The reading and buying market for Afrikaans fiction is limited due to historical and economical reasons. It can thus be argued that in order to expand the market for South African Afrikaans trade publishers and authors' novels, a work needs to be translated via the selling of translation rights with the assistance of the publisher or literary agents, into a language that has similar needs in terms of cultural consumption, for example book reading culture. Due to the colonial influence of the Dutch on South African culture and the development of Afrikaans, this study explores the selling of translation rights of Afrikaans fiction to trade publishers in The Netherlands and Belgium. The polystem theory is also used to illustrate the movement of languages from a peripheral position to semi-peripheral and central position within a global literary polysystem. A qualitative and exploratory research design is used. Secondary research in the form of a literature review combines theoretical information, clarifies terms and provides context from which primary research develops. In terms of primary research, interviews with key informants in the Belgian, Netherlands and South African publishing industry were conducted. Case studies of South African crime author Deon Meyer, and historical romance author Irma Joubert provide in-depth analysis of success factors, process and factors that influenced the selling of subsidiary rights to Dutch trade publishers. Lastly, visibility and discoverability of Afrikaans fiction on an international rights trading platform, as well as interaction amongst South African and foreign publishers were observed, at the largest book rights fair, the Frankfurt Book Fair. The findings of this study provide practical information and act as reference guide to role players in the publishing industry, including authors, trade publishers and literary agents. Recommendations for best practice in the selling of subsidiary rights are included, as well as initiatives for further research, experimentation, investment and development of the selling of subsidiary rights to European trade publishers to ultimately grow the Afrikaans fiction book buying and reading markets. / Dissertation (MIT)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Information Science / MIS / Unrestricted

In many markets for cultural goods, gatekeepers select the cultural goods, relatively few cultural goods are selected, and the criteria for selection are unclear to both artists and gatekeepers. Not knowing whether cultural goods are of the 'right' quality to be selected, artists and gatekeepers become preoccupied with handling quality uncertainty. This thesis studies such handling of quality uncertainty before, during, and after aspiring writers attempt to succeed in the publishing market. Drawing on eighty interviews with mainly aspiring writers and publishers in Sweden, three papers investigate three phases of handling quality uncertainty in the publishing market. First, in attempting to get published, writers handled uncertainty about how the quality of their work would be evaluated in the publishing market by using appraisal devices: trusted, knowledgeable appraisals of their work’s chances of success or failure on the publishing market. Second, publishers responded to uncertainty about the quality of manuscripts by learning to consider means before ends, such that certain qualities of their reading experience became the necessary means for realizing that the manuscript might be publishable. This realization moved the manuscript from the discovery phase to justification phase, in which publishers made a final decision to select or reject the manuscript. Third, for the rejected writer, the uncertainty of not knowing how the publisher had determined the quality of the manuscript made it possible to excuse the course of events. Writers gave reasons why their manuscript had been rejected based on how they imagined publishers had determined its quality. They accepted the occurrence of failure but dismissed the responsibility for having failed. Writers also engaged in justifications, refusals, and concessions of the perceived failure. These concepts for analyzing the publishing market are based on a perspective that takes into account subjectivity, temporality, and the condition of quality uncertainty. The perspective and concepts are useful for understanding other market situations in the cultural industries, wherein the successful hiring of cultural workers and the acquisition of cultural goods are rare relative to the number of aspirants, and wherein assessments are conditioned by quality uncertainty that needs to be handled. / ERC 263699-CEV