Towards an African Book Renaissance in the Context of a Bibliophilic Odyssey 9: From Publishing Strategies in African Non-Fiction Publishing to Encountering Kant

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

                                                             

                              

                         Towards an African Book Renaissance in the Context of a Bibliophilic Odyssey

                                                                                       9

 

                              From Publishing Strategies in African Non-Fiction Publishing to Encountering Kant 

                                                          Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                         Compcros

                                                 Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                       Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge

                                                         Abstract

A presentation of an opening initiative in an aspiration to contribute to a renaissance of African publishing of serious non-fiction and the bibliophilic history,  a personal history with books, inspiring this goal. 

The main essay describes the publishing initiative. The interspersed  images and their accompanying commentary constitute the bibliophilic autobiography.  

Contents 

Publishing Strategies in Nigerian and African Non-Fiction

      Quality and Affordability, My Ultimate Goal as a Publisher 

Encountering Kant

 

Publishing Strategies in Nigerian and African Non-Fiction

I looked back at my history as a publisher addressing the paucity of textbooks in the context of the Department of English and Literature, University of Benin, where I lectured from my BA graduation till 2002, as different from the breadth of access to books in my undergraduate days when the Nigerian currency was stronger, to my later arriving in England into an environment awash with books, to my current focus on self publishing online, particularly on social media, and returning to Nigeria more than a decade after I left to meet what seems to be the same situation of lack but ameliorated by the information scope of the Internet, even as one is confronted with a shrinking of bookshops and libraries and a tension between existential needs and education as both leisure and necessity.

I had made money from the University of Benin situation at the time by asking students to let me know which courses in literature they had challenges with so I could write books for them on the subject and deliver those texts on time for them to study them for their exams, reasoning that the desire to pass exams would motivate most students to patronize me, an approach that worked. I would dictate the text to a typist, bind and sell to students, making sure I engaged only students I was not teaching so they would not feel pressured to patronize me.

In the light of the changes in the information landscape and my operating outside the academic context as different from when my presence within it had enabled an intimate understanding of students' needs and orientations and the fact that my current passions have extended beyond academia to education for the general populace, I asked myself:

''For whom would I be publishing such a book as the Falola text and others like it and what are the chances they will read those books?

How can I develop understanding of the African market that would be the target for such books?

How could one build an audience for the books one is publishing as advertisers build a consumer base for their products?

Can I reach beyond Africa with books I know would catch the attention of non-African audiences?

What would be the relationship between production costs, selling costs and profit?

Can innovative methods be developed to bring these productions to a broad audience?

What is the level of literacy in African  countries and its relationship to consumer behaviour and how can a publisher engage with this?

How can I learn from other publishers who have sustained publishing in Nigeria and other African countries after the loss of those publishers that defined African publishing up till perhaps the 80s?''

''Is the task of contributing to a Nigerian and African scholarly book culture worth doing?'', I continued, asking myself. 

''What is the significance of  scholarly knowledge, particularly outside the practical benefits of science and technology and at times, the social sciences?

Should I engage in this task?

Can I succeed in it?

Do I have the capital or can I find it?''

All responses and suggestions are welcome.

      Quality and Affordability, My Ultimate Goal as a Publisher 

The following is my ultimate goal, from James Robertson's novel And the Land Lay Still ( Penguin, 2011), copied from the publisher's account of the emergence of the company:

                                                            He Just Wanted a Decent Book to Read

 

Not too much to ask, is it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for something good to read on his journey back to London. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor-quality paperbacks, the same choice faced every day by the vast majority of readers, few of whom could afford hardbacks. Lane's disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led him to found a company-and change the world.

 

''We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price and staked everything on it.''

 

                            Sir Allen Lane, 1902-1970, founder of Penguin Books

 

The quality paperback had arrived-and not just in bookshops. Lane was adamant that his Penguins should appear in chain stores and tobacconists, and should cost no more than a pack of cigarettes.

 

Reading habits (and cigarette prices) have changed since 1935, but Penguin still believes in publishing the best books for everybody to enjoy. We still believe that good design costs no more than bad design, and we still believe that quality books published passionately and responsibly make the world a better place.

 

                                                                    

                                          

So wherever you see the little bird [ the Penguin logo]-whether it's on a piece of prize-winning literary fiction or a celebrity autobiography, political tour de force or historical masterpiece, a serial-killer thriller, reference book, world classic or a piece of pure escapism-you can bet that it represents the very best that the genre has to offer.

Whatever you like to read-trust Penguin.

For me, in addition to such outlets as drug stores, bookstores displayed on surfaces spread on nothing but ground in such public transport intersections as Ikeja Under Bridge, in general interest book stores  attransporation hubs  as Ojuelegba in Lagos and Ring Road in Benin, to university bookshops and high end booksrtores in Ikoyi and Victoria Island, Lagos, I would add the highways and byways of the Internet,  from online selling platforms to social media, those digital nexus where the world congregates to have fun, learn, buy and sell. 

Encountering Kant

                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                  

'' Am I occupying the same space as the other users of the library?'' I asked myself, as I returned to awareness of myself and my environment after reading, for the first time,  Kant's exposition on the Sublime in his Critique of Judgement,  in the final year of my BA, in the Ugbowo library of the University of Benin.

On reading those passages, I lost perception of my material environment.  I seemed to exist only as  pure consciousness, a sweep of awareness in a zoneless state, a vast landscape of no coordinates, only intense being. 

I eventually referenced those Kantian passages in my final year thesis, but realized I did not fully understand them. Fourteen years later, assigned the same passages at my MA at the University of London, I realized I still did not fully understand them. Today, more than thirty years after that first encounter, I realize I still dont fully comprehend them. It will require careful, possibly daily study, for a period, for me to adequately grasp the inimitable master.

Reading has become an exoteric, democratic activity, states Herman Hesse, but its esoteric core remains intact, palpitating within the sunshine of full exposure of its outward expression while its penetralia remains concealed.

Breaking the silence of an ancient pond

            a frog jumps into water

                           a deep resonance. 

My favourite poem. 

How does one explain Japanese poet Matsuo Basho's frog haiku to a person unacquainted with Japanese aesthetics of the relationship between the evanescent, the everyday and the sublime, as Sen Rikyu's design of his garden at Sakai, so that as a person passes by the washing bowl on their way to the tea room, they will be confronted with the sight of the sea, and perhaps be provoked into reflection on the relationship between the bowl of water and the ocean and, thus,  between themselves and the cosmos?