Leeslyste bevat sagtebandboeke; met ander woorde, boekklubs kies hulle.

Afrikaans normally writes compound nouns as one word.

So here you have:

• leeslys = reading list
• sagtebandboek = paperback book
• boekklub = book club

Their plural forms in the sentence are:

• leeslyste
• sagtebandboeke
• boekklubs

This is very normal in Afrikaans. English often writes similar ideas as two words, but Afrikaans usually joins them.

Each noun has its own plural pattern:

• leeslys → leeslyste
• sagtebandboek → sagtebandboeke
• boekklub → boekklubs

A useful thing to notice is that in compounds, the plural is usually marked on the main noun at the end:

• boek → boeke
• so sagtebandboek → sagtebandboeke

That is why the whole word changes at the end.

Yes, pretty much.

It breaks down like this:

• sagte = soft
• band = binding / cover
• boek/boeke = book/books

So sagtebandboeke is literally soft-cover books, which is the Afrikaans way to say paperbacks.

In Afrikaans, present-tense verbs usually do not change according to the subject.

So you get:

• Ek bevat
• Jy bevat
• Hy bevat
• Leeslyste bevat

And similarly:

• Ek kies
• Hulle kies
• Boekklubs kies

This is much simpler than English, where you get I choose but he chooses.

Because the sentence is making a general statement, not talking about specific items.

• Leeslyste bevat sagtebandboeke = reading lists contain paperback books, in general
• Boekklubs kies hulle = book clubs choose them, in general

If you wanted to refer to specific reading lists or specific book clubs, you might use die:

• Die leeslyste bevat die sagtebandboeke.

So the lack of an article here is normal for a broad, general statement.

Met ander woorde means in other words.

Literally, it is:

• met = with
• ander = other
• woorde = words

But as a whole, it is a fixed expression used to rephrase or explain what came before. It works very much like English in other words.

The semicolon links two closely related independent clauses:

• Leeslyste bevat sagtebandboeke
• met ander woorde, boekklubs kies hulle

A semicolon is stronger than a comma but weaker than a full stop. It shows that the second part is closely connected to the first and helps explain or restate it.

Because met ander woorde is being used here as a parenthetical discourse marker, like English in other words.

So the structure is basically:

• met ander woorde, = parenthetical phrase
• boekklubs kies hulle = the actual clause

That is why the normal clause order stays:

• subject: boekklubs
• verb: kies
• object: hulle

If met ander woorde were treated as the first element of the clause itself, then Afrikaans verb-second word order could give:

• Met ander woorde kies boekklubs hulle.

But in your sentence, the commas show it is being inserted as a set phrase, so no inversion happens in the clause that follows.

Hulle refers to sagtebandboeke.

So:

• boekklubs kies hulle = book clubs choose them
• them = the paperback books

It does not refer to leeslyste, because semantically the second clause is talking about choosing books, not choosing reading lists.

In Afrikaans, hulle can mean both they and them.

The form stays the same, and the role is shown by word order and sentence structure.

Examples:

• Hulle kies boeke. = They choose books.
• Boekklubs kies hulle. = Book clubs choose them.

So in your sentence, hulle comes after the verb kies, which shows it is the object: them.

No. Unlike German, Afrikaans does not capitalize all nouns.

In this sentence:

• Leeslyste is capitalized only because it is the first word of the sentence.
• sagtebandboeke and boekklubs stay lowercase.

So normal Afrikaans capitalization is much closer to English than to German.