Bibi Bakare-Yusuf: Social Media and Publishing

Bibi Bakare-Yusuf is the co-founder of Cassava Republic Press. She moderated the event on publishing at the Social Media Week, 2013 tagged "Publishing in the Age of Social Media." In this short interview, she reacts to some issues related to social media and publishing. 



Social media and the book form
Social media is a medium for shorter attention spans. People are increasingly consuming information in sound bites so the time frame within which they are able to digest information is shorter. This lends itself to certain forms of fiction, for instance, flash fiction is on the rise as is haiku poetry. Now, does that mean that these shorter forms will fully displace the long form? I’m not sure.  It might mean that the long form may end up being broken up and we will see a return to Dickensian times when stories were serialised in newspapers. In other words, long form writing will survive, but broken down into bite sized chunks. On the other hand, I think there will continue to be people who just want to get lost in the long form and have an immersive experience. The novel form allows for some form of escapism; short form writing restricts that because it is not sufficiently immersive.

Do you think that Twitter has led to the rise of "lazy writers"?
Twitter hasn't created lazy writers; writers on Twitter will mostly focus on their updates. Many of them (so-called writers) are not really writers, they’re just commenting and tweeting. I think the people who are serious about writing will continue to write regardless. Social media will be used as an avenue to present their work and to create buzz about what they've written. I think people tweeting as their main form of writing is inherently lazy, but it's just one form among others and it is okay. I don't see any problem with it.

We need all of these forms to emerge and develop; people will gravitate towards what they find suitable. Some people are comfortable with Facebook updates, others prefer Twitter because it is an even shorter form and immediate.  However, there will always be those who prefer a long form reading experience, whether online or in print.

Do you think that social media can help in solving the book distribution challenge?
Social media is not going to solve our distribution challenges. What social media can do is to raise awareness about a book and create desire for more books to buy and to read. Whether we can meet that hunger returns us to the same distribution challenge. Digital media however can help to break the ground in terms of access to e-books. But we have to be mindful that not everyone in Nigeria has access to these devices, or will for a long time to come

--This interview was sent in by Temitayo Olofinlua