In the course of preparations for the 2012 edition of the
National Reading Week in Nigeria earlier in the year which he was convening,
this writer had called on a number of industry players to solicit their inputs.
One such visit was to the Ikorodu, Lagos operational base of Mr. Dayo Alabi,
Chief Executive of The Book Company and founding Chairman of the Nigerian
Bookfair Trust (NBFT).
It was in the course of the visit that he learnt that the
former Chief Executive of the African Christian Press, Accra, Ghana, Mr. Richard
Crabbe would be the keynote speaker at the 2012 edition of the Nigerian
International Bookfair.
Richard Crabbe. Growing up in the day as a young student of
the African book sector, I had come in contact regularly with the works of two
activist-professionals in the African book trade. One was my fellow countryman
and founding Chief Executive of Fourth Dimension Publishers, Enugu, the late
Engineer Victor Nwankwo, and the other was Crabbe. From their writings,
engagements and interventions, the two men came across as very well-reasoned
but dogged and committed enthusiasts for the place of the African and Africa in
the global book trade. Well-read and clear-headed, both men have not only
contributed immensely to the body of scholarship on the book trade in Africa,
they had also risen to the topmost echelons of the sector and served as Chairmen
of the African Publishers Network (APNET).
Encountering Crabbe at the Lagos Bookfair in 2012 did not also
disappoint. At the event, he spoke on the subject of ‘the state of infrastructural
development in Africa and the future of the book trade’ and raised issues that
reveberated far beyond the venue.
Electing to speak to the subject rather than read from his
already prepared speech, Crabbe was able to set the subject free and approached
his theme from the point of view of where his audience presently was. He spoke
on the challenges of an industry that was in the midst of re-definition; of
shifting and changing roles; and the pressure that was coming from literally, everywhere;
on the need to constantly be on one’s toes, innovating, changing and
transforming. Indeed it is quite some time to be a player in the book sector in
the mother continent!
Quoting copiously from data released by the African
Development Bank (ADB) on the prognosis for Africa by the year 2060, he
affirmed that the indicators were quite upbeat with overall infrastructure and
literacy rates expected to rise astronomically even as the population doubled.
Underscoring that this scenario did indeed open up fresh vistas for
particularly book sector professionals, he wondered how many in the hall were going to take up the challenge of
ensuring that they developed strong but flexible, sturdy and resilient, assured but malleable, fundamentally grounded
but creatively-astute and consistent but innovation-embracing systems that
would profit maximally from this shifting scenario.
Even more frankly, Crabbe would go on during question time
to break it down further. ‘This was indeed a different time and every one
needed to claw his way around as best as the situation demanded.’ He counselled
emphatically on the overall need to be open and amenable to change, affirming
that a lot of solutions to navigating the challenge of the present may be lying
in the hands of some young, untested and just-out-of-school entrants who on
account of their being viscerally involved with the emergent generation may be
better placed to connect with them on the primary level and design their own book
needs and solutions.
Going further, Crabbe invited practitioners to see the
continually changing trends in the book sector as less of a threat per se, but
more of a challenge that needed to be embraced headlong. The times, he
reasoned, were introducing shifting roles for everyone; with booksellers being
invited to be content aggregators, with authors being far more assertive and
personally taking charge of the ‘numbers’ side of the business; with publishers increasingly being tasked to let
go of some or more of the ‘global rights management’ they once took for granted;
and librarians being pushed to rely more and more on electronic and not print
book solutions in the course of their work with library users. With a lot of
these adjustments being initiated, encouraged and demanded by the neo-emergent,
and clearly unstoppable technologies of the day, the path of wisdom, he
counselled, was for practitioners to continue to more confidently engage and
interface with these technologies with a view to not only integrating them in their
operations, but to get a grip of the better side of them, maximise their
potential for reaching the new generation of readers, and go on to break even newer grounds with
them.
As APNET clocks two decades in its work of growing the
African book space, it is only fitting that we pause at this moment to salute
the work of pioneers and veterans like Nwankwo and Crabbe. Through their
resilient contributions to championing the course of the African book, they
have helped in giving further fillip to the sector and its issues. What remains
therefore is for us to continue to keep faith with the global dream and grow the
sector further in such a way that ‘the labours of our heroes, past and present,’
shall not be in vain.
Not one to leave his audience gaping without practical
solutions, Crabbe in the self-same ‘Lagos Declaration’ spoke on how this can be
best done, charging the profession’s current elders to be open enough in
receiving and integrating novel inputs from younger and emergent professionals
who in his view were clearly more abreast, not only with the new technologies
in question but even more fundamentally also, with the new consumer.
This is clearly very wise talk from an ‘elder’ in the business, and
notably too, from one who – as we say in these parts - has seen it all. This writer very clearly then has no hesitation in
identifying with, and indeed, ‘retweeting’ the kernel of Crabbe’s thesis for
the maximal benefit of all stakeholders.
