Letter from the Founder Editor: Kitaab’s new look and Membership plan launched

Dear Readers,

Season’s Greetings!

Thank you for supporting our work at Kitaab and for being part of this creative community. We deeply appreciate your involvement with Kitaab.

We wanted to start the new year with a fresh, aesthetically appealing look for the website. It has already been launched and hope you like the new look. We will keep working on it as we keep evolving.

Looking back, we can say with some satisfaction that ever since we started our journey in 2005, we have been serving the global community of readers, writers, publishers, distributors, booksellers and agents with the mission of connecting Asian writers with readers across the world and giving new voices an opportunity to express themselves on a credible platform.

Throughout this journey, we have taken care to keep our publishing programme free from any commercial biases. Through a group of paid and voluntary editors and contributors, we have been giving a voice to those less heard and celebrating the success of those who have made their mark in the literary space. That’s why we have kept out platform free and open to anyone who visits us.

But with the growth of the platform, the operational costs have grown too. We initially tried to appeal to your generosity by helping Kitaab with donations. Unfortunately, it did not work at all. The free ads that you have been seeing on the platform hardly translate into any substantial revenues (they won’t even cover 1% of our expenses), as we are only a niche platform.

We have been running Kitaab free of charge since our inception, and for a long time we have resisted the urge to put our content behind a paywall! We believe that literature builds bridges, opens our hearts to others and widens our mental and emotional horizons. But given the challenges associated with running a website and a literary publishing organisation, we need your solid support now more than ever.

We know that this year has been bad for almost all of us, and the next year might also be challenging for us. But we have to carry on our operations and keep improving our offerings to you: after all, we want to give you a better experience and more services. This is only possible with your membership support. Please take a minute and read the benefits of our subscription plan here.

At less than $1 per month, our subscription plan is very affordable and if you can sacrifice one or two cups of coffee a year (depending on the type of coffee or beverage you drink), you will certainly be able to become a member of our community!

So, please help us with our journey ahead with your continued support. We can only assure you that better things are in store for you at Kitaab. So, please don’t hesitate and hit the Subscribe button now!

Here’s wishing you and your dear ones Happy Holidays and a better, safer and healthier 2021!

Sincerely,

Zafar Anjum
Founder Editor, Kitaab

Zafar Anjum

I am a writer based in Singapore.

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