Kontax wins a Bronze @ the Bookmarks

Kontax won a Bronze “Pixel” in the Bookmarks Awards, the only medal in the Mobile Publishing category. Kontax “beat” M-Net, Football365, EntertainmentAfrica, CAR magazine and Soccer-Laduma, which is the most visited mobisite in South Africa. One of the competition organisors told Steve Vosloo that Kontax won a medal because it showed creative thinking and innovation in its category.

This year, as with last year, no Gold or Grand Prix prizes were awarded — a message to the local industry that we’re getting there, but have some way to go yet. According to 24.com, “The total number of awards made was 25, amounting to a fraction over 1% of the entries” — so competition was stiff.

Once again, well done to the Kontax team!

For more info see the list of the Bookmarks Finalists and winners. BizCommunity covered the awards ceremony — looks like lots of fun was had by all.

Coverage of Kontax (part IV)

Coverage of Kontax continues as follows:

Web:

• Mobile novel a hit with SA youth (South Africa: The Good News, 2 Nov)

Newspapers:

• Mystery on your phone by Estelle Sinkins for Weekend Witness, Kwazulu-Natal (7 Nov)

Is 4,000 reads a lot?

Kontax has been read by 4,000 people in it’s first 10 days on MXit. I asked a friend in publishing to put that figure in context in terms of regular teen books sales in SA: is that low, high, ok? While we can’t really compare m-novels to printed books — they’re so different in so many ways — her response is still very interesting:

I can’t testify about teen books in particular, but a typical trade book first print run is 3,000, and a book publisher is usually satisfied if that sells through, particularly for fiction. Figures are much higher for prescribed school books of course, but you’re talking about a voluntary sign-up here. Also, you need to consider the time-frame: the equivalent of 4,000 copies ’sold’ in less than a month? A publisher might expect that kind of performance over a year to 18 months.

I think this project overcomes so many of the problems of book publishing (language, relevance, distribution, cost) that comparing it with book sales is the ultimate apples-and-oranges. But, as a book publisher, I’d be seriously impressed with these figures.

m4Lit presented at the Africa Media and Broadcasting Congress

At the Africa Media and Broadcasting Congress, Steve Vosloo presented m-Novels for Africa: A South African Case Study.

m4Lit presented at mLearn 2009

At mLearn 2009, Steve Vosloo presented m4Lit A teen m-novel project in South Africa. The presentation covered the paper of the same title co-authored with Ana Deumert and Marion Walton, as well as some interim results of the in-progress project.

Kontax on MXit

Since 26 October, Kontax has also been available on MXit. The MXit offering is quite different to the mobisite: no registration, comments or Kontax social network; and all 21 chapters are published at once (as opposed to serially over 21 days). Readers can still enter the Kontax Sequel competition from there.

There has also been marketing within MXit itself: splash screens to the 11-14 and 15-18 age groups, and a Tradepost broadcast message. It will be interesting to compare the two approaches to publishing m-novels: mobisite vs MXit. In the 9 days since it’s gone live on MXit, 4,000 readers have read the whole story, as opposed to about 250 for the mobisite. There is an interesting drop-off trend after the first few chapters for both versions.

Today at the Africa Media and Broadcasting Congress, Rick Joubert spoke about the mobile web in South Africa (before joining Yonder Media he was head of Mobile Media at Vodacom, so he has considerable commerical experience in mobile). He said that in general the mobile web is for 18s and over, and to reach the younger audience one should go MXit.

The best solution seems to be a mobisite that is accessible via MXit — something that has become possible only recently.

Kontax a finalist in the Bookmarks

The Bookmarks Awards celebrates digital media in all its guises, and is coordinated by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) as a means to promote digital media in South Africa. It is the Loerie Awards for digital.

Kontax is a finalist in the Mobile Publishing category. Winners will be announced on 12 November. Just to be a finalist is a great honour. Well done, team!

Kontax reader trend

Kontax is published in two places: as a mobisite and also on MXit. As we begin to see the statistics for the viewings per chapter, a clear trend is emerging: high volumes in the beginning, then a sharp drop-off and stabilisation of the die-hard fans who read all 21 chapters.

(Source: Shuttleworth Foundation, CC-BY-3.0)

For the mobisite, chapter 1 has received 1,683 visits, and about 250 readers have finished the story. For MXit, chapter 1 has received 35,149 visits, and about 4,000 readers have finished the story.

Over the next few weeks we’ll keep watching the usage stats and try to make sense of the difference between the mobisite and MXit. For one, there was marketing within MXit around Kontax: splash screens were shown to the 11-14 and 15-18 age group users and a Tradepost message alerted all users to the story. We hope that it was teens (14-17 year olds ideally) that read the story, but of course you can never know for sure in the virtual world.

A question I have on the drop-off trend is whether it applies to printed books too, where, say, 10% of books that are sold aren’t read to the end? In print you can’t track this, but in digital it is very easy to do.

Kontax on the BBC

Kontax was featured on the BBC this week! (Well done to the m4Lit team.) Steve Vosloo was interviewed by Gareth Mitchell on the World Service radio programme Digital Planet (listen live or download the mp3 of the interview).

During the programme one of the regular readers and commenters on Kontax, Sugar, was called. She made some very interesting comments about the story — in particular that she looks up words that she doesn’t understand in a dictionary (the printed version), which means that the story is improving her vocabulary. This is also what Sexyeyez — another reader and commenter — said in the interview on Bush Radio about why she liked the story (it improves her vocabulary).

After the interview, Gareth Mitchell asked his co-host Bill Thompson whether reading an m-novel is going to lead someone to actual books. Bill responded:

It might do, and even if it doesn’t it’s going to encourage them to read narrative fiction, to read stories. And I think given that so much information presented these days is in chunks, e.g.  on social network sites or as emails, anything that gets young people reading longer forms is a good idea.

It’s well established within the world of children’s fiction, where there’s a genre called “high low” fiction (stories written for older children with younger reading age) — that these are very successful. So I think projects like this that engage with children do stand a good chance of working.

Kontax was also written about on the BBC website (Mobile novels switch on South Africa by Dave Lee). A great quote is given by Bernard Kedge, manager of Galloway and Porter, a Cambridge bookshop which sold its first book in 1902.

This is sometimes how education works. Anything that actually encourages people to read more is a really excellent idea.

Other recent coverage of Kontax includes:

Radio:

• Steve Vosloo was interviewed on SAfm by Karabo Kgoleng (19 Oct)
• Nkululeko Mabandla was interviewed on Umhlobo Wenene fm by Nobathembu Kani (23 Oct)

Web:

• South Africa: Kontax launched (Pambazuka, 1 Oct)

Usability lab South Africa-style

Source: Marion Walton

Andile, Marion and Nkululeko waiting for the teens to run our basic user testing – or technology observation – of the Kontax mobisite with them. Andile’s garage in Guguletu was the perfect impromptu usability lab!