Another reason why Crabbe’s point makes a lot of sense is
that it answers the creeping discomfort that had come to be introduced into the
overriding framework of operational roles and relations within the industry.
Here is how it plays out. When two players within the book sector meet for the
first time and the inevitable business and social talk ensues, they ‘explain’
themselves in line with one of the compartments that the industry had grown to
live with However this is not exactly guaranteed today with players
increasingly finding themselves wearing more than one of the hitherto
relatively exclusive labels that existed. Thus we now have Publisher/Editor,
Bookseller/Librarian or Literary Agent/Book Scout/Editor/Publisher all rolled
into one. And the lines are further blurring.
This shifting
delineation is also affecting association relations within the sector. Thus
going forward, we now have players who take up and play multiple roles in the
various associations or going on, we may even have more of the combined
association frameworks as say the ‘association of booksellers and publishers.’
While this like every other change is sure to come with its own stresses, one
of the side benefits that it promises is that it would address some of the
tension existing between say for example, publishers and booksellers over
issues like alleged role encroachment and off-schedule sales returns.
And what would be the fate of those players who insist that
‘the new technology is still a far-off and non-third world phenomenon?’ For
this category, the answer is simple: look at the ADB report referenced by
Crabbe and you will see that heads or tails, this new reality has virtually
dawned on us. That dear reader, is globalization 102.
Associated with this is the need to deal with what this
writer considers to be one of the most fundamental imperatives facing the
African Publishers network at this time, and one which may have come as a
result of taking our eyes off the ball.
This is because from what we know and understand of both the
spirit and work of APNET greats like Nwankwo, Crabbe and Woeli Deukutsy, the
organisation was one that was not only expected to always remain at the cutting
edge of trends and innovation in the book sector, but also one that would continue
to tap into the richest dynamics of progress that the industry could find.
This much came across to this writer as he sat with late
Victor Nwankwo in his study/office at Enugu in the concluding years of the
decade of the 90s as well as from the treatises on the subject penned by the good
man and other founding fathers of APNET.
At the core of the vision then, was a necessary - if not
compulsive - emphasis on intellectual rigour, creativity, innovation and
networking. Even when there necessarily was politicking, it was healthy,
measured and most progressive, as it was built upon – and not expected to depart
from - these quintessential principles and values that players and stakeholders
were continually being challenged to buy into.
As I see it then, one of the critical challenges facing
APNET in this 20th year, is to basically return to the spirit of
this founding engagement. This is moreso when we now have – as enunciated by
Crabbe in the paper under reference – a technology-dominated book space that -
for good or otherwise – allows far more room for dissonance than convergence.
In practical terms then, I would be advocating an APNET
which places a lot of emphasis on the re-development of the organisation’s
intellectual space, with a view to ensuring that its lead journal, the APNET
Review, is further strengthened and energised to very fully lead the debate
around issues in the development of the book trade in the continent. There may also
be the need for the establishment of a formal APNET Academy or - more like it –
a B to B collaboration with a number of leading institutions in the continent
with a view to developing and teaching more contemporarily, industry-relevant
discourses, and training well-fitted and era-sensitive junior, medium and high
net-worth personnel in the sector.
And then my final point. That there is a blurring of lines
in the book’s landscape today is no longer news. What is at issue is how we are
responding to it. Would this response - as it also has to do with APNET now - also
require an adjustment either in the name of the organisation or its definition
modalities to encompass some of the other players that have now ‘blurred into’
hitherto exclusive ‘publishing’ territories? Or do we continue to put our foot
very strongly down that ‘publishing is publising is publishing is publishing!’
Not being an APNET leader, this is clearly not my call to
make. But be rest assured that the thought is only being shared in the spirit
of basically reviewing how far the APNET journey has come in the past two
decades and how much further it could yet go in the years that follow. To
provide more fillip for my thought, I will draw the reader’s attention to three
realities of a near similar-frame.
The first has to do with the fact that in a number of
territories in Africa and indeed the world over, there currently exist joint
associations of sorts in the book trade, including in some instances, joint
associations of publishers and book sellers. Are they working together in
tandem? Does it look that they may be in a better position – conceptually at
least – to better handle the challenge of blurring lines, having already been
enmeshed in it?
Second, there are instances in our recent history where
efforts at establishing even more dissonance may not have fully worked out or
served its purpose. One example here may be the establishment of new
associations to promote the interests of ‘non-ficion authors.’ With the benefit
of hindsight now, what may have been needed could have been the expansion of
the mandate of the existing ‘fiction-dominant’ national writers association to
incorporate and accomodate this new focus.
And third, is the example of the founding origins of the
book as we know it, where - in the pre-Gutenberg era - the bookseller was literally
also the publisher, the librarian and the printer of the few books that were in
existence? Did I just hear someone say Déjà vu?
Happy birthday, APNET. Longer may you live. Amen.
Richard Mammah can be reached at richard.mammah@gmail.com
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