WE’RE GROWING – IN FACT WE’RE BURSTING AT THE SEAMS

Porcupine is undergoing a period of impressive growth. The publishing target we set for the current financial year was twenty new books. By the end of November (that’s for the first nine months of the year) already nineteen new Porcupine books have found their way onto bookshop shelves and book-selling websites. And there are a further fifteen books currently in various stages of production. They’ll all be appearing under the Porcupine imprint early in 2014. Now add to this the more than sixty titles we market and distribute for other parties. It's no wonder we’re bursting out of our converted garage premises.

This growth means that authors and book sellers are taking us seriously. One of the reasons for this is the excellence of our cover designs. Look at the covers pictured here: they’re colourful, inventive, and professional; most of them are done by Porcupine’s designer, Wim Rheeder, who works in Cape Town and sometimes on a farm near Oudtshoorn.

There can be little doubt that the complete range of services offered (and provided) by Porcupine is paying dividends. More and more people are knocking on our door. Many come to us through our website. Increasingly, though, people are being referred by those who have already experienced our professionalism. This certainly tells you something.

 Increasingly, too, Porcupine is stepping into that no-man’s-land between commercial and self-publishing. On selected titles (we select the ones which are the best, the most interesting, and the most saleable) we’re willing to subsidise up-front production costs to assist authors to get into the market. This gives author and publisher a joint stake in the commercial fortunes of the book. Talk to us. 

Notes from Porcupines' 'resident Writer'

ALL THE SAME, BUT ALL DIFFERENT

Not surprisingly, Oman is full of mosques. Many are of great beauty, built with as much care and attention to detail as the cathedrals of Europe. Some are old and others are new. The Grand Mosque in Oman is only a dozen years old. The vintage of others takes the mind back into the long reaches of Middle Eastern history.

But the frequency of them soon engages the attention. We went to Sur, an ancient port city perched on the Omani coast as it turns left into the Persian Gulf. We saw men building dhows according to the traditional method. We stood close to the water, looking back at the city as it stretched around a placid bay. I noticed seven mosques, which I could easily photograph without moving my position. And I noticed, perhaps prosaically, that while they were immediately recognisable as mosques, they were all different.

Of course the Islamic faith is similarly configured. In Oman, the Ibadhi are in the majority, followed by the Sunni, with Shi’a making up a definite minority. Within these main divisions are quite a few others.

But it was in particular the differing designs of the minarets, sometimes looking like rockets and sometimes like elongated wedding cakes, that seemed to point into the heart of the dangers of too glib generalisation and equally of attempts at a too rigid uniformity. It was the same with the dhows. They were immediately recognisable as dhows, but they were also all different in their detail.

The Customer Centric Blueprint: Destiny Men, November 2013

Blaze - The beginnings: Daily sun, October 2013

Blaze - The beginnings: Sowetan, October 2013

Blaze - The Beginning: Drum Magazine, November 2013

Notes from Porcupine’s ‘resident writer’

I have now returned from the Middle East. I can report that Oman is extremely wealthy and ordered, and that Iran, in its geography and its past, is majestic.

In Oman’s capital city of Muscat, there is a massive place of worship called the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. This Sultan (Qaboos bin Said) has ruled Oman since the early 1970s. Everywhere, there is evidence of his lavish spending on the country he has so successfully ruled. The national Opera House, an edifice of white marble, is an imposing example. But the Grand Mosque is the pinnacle.

          My guide gave me some of the facts. It took six years to build, finally opening in 2001. The main minarets rear nearly 50 metres into Muscat’s deep blue sky. Inside the main space hangs a sparkling chandelier weighing 8,5 tons; and on the floor at 60 by 70 metres is the world’s largest carpet, comprising 1700-million knots and 28 colours. The carpet had been made in Iran by 600 people working fulltime for four years. The grandeur of the place – the acres of intricate mosaic, the symmetry of stained glass, the vistas from the formal gardens – reminded me of another place of worship I had visited some years before.

          The Basilica Notre-Dame de la Paix, the largest cathedral in Christendom, reared out of the African bush at Yamoussoukro, nominal capital of Cote d’Ivoire. This place of worship had also been built by a successful leader. In one of the stained-glass windows, Felix Houphouet-Boigny (president of Cote d’Ivoire from 1960 to 1993) is depicted kneeling before Christ, his arms outstretched is if in offering. ‘He is giving the church to God,’ someone had told me.

          The Grand Mosque was almost certainly a gift that had been given in similar humility. It struck me that these impulses, expressed by Christian and Muslim alike, bound the worshippers of the world together in a simple knot. But the thought seemed not to accord with reality.

          I asked my guide how much the Grand Mosque had cost to build. He smiled. ‘I always give the same answer,’ he said. ‘Only God knows.’

David Robbins.