Fiction author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie poses with her book "Half of a Yellow Sun". Photo/FILE
I will never forget that afternoon; it
was a bad one for me. It was a hot afternoon in 2006, as I recollect;
the kind of swampy, sweltering Nairobi day that makes cheap, polyester
shirts stick to one’s back.
I was tracking Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian literary breakout star, who was at a Nairobi
hotel attending a literary festival. At the time, I was compiling an
anthology of African short stories and wanted to include one of her
stories to represent Nigeria.
Chimamanda had come to town at the invitation of a prominent Kenyan writer.
When
I caught up with Chimamanda’s local host, he wouldn’t allow me beyond
the reception! When he learnt that I worked for a “mainstream”
publisher, he lost his temper and lambasted me in the hallway of the
hotel – a spectacle that must have entertained bystanders but left me
thoroughly baffled and looking for a place to hide!
He
raved on and on about how we “mainstream” Kenyan publishers were
uncreative, bureaucratic and rigid. There was a whiff of dry season air
and I could feel my eyes moisten; I didn’t wait to confirm if tears were
forming.
Feeling more than a little embarrassed, I
tiptoed out of that hotel, my esteem as a young publisher having taken a
bad hit (fortunately I still tracked Chimamanda and we published her
story).
Like that Kenyan writer who gave me that verbal lashing, most Kenyans do not understand the nuances in publishing.
Over
the years, debate on Kenyans’ reading habits has been beaten to death
and much has been said about uncreative Kenyan publishers. In my years
in the industry, I’ve gleaned a few lessons.
Firstly,
publishing fiction is a dangerous business; it is a Hobessian state of
existence where life can be solitary, nasty, short and brutish. This is
the reason why even very creative publishing outfits are struggling to
make ends meet and others have gone under (or on the verge of going
under) or have to do with donor funding.
Publishing is
a risky business even at a personal level because publishing a book
exposes one to a lot of criticism (how could he/she publish such a
book?). As Edna St. Vincent Millay once said: “A person who publishes a
book wilfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a
good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help
him”.
As a publishing insider who has worked for two
major publishing companies for more than a decade, I can authoritatively
write that Kenyan fiction readers haven’t reached a critical mass to
support a publishing house solely publishing creative works (without a
single cent from any donor or NGO).
Nairobi, I
suppose, has about 3,000 book enthusiasts or thereabouts who read for
pleasure. These are the people who attend every book event (they are
usually the same faces) and buy every good book published in Kenya and
also keep the second-hand book trade afloat.
These are
the people who read every column on literary issues and they get mighty
offended when they hear publishers moaning that ‘Kenyans don’t read’
because they do.
However, for publishing of fiction to
be vibrant, we need hundreds of thousands or even millions of readers
(which is not asking much in a country of 40 million people).
Averagely,
a novel classified as a ‘best-seller’ in Kenya sells about 3,000 copies
per year! However, if the same novel is selected to be a mandatory set
book in secondary schools, it easily sells 300,000 and more.
The
difference is brought about by the ‘forced’ market of secondary school
students who must read the novel or they will fail their exams. If in a
country of 40 million people, the best we can get is 3,000 dedicated
readers or even 10,000 readers, that’s a poor reading culture even if
that’s politically incorrect to say.
If Kenya had a
critical mass of readers by the millions, publishers (who are
businesspeople lest one forgets) would be battling to publish fiction.
As a country, we are still at the age in our development where ‘someni
vijana’ still means passing exams.
Secondly, books are
not free of charge. And the Jubilee government, by taxing books through
VAT, has made it even harder for some people to access them. Since
Independence, books have been zero-rated but the current crop of MPs
(from the VAT debate on books) don’t seem to understand this.
Effectively,
books are 16 percent more expensive than they were in the past with the
16 percent going directly to the government.
In this
aspect, the Jubilee Administration is the most unfriendly of all Kenyan
regimes to the publishing industry. No progressive country in the world
collects VAT on books; that just makes ignorance cheaper (I know of no
other country in Africa except South Africa that taxes books — and they
historically reportedly taxed books so Africans couldn’t access them).
However,
there is a glimmer of hope as the middle class is growing and these are
people who cannot only read for pleasure but can also buy books as
gifts for others.
Thirdly, Kenyan writers should be
bolder and more experimental. There are many genres of fiction:
thrillers, mysteries, horror stories, detective stories and many others
that Kenyan writers have not even put a hand into. Kenyan writers can
learn from their Western counterparts where writers build brands around
certain genres.
Such strong writer brands (who are
known by their writing style and genre) make it easy for publishers to
market. The ordinary Kenyan novel (with a few exceptions) is all too
predictable and sometimes even boring.
The tragedy is
that even our award-winning titles in Kenya are hardly selling by the
thousands — and the writer and publisher are left poorer (and with many
questions). Left with no option, publishers have to publish for the
school market in one way or the other — or perish.
However,
if the critical mass of voracious readers reaches the required optimum,
publishers will not have to worry about school books as they will sell
enough copies of fiction books to break even and make a profit.
Publishers
are not in the industry for sentimental reasons, they are there to make
money (it’s the only language shareholders understand). This is true
for every industry, the book industry is no exception.
The writer is the CEO ofPhoenix Publishers. johnmwazemba@gmail.com
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