Word of mouth and recommendations are an amazing promoter and advertiser, and when word of mouth comes from a an influential, unquestionable source more so the better.
In April of 2009 I submitted- according to the requirements- copies of The Magic that’s Ours
to the Western Cape Education department. The copies were submitted for a specific project that the WCED was initiating where they were to supply copies of books to 650 of the poorest schools in the Western Cape. Due to the withdrawal of funding the initiatiative was put on hold.
After a while I forgot about the submission and thought that my book had not been accepted by the WCED for this initiative.
A few weeks ago while wandering around the Cape Town Book Fair, I stumbled upon the Education Library and Information Services (EDULIS) stand. EDULIS has many functions, and one of them is to recommend books to school libraries.
After speaking to a representative it was suggested that I re -submit copies of both The Magic that’s Ours and The Power that’s Ours
. Remembering my previous submission I moaned about having previously submitted copies and never hearing from them again. But still I re-submitted copies of both my books with the promise that I’ll be hearing from them either way.
Here is the email I received from them today;
Hi Gary
I spoke with our evaluator regarding your book and we have approved it to be included in our School Library Project, the QIDS-Up School Library Project at the end of last year. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this project, but we were purchasing library books for 650 of the poorest schools in the Western Cape. By placing your titles on the list it was/is our intention to buy copies of your books for these schools to be housed in their library. Unfortunately, the funding for the project came to an abrupt halt and we have had to put everything on hold indefinitely.
However, one of our services is to recommend lists of material to schools to purchase for their school libraries and we will include both your titles on this list. What this essentially means is that when we are approached by a school for a custom made list as per the individual requirements of the school (language of teaching and learning, size etc), we will include them in the recommended list.
Once again, thank you very much for submitting your books (for the second time?).
If you could let me have your address I will send your copies back to you or, if you prefer, you could collect them from me.
I hope your third book is a huge success.
Kind regards,
There are roughly 26500 schools in South Africa, to date I’ve not been able to find out how many of those are in the Western Cape but I imagine a good few 1000. Just by submitting my books to a recommended source that school libraries turn to, I’ve now achieved what 1000’s of calls and emails would have done. Find the right source and save lots of time.
The contact details for EDULIS are:
Western Cape Education Department
Education Library & Information Services (EDULIS) 1st Floor, Middestad Mall, Charl Malan Street, Bellville, 7530, Cape Town
Tel: +27 21 957-9638
Fax: +27 21 948-0748