So, What If It Is a Good Book? And Other Lessons I Am Learning About Publishing by Nyana Kakoma
It was Nigerian poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo who told us to start. To start where we are. To start with fear. To start with pain. To start with doubt. To start with our hands shaking, voices trembling. To just start. And so, I did in June 2016 when Sooo Many Stories, published its first title, a poetry collection by Ugandan poet, Peter Kagayi. When I look back now, I feel like I was well equipped with everything Ijeoma says to start with. There were innumerable things I was uncertain of and only one I knew for sure; that Peter Kagayi had some things to say, things that I believed needed to be said. But there are things even a world-class editing class and a remarkable publishing internship in one of the best publishing houses you know, can never prepare you for. Things you will only learn just because you started.
This is a lesson I learnt really fast. It is not enough to have a well-written, perfectly edited and beautifully laid-out book. It is even worse if it is in a country where you are often reminded of the poor reading culture whenever you say the word “reading” and even worse when it is poetry. The fact that it could be the best poetry ever written is not enough. This has taught me to think about what the book looks like, how it can be creatively marketed and how to creatively make sure it gets to people as easily as possible. This has stretched the way I look at manuscripts, how books are introduced to the public and how to think outside the box when it comes to books.
It has changed the way I look at people who do not have any interest in books; to look at them as people I can interest, people I can convert and tuck away that snobbishness us book enthusiasts reserve for people that do not share this precious interest we have. It has pushed me out of my shell into interesting collaborations and spaces that I would never have been caught dead in before.
Ask and you shall receive
This is a lesson I am still learning. So, you open this publishing house and you are the publishing director, HR Manager, Marketing Executive, Sales Executive, Public Relations person, Events coordinator, events decorator, finance chick, book distributor and inevitably, the tea girl. Very soon you realise you can’t do everything (your body won’t let you hear the end of it and your brain starts to drop a few balls here and there). I have been shocked by the kind of help I have received from strangers and friends alike, most times without my asking (because I did not know I needed it or was too scared to ask).
From my brother, who at the launch of The Headline That morning pulled me aside and said he was hesitant to buy a poetry book (poetry is not his kind of thing) but instead gave me money to “open a bank account, register with the revenue authority, you know…formalise your business”. Help came from a stranger (now a dear friend), the second person to order for a copy of The Headline That Morning and the very person who sent me a message the morning of the launch to encourage, affirm and celebrate my efforts. Help came when a Kenyan Blogger friend took the bus from Nairobi to Kampala, at his own cost, to be there for the launch of The Headline That Morning.
Help came when a friend, who could not make it for the launch, offered to come and get the venue ready for the launch of the East African edition of Flame and Song by Philippa Namutebi Kabali-Kagwa, our second title. Help came when a young lady attended our adults’ book club and after, she called to offer her time because she believed in what we are doing. I had no money to pay someone to do our social media work and yet, it was increasingly becoming too much for me to handle with the rest of the work I had to do. Help still pours in from friends in the publishing world, visionary women that have gone ahead of me and made it much easier for me to live this dream; Bibi Bakare-Yusuf and Colleen Higgs continue to advise and make it all easier. Help still pours in from volunteers who set aside time every month to make reading fun for our children in our monthly book club. Help pours in ways too many to mention. Helps pours in from people who ask that you never publicly talk about how much they have supported you; they are just doing it because they believe in what you do. Help comes. Ask and you shall receive.
You don’t have to fix all the problems today.
Another lesson I am still learning. You will not fix how the book shops look at local writers and how the government looks at the arts and how writers look at publishers and how people perceive books and how stories are told and what your family thinks of your work and how other people in the industry look at you TODAY! You don’t have to know all the publishing models today. You do not have to have read all the bestsellers on all the bestselling lists. You can say no to manuscripts and you will not be guilty of crippling the publishing industry. You do not have to know everything and fix everything.
When in doubt, look to the children
This is perhaps the main reason I have not thrown in the towel yet. We started Fireplaces (book clubs) for children, teenagers and adults shortly after we had launched our first book. The Children’s Fireplace is a constant reminder of the importance of our work and the need for us to do more. We have received feedback from parents about the change in their children since they started attending the book club. And it has been changing as significant as winning spelling and vocabulary contests and change as mind-blowing as a six-year-old attempting to retell the story she was told at the book club to her neighbourhood friends. It’s seeing children’s confidence grow as they read aloud to other members of the Fireplace or parents telling us that the children have been asking when the next book club is.
From the book club, we got requests to train young writers, and we had our first children’s writing workshop in December last year. We will be publishing an anthology from that workshop this year and we can’t wait to see good books with faces they can relate to in book shops and school libraries in Uganda. I look to the children to see the bigger picture of this often-frustrating work and to be reminded why I started.
