Africa: Web Bookshop Special

Africa Policy E-Journal

Africa: Web Bookshop Special
Date distributed (ymd): 980520
APIC Document

New Features at APIC's Africa Web Bookshop

We are writing to let you know about several exciting new features at APIC's Africa Web Bookshop, and to appeal for your help in moving this on-line initiative from the experimental stage to become an even more useful tool.

Our new special feature at the bookshop is a listing of books to accompany our strategic action area on African Women's Rights. The first books to go in this special section are books we have received recently from publishers and a few suggested by APIC staff and friends. We are asking the readers of the Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List and visitors to the web site for additional suggestions.

As most of you know, with your help we launched the bookshop with suggestions for President Clinton's reading on his trip. In the two months since the shop was placed on our web site, there have been more than 1100 visits to the shop. Most visitors so far are just browsing, but a few have actually bought books through amazon.com -- our "referral fees" for the first month came to a bit more than $30.

In order to make the bookshop a more useful tool for our web visitors, and a more substantial income source to support our work, we need to continue to add more books and get more visitors. We are now beginning this process. With your help--and a new feature just introduced by amazon.com--we are convinced that there is significant potential for this venture.

Until last week, Amazon "associates" such as the APIC Web Bookshop received referral credits (ranging from 15% TO 5%) only for books actually listed on our site. Now, if you go to Amazon from any link on the Africa Policy Web Site, we will get a 5% referral credit for any book or music CD you buy from those they have in stock -- most of the 2.5 million listed in their catalog, and very many at discount prices.

So we are making an appeal to APIC's members and other supporters who get our services for free -- and particularly those living in North America where shipping costs are often less than the discount that Amazon offers. If you buy any books or CD's by mail order, and have access to the Web, please order them by going to the easy search link to Amazon at APIC's Web Bookshop ( http://www.africapolicy.org/books/vbooks.shtml).

You can buy books on any subject through us. If you are a teacher or student, consider buying your expensive science textbooks this way, as well as your African music or jazz CDs, and books for African politics or history courses. It's an easy and convenient way to support our work and get what you need at the same time.

We also want to continue to add references to books on key topics to the bookshop -- whether they are available at Amazon or not (as is still the case for many books published in Africa). The Africa Web Bookshop also has links to African publishers and their representatives. We are beginning to receive books from publishers to list on our site. And we are asking friends to suggest titles on priority topics.

Our busy staff does not have time to read as many books as we would like, nor do we have the capacity as yet to work simultaneously on developing listings on many topics. So our strategy is to give you access to do your own searches at Amazon, while concentrating on one topic at a time to build up more targeted lists -- with your help.

To make a suggestion to include in this special listing, please fill out the form on the bookshop page in full. Please suggest books in print -- or if you do suggest an out-of-print classic or another hard-to-find book, please give details on how someone can get a copy.

Please interpret the topic broadly. We are particularly interested in books that would be useful to an activist or student seeking background and insight on the issues. Fiction as well as non-fiction is welcome -- preferably accessible to the general reader rather than just to academic specialists. Think of books that you would recommend if you were teaching a course to secondary or undergraduate students on the subject, or suggesting a book about African women to a women's rights activist elsewhere in the world who doesn't yet know Africa.

You may submit as many suggestions as you wish. To do so, please be sure to fill in the form completely for each one, including a one-or-two sentence description of the book and some identification of who you are.

Special note to authors:
You may suggest your own book, but we will list author's suggestions in a separate file. To be included in the main file, it would be to your advantage to get someone else to recommend your book!

Special note to publishers:
Any books received will be listed in a "Books Received" section in the Bookshop. Selected books will also be annotated and included in the special topical listings.

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