ANA dumps publishers of NWS, releases new books
Chux
Ohai
The
Association of Nigerian Authors has released the second edition of the Nigerian
Writers’ Series.
The
association, in a statement posted on Facebook by its President, Denja
Abdullahi, said that only three titles were published out of the 13 entries
submitted in the Children’s Literature category.
The
selected entries include The Loyal Queen written by Chinyere Obi-Obasi,
Salamatu Sule’s Oma the Drummer Queen and The Golden Girl of Galma
by Kabir Abdullahi.
Unlike
the titles published in the first edition of the series in 2014 by five
selected publishing companies, the new books are published under an imprint of
ANA, known as the NWS Publishers.
Explaining
why the association did not get the initial publishing outlets involved in the
production of the new books, Abdullahi said, “We didn’t want to repeat what
happened four years ago when we didn’t get up to N300,000 from an investment of
about N7m. The publishing companies that we asked to handle the series ended up
doing nothing to market and distribute the finished products. They simply
dumped the books on us.
“This
time around, we want to market the books ourselves so as to make some profits
and publish more titles. We have decided to approach this from a proper
business perspective. We are going to find a way to get the books into the
schools’ curricula. All the chapters of ANA in the 36 states of the federation
are going to be involved in marketing and distributing the books.”
But,
reacting to Abdullahi’s statement, a co-founder of Parresias Publishing
Limited, one of the outlets contracted by ANA four years ago, Richard Ali,
counted his company out of those that failed to live up to the association’s
expectations.
He
said, “It’s not all the publishers initially selected to handle the first
edition of the series that dumped the book on the association. If I remember
correctly, the original arrangement was to produce the books and distribute
them. But only Parresias distributed and tried to do some kind of marketing.
The idea was that ANA would use its state chapters and other structures to help
push the books. I don’t think any of the publishers followed up on that.
“For
the most part, I don’t think the publishers did what they were supposed to do.
Part of this problem is the fact that ANA split the task of publishing the
first edition of the series among different outlets instead of giving it to
just one. When Parresias entered the equation, some people protested and said
it shouldn’t be the only publishing company involved in the series. So, it was
split among several other publishers. If you look at the quality of the
production of those books, you will see that they differ from one publishing
outlet to another.”
However,
Abdullahi, in a separate telephone interview with our correspondent, said that
the writers’ body had concluded plans to start A Book, A Child reading
promotion project, nationwide, with the three children’s books, which were also
published with the grant that it received from one of its major sponsors,
Alhaji Yusuf Ali, in 2016.
“One
of ANA’s goals at the moment is to ensure that a copy of the book gets to every
Nigerian child in school. We are also going to organise a symposium, themed The
Expanding Frontiers of Creative Writing in Nigeria, at the Federal
University, Ndufu-Alike Ikwo, Ebonyi State next Monday.
“In
addition, we want to start hosting an annual conference on the criticism of
Nigerian literature, which will take place as from 2018. The symposium will be
the prelude to this conference. For this reason, the FUNAI authority has
entered into a partnership with ANA,” the ANA president said.
