Social media platforms open new markets for pubishers

During the Nyrobi Book Fest, organised by the Alliance Française, in mid-October, I sat down with Eunniah Mbabazi, keen to learn from her, how self-publishing works in Kenya works.

Eunniah is part of a growing number of authors, mostly young, who have taken to self-publishing, and in the face of it, are doing quite well. You see, Eunniah is a trained engineer but appears to have given up all that in favour of writing and publishing her own books.

Ordinarily, even with the backing of a mainstream publisher, no sane writer would give up their day job to focus on writing, at least not in Kenya. And here we are not talking about writing textbooks, which have a guaranteed market in schools. We are talking about creative writing.

Now, any Kenyan publisher will tell you that publishing creative works (novels, short stories, poems etc) is fraught with risks, since the market is not clearly defined.

Thus, if the book will not be absorbed in the school market – either as a class reader or better still a set-book – they are unlikely to take it up.

If that be the case, how come Eunniah and a host of other authors are producing book after book – where is the market? To put this into perspective, Dennis Mucheru, the principal librarian at the Alliance Française, told me that last year alone, over 50 books had been launched at the library.

This translates to a book every week. And yes, all these books are self-published.

While it is one thing to produce a book, it is quite a different thing altogether, to market and sell that book. Henry Chakava, better known as the ‘father of African publishing’, has dedicated a whole chapter to marketing of books, in his book. Publishing in Africa: One Man’s Perspective.

In that chapter, Chakava explains that marketing is the Achilles heel of African publishing, basically arguing that it is no easy walk in the park. Now, when a person of Chakava’s stature speaks, you better stand up and listen.

Back to Eunniah.

She told me that she mostly markets her books through social media and yes, she makes good sales. “Social media is such that I might make a post today and not all my friends will see,” she explained.

“That explains why I repeat a post many times over, marketing my books, for the sake of those that hadn’t seen it when I made the initial post.”

At an earlier interview, Silas Nyanchwani had told me an almost similar thing; that he sells his books through social media. Like Eunniah, Nyanchwani said he makes comfortable living through the sale of his books.

Now, that rings a bell.

When Chakava wrote his book, there was no social media as we know it today; there was only mainstream media, which was not accessible to many people. Social media has not only opened up new avenues and new possibilities; most importantly it has unlocked new markets.

What social media has done for books is a bit like what Equity Bank did for banking; reaching out to the unbanked, who in effect catapulted Equity to the top of the pile in local banking.

What this says is that there is a huge demographic, out there, that loves books and reading, and which is not accessed by traditional marketing efforts by publishers.

The existence of this demographic reminds me of an illuminating conversation I had with Lila Luce, about 20 years ago. Luce, an American, was the founder of Sasa Sema, set up for the sole purpose of producing creative works.

She explained that textbook publishing, which is the mainstay of Kenyan publishing, had exploited 70 per cent of that market, leaving them with a potential of 30 per cent.

Creative publishing on the other hand, she said, had only exploited 30 per cent of the market, meaning that there was 70 per cent potential remaining to be exploited.

It is this unexploited 70 per cent she had in mind, when she founded Sasa Sema. While she knew who her target audience was, she sadly lacked the vehicle to get there. That partly explained why she ran into headwinds and ended up selling Sasa Sema to Longhorn Publishers.

Social media was the vehicle, Sasa Sema had sorely missed. At the time she sold her outfit, Facebook was only four or five years away from reaching Kenyan shores.

It is that social media that the likes of Eunniah, Nyanchwani and many other self-published authors have tapped into to reach to the elusive 70 per cent market. That explains the sales these authors are currently enjoying.

Mainstream publishers, on the other hand, are yet to embrace the gifts presented by social media. A cursory look at their social media pages, reveals that they are largely inactive; very little meaningful engagement with the public takes place.

This can only mean one thing, publishers are missing out on this new frontier, thereby locking themselves out of market they have, over time, failed to reach using their traditional marketing efforts.

Make no mistake about it though, the self-published authors currently enjoying the fruits of social media have barely scratched the surface of this largely untapped market.

The future therefore looks bright, but only for those willing to put in the hard work.

Mbugua Ngunjiri is the curator of Maisha Yetu, a Digital Arts and Books media platform

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