing again.
She told PUBLISH’D AFRIKA: “There are many of people out there who are prisoners of love, or who are in some kind of prison in their relationships, or whose situations relate to my story. Hence I wanted to ensure that the book reaches as many people as possible. I’m glad I didn’t succumb to limiting beliefs, such as ‘book stores will rip you off’. I’d rather have a small slice of a big cake, instead of a big slice of a small cake.”
Another limiting she encountered when she began marketing her book was that ‘You will need to go through a distributor’ and ‘you are better off selling directly’.
“I told myself that my distributor is in heaven, and that I wasn’t better off selling directly,” she says. “There are readers who will never contact me directly to buy my book. I’ll be selling to people in my social media circle and those who hear me on radio. Why would I want to limit myself? What about readers who don’t follow me on social media, or those who don’t listen to the radio? What about prominent people who don’t have the time to call me and wait for the book to be couriered by Paxi? Don’t they deserve to read my book? What about opportunities that could come with my book being on the shelves of book stores? These questions propelled me to kick the doors of Exclusive Books stores.”
Tshidi says big manufacturing companies and well known brands such as Unilever, Coca-Coca, Tiger Brands, Issey Miyake, Tom Ford, Visage, Nike and other need retailers to sell their products. So, why would she convince herself that she doesn’t need a retailer to sell her book?
“Bookstores will return your books if readers don’t buy; yes that’s a fact,” she says. “Exclusive Books has a buy-back clause. If your book collects dust on their shelves, they return it and you reimburse what they’ve paid you. I didn’t allow this to discourage me because I can control this by showing up at their doorstep to promote my book and also continue marketing it on social media and other platforms.”
Tshidi chose to continue being proactive, to continue shifting the paradigm, to continue challenging herself. She chose to go to the bus depots, instead of waiting at the bus stop.
“We create our own experiences. My story didn’t begin when I was born; it began when the word was spoken. I don’t know my own story. I don’t know who I am and where I am headed. So, why should I limit myself?”
She has now supplied 25 Exclusive Books branches including all the three airports and Exclusive Books Botswana. She has also supplied Lifestyle Books including their branches in Lesotho and Zimbabwe. It has been a journey on a road filled with potholes yet exhilarating.
“I have been visiting different branches every month to promote my book,” she says. “I travel to different provinces and across border. My “WHY” gives me the drive that I need. I give myself a target each time I visit a store. For me it’s not only about creating awareness, it’s also about closing the deal. The sales person in me is always pushing beyond boundaries.”
Prison Love is Tshidi’s only source of income. It has turned her into an entrepreneur. She sold over 850 copies of the book in a space of 14 months. Prison Love was also recommended and selected by the Gauteng Department of Education to be used in schools. She has also supplied the Department of Arts and Culture in the North West and the City of Tshwane Municipality for their libraries.
“I’ve learned that whatever it is that I want and desire, I need to give to myself and that is what I have been doing,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been able to do all this if I hadn’t allowed myself to heal and forgive. Forgiveness is rewarding and fulfilling. How can I forget the lives I have touched through my book? I believe I am the light people have been longing for in their lives. God is using me to heal the broken-hearted and bandage their wounds.”

Second Book, “Mme Ntate O Kae?”

Prison Love has not been Tshidi’s only focus. She recently qualified as a Life Coach, NLP Coach and NLP Practitioner. She is also in the process of launching her speaking career. Her second book, “Mme Ntate O Kae?”, “Mama Ubaba Ukuphi?” will be released soon.
She told PUBLISH’D AFRIKA what the book is about: “We often disregard the pain our children go through when we get divorced or when the father passes on, we don’t know how to deal with our own pain. How do we then attend to what our children are going through? Children are left to navigate their own way through pain which doesn’t yield good results.”
Tshidi said men are also expected to be the best fathers when some of them were not raised by their fathers. Who do we blame? Being an absent father, she said, is a choice one makes, regardless of your upbringing.
“Failing to provide for your child is lack of self-love,” she said. “Denying a father access to his child does more damage than good. Let’s attend to our children’s pain and heal our own childhood wounds. Let’s make co-parenting a priority. Let’s make a difference, one child at a time.”

---

CORPORATE INFORMATION
PUBLISH’D AFRIKA is a registered B-BBEE Level 1 company.
Contact: +2783 487 4440 / +2784 311 8838
Email: info@publishdafrika.com

Has it always been your wish to see your work published overseas, specifically in the United States and the United Kingdom? How about in Australia, Germany, Canada, Spain, New Zealand and United Arab Emirates?

