Slogan: "Read, wRite, Rise"

Pelmo Books is a publishing company based in Pretoria, South Africa. Started by myself Nkemi Molefe in 2012, at the age of 25. My dad, Dr Lawrence Molefe, is an author and I found myself trying to help him de-clutter his many manuscripts lying around at home, which led me to being a publisher. Self-taught from curiosity and the drive to not wanting to fail at what is my dad’s passion, I knocked on doors, googled, consulted and gradually got answers and a way forward. Today with over 65 published titles, 29 authors and 15 distribution contracts (from self-published authors) and 1 international rights contract.

South Africa has a total of 11 official languages, 9 of which are indigenous: isiZulu, siSwati, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, Setswana, Sesotho, Sepedi, Tshivenda, and Tsonga. Our mission is to also make sure that our indigenous languages do not fade away by writing, translating and publishing books that are written in our languages. These languages are still very much spoken, although a large percentage of South Africans struggle to read or write in their mother tongue. By publishing books in these languages, we encouraging people to read, write and speak their mother tongue languages even more, to want to write books in their languages. In that way we know we will have had a hand in the development of that languages. With so many languages in one country, comes many cultures as well, authors have a variety of topics to write about and can express themselves greatly.

Our main focus has been in Education, supplying public libraries, school libraries as well as school books through the Department of Education. We broadened our focus into the trade space where we publish books for general read and interest.

• Novels
• Dramas
• Poetry
• essay writing
• short stories
• one-act-plays
• children's stories