While in Africa, authors submit directly to publishers, in countries such as the US, the UK, Canada and other parts of Europe, an author has to be represented by a literary agent and cannot approach a publisher directly. Below is a list of reputable agents who represent African authors across the globe.

The Wylie Agency

Represents over 800 authors of fiction and nonfiction worldwide, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Binyavanga Wainaina, Helen Oyeyemi, Elif Batuman, Martin Amis, NoViolet Bulawayo, Teju Cole, Geoff Dyer, Taiye Selasi, John Updike, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Salman Rushdie, and the Estates of Chinua Achebe, Roberto Bolaño, Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, Jose Saramago, and Susan Sontag, among many others.

Email: mail@wylieagency.com (NY) or mail@wylieagency.co.uk (UK)

Phone: 212 246 0069 (NY) or +44 020 7908 5900 (UK)

Veronique Baxter

Email: veroniquebaxter@davidhigham.co.uk

Phone: N/A

Seeking: Interested in literary fiction, children’s writing and thought-provoking non-fiction of all kinds.

Carole Blake

Email: carole@blakefriedmann.co.uk

Phone: 020 7387 0842

Seeking: Represents good quality commercial and literary fiction, contemporary and historical. She works almost exclusively with novelists, but does not handle science fiction, fantasy, horror or juvenile material.

Isobel Dixon

Email: Isobel@blakefriedmann.co.uk

Phone: 020 7387 0842

Seeking: Her interests are wide-ranging and her clients’ work includes literary fiction, crime and thrillers, young adult fiction, memoir, popular culture, biography, history and current affairs.

Angela Oguche Onoja

Email: Angela@websuccessboost.com|Ojochegbe55@gmail.com

Phone: 08053294569|08168036130

Seeking: interesting fiction for children and teens.

Lumina Literary Agency

Email: ogochukwupromise@yahoo.com (Ogochukwu Promise) |unomaazuah@gmail.com (Unoma Azuah)

Phone: N/A

Seeking: adult literary fiction, Children’s fiction, drama and poetry.

VAN AGGELEN – African Literary Agency

Email: africanliteraryagency@gmail.com.

Focus: African fiction and non-fiction books and high quality cook books.

A boutique literary agency, VAN AGGELEN – African Literary Agency only receive queries via email. They require you to send in a short synopsis (maximum 2 pages) and THREE chapters (recommend the first three, though the first and any other two are acceptable). If your chapters are short and you would like to submit more material, They are happy to look at the first 50 pages. All submissions should be printed out double spaced, on one side of an A4 page with at least 30mm margins.

Sarah Chalfant of The Wylie Agency

Email: schalfant@wylieagency.com (Does not accept email queries)

Phone: N/A

Works With: Women’s fiction, Paranormal romance, Horror, Historical fiction, Genre romance, Crime, thriller, action, General Fiction, Literary Fiction.

Jessica Woollard

Email: jessica@marsh-agency.co.uk / http://www.marsh-agency.co.uk/agents/jessicawoollard/

Phone: 020 7493 4361

Works With: strong issue based non-fiction, current affairs, politics, environment, narrative non-fiction, natural history, memoir.

To submit work to Jessica, use The Marsh Agency submissions page. She does not accept submissions sent by email.

Laura Boon Literary Agency

Email: No email submissions will be considered.

Seeks: stories that have a South African flavour but universal appeal. Specializes in mainstream fiction and memoirs but will consider manuscripts that fall outside of this definition, including children’s books. Will NOT accept poetry, short stories, and erotica.

How to submit: Post a one page covering letter; a one page synopsis and the first three chapters to the address below. And in a separate letter, indicate what kind of readers will enjoy your book.

Hand deliver to: Laura Boon, c/o The Write Co, 1st Floor, East Wing, Coral House, 20 Peter Place, Lyme Park, Bryanston, Sandton.

Or post to: Laura Boon, PO Box 783324, Sandton 2146. South Africa

The Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency, Inc.

Does not accept poetry, screenplays, sci-fi and horror. Submit a one-page query letter via e-mail to the respective agents below. The query letter should describe your work as well as your background. Please do not send attachments. However a first chapter pasted into the body of an e-mail query is acceptable. Do not submit to more than one agent at this agency.

. Aaron Priest

Email: querypriest@aaronpriest.com | http://www.aaronpriest.com/team.html#aaron

Seeks: Thrillers, commercial fiction, and biographies.

Lisa Erbach Vance

Email: queryvance@aaronpriest.com | http://www.aaronpriest.com/team.html#lisa

Seeks: Contemporary fiction, thrillers/suspense, international fiction, and narrative non-fiction.

Mitch Hoffman

Email: querychilds@aaronpriest.com | http://www.aaronpriest.com/team.html#mitch

Seeks: Thrillers, suspense, crime fiction, literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, politics, popular science, history, memoir, current events, and pop culture.

Lucy Childs

Email: qquerychilds@aaronpriest.com | http://www.aaronpriest.com/team.html#lucy

Seeks: Literary & commercial fiction, memoir, and edgy women’s fiction.

Melissa L. Edwards

Email: queryedwards@aaronpriest.com | http://www.aaronpriest.com/team.html#melissa

Seeks: Middle grade, young adult, women’s fiction, and thrillers.

Ayebia Clarke Literary Agency & Publishing Limited

Becky Ayebia Clarke, Ghanaian, set up Ayebia Clarke Literary Agency & Publishing Limited in 2003 with her husband David.

Email: info@ayebia.co.uk

Seeks: writing from established as well as budding new authors.

Contact Ayebia by email first before submitting any material for assessment. Send a synopsis, a short bio, a concise covering letter that includes your writing history, outlining the merits of the work that you wish to submit and why you think your work deserves to be published. Do not send the original copy of your manuscript.

___________

Are you ready to self-publish your book? PUBLISH’D AFRIKA can help you publish your book without the necessity of a huge capital spend.

Contact PUBLISH’D AFRIKA for all your editing, proofreading, ghostwriting and self-publishing needs.

Call / WhatsApp: +2783 487 4440

Alternative Contact: +2784 311 8838

Email: info@publishdafrika.com

_________

PUBLISH’D AFRIKA is a registered B-BBEE Level 1 company.

While the majority of Spoiling The Broth anthology contributors are aspiring authors, the short story collection is a melting pot of youth and experience with at least seven published authors.

Busisekile Khumalo, Hidayat Adams, Busisiwe I Ngwenya, Buhle Stuurman, Thubelihle Charles Ntombela, Anathi Kom and Zambian Isaac Kanyinji Jr lead the charge. Busisekile is the author of the acclaimed Harvard Series, Her Silent Screams and Fallen Candle, while Cape Town based author Hidayat Adams has published a collection of short stories titled Mhlobam and Other Stories. Anathi Kom is a product of PUBLISH’D AFRIKA’s Adopt-An-Author Program, while Kanyinji’s ebook was edited and published by PUBLISH’D AFRIKA. 

The PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Online Literary Magazine Short Story Competition was officially established in December 2021, and started operating in January 2022. We invite writers to submit short stories of between 1800 and 2500 words, under a theme we announce monthly. The stories are then posted on our Facebook page, and readers vote for the best story for the month. The story that obtains the most votes wins R500, while the PUBLISHER’S CHOICE AWARD is worthy a whooping R1000. The prizes are funded by the National Arts Council, an agency of the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and the Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3.

While the writers and their works are exposed to the 15000-plus following our page has amassed (new followers join the page daily), the stories are exposed to an even bigger audience as every writer is allowed to canvass for votes and advertise his or her story on various platforms, exposing the page to an even bigger audience monthly. The winners are then featured in our monthly issue of the PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Online Literary magazine, giving them further publicity and assisting them to build themselves as brands.

In-between, we offer mentoring programs, based on the areas we identified to be lacking in each writer’s work. Writing tips are also posted on the page regularly, as well as other worthy calls for submission from various other art and craft organisations.

Already, this mentoring program has produced published authors such as Anathi Kom, Zeripah Amoni Phiri and Matumelo Mafoko. All three were published by PUBLISH’D AFRIKA’s Adopt-An-Author Program.

While the competition has unearthed writers from every corner of the country, the PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Online Literary Magazine has gone a step further. Through the magazine, we have brought to the fore hidden talent from various parts of the country, that no one would have known about had the magazine not been established. We also invite established authors, artists and other established creatives to give tips on anything from writing, publishing, entrepreneurship (using your art as a business), building yourself into a brand etc.

People who have honoured our invites include American author Eve Fairbanks, Nhlanhla Ngema of Sarafina and Broadway’s The Lion King fame and founder of Keeloz Global Entertainment, and Kirsten Miller who won the prestigious international writing competition, the Niso Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for 2016. She is also the author of six books. We have also had the courageous Tshidi Monkoe, author of Prison Love, gracing our pages, best-selling authors Takalani M and Busisekile Khumalo, and poetry connoisseur Frank Meintjies.                                                           

You can pre-order the book from any of your favourite authors who are part of the anthology, or contact PUBLISH’D AFRIKA directly at info@publishdafrika.com, or WhatsApp +2784 311 8838.