Azafi Omoluabi-Ogosi: Social Media and Publishing

Azafi Omoluabi-Ogosi works as a managing editor with Parresia Publishers, a publishing outfit based in Lagos, Nigeria. She responds to some issues around social media and publishing; some of the issues raised by Chiagozie Nwonwu last week.

What do you use social media for at Parresia? 

Social media is basically used as a marketing tool, we break into the groups of literary people on social media. So it is used as a merging ground where writers, readers, authors, from anywhere, in Nigeria or anywhere in Africa are aware of our products and the books we have to offer. We use them to create buzz for the company and the books.

Are Parresia Books available online?

Yes. Our books are available via Amazon, and they are are not for Nigerians living in Nigeria because we expect that if you want to buy our books from an online portal, you can go via Konga or Jumia.com which cater for Nigerians and for the Naira.  Amazon  does not cater for Nigerians here. There is no online payment that we can use from here for Amazon, except you have an online account or something. So, it is Nigerians living outside or anybody in the world who will buy via Amazon. So far we haven't gotten any complaints. Sales are fair. The social media helps so we have had people reading and talking about our books. We have had response from people we don't know from anywhere coming and saying that they bought the books via Amazon; some have actually taken pictures. Yes, things like that have happened so far, the response is good.

Do you think social media is changing roles, experiences, and terms in publishing?

Basically, one thing that I have noticed about social media is that it has given people more confidence to write, people who otherwise would not have written or who would have hidden away their works can now make posts, and have other people who like, comment; who give you some form of encouragement whatsoever.

Now, does that translate into publishing? No, I don't think it does because it still means that there are two sorts of writers. First, the one who will post stuff on Facebook--write a poem, a short story or do the blogging. I personally separate that from those who will go all the way and take their time to write an actual book.

I don't think I will publish an author based on his/her postings via social media because I have learnt to separate that: I don't think it is the same thing. There was a girl who recently published a short story online and it was shared all over social media, her writing was interesting, and we asked her to send her work, the first three chapters to us, for consideration, she didn't have anything to send in. In fact that was her first story and first writing ever. So, it gives the buzz, gives you the confidence and all that but actually writing and writing well, is another issue.

Social media and Parresia's call for submissions

We have gotten over fifty submissions so far and I am definite that all of them came via social media because that is the only means that we used to call for submissions. Now, the quality of writing is not tied to social media but it's there, in fact I don't know what to say about that because there are people who write and do not understand what writing is about and I get a lot of people who don't understand what writing is, who still need help. So, there are people who still need help with their writing and social media won't play that part for them...

Do you think that social media affects the reading culture in any way? 

For me, social media is an interactive thing. It is also very distracting. So, in terms of reading. I can say for instance, in the past few weeks, I had to shut myself out of social media because it personally affected my own reading, it affected my own work because I am always going there, always trying to see what I can do to promote one book or the other. So, in terms of using it as a marketing tool, for people around you to be aware of your work, it works, but in terms of the nitty gritty of publishing and reading through manuscripts, it is a distracting tool, for me as a publisher. You are there, you are thinking of other things rather than thinking of work at hand, It serves its suppose rather than create the balance at hand.

In terms of reading, I don't see how it has improved the standard of reading. It affected mine as a consumer of books.

Picture from: www.3dissue.com

Hard cover generation vs Social Media Generation

I was with my brother recently and he has always belonged to the school of thought that think that books will be completely phased out; that it will come to a point where you will only buy books in cover as special editions, everything else will be digital, especially textbooks. He believes it will start with textbooks, move to fiction and what we know as books will be generally phased out. I do not have that opinion at all even though we belong to the same generation of readers.

Reading from a tab or from a phone or other digital device is not going to replace the experience of reading from a real book. It is a different experience all together. First, the eyes are  affected. Reading on a digital device is distracting: you have to tap for the light to stay on; you have a call that will come in; you have Facebook messages to attend to. I am always wondering how people enjoy reading off a device like a phone. I owned a Kindle for some time, really I did not like it. I'd rather still have the book, put a bookmark in it, and not something I have to turn on. I just cannot see the future in digital e-book formats taking over. It is a fad, it will happen but it is a fad, it cannot last.

It is a visual thing. It is like this. I use my laptop. I read in front of it; I am not comfortable with the fact that I continually read text on my laptop. When I am editing for instance, there are times, that I print out the manuscript. I concentrate more that way, instead of reading on the computer and my eyes are skimming through and I am not catching what I should catch. So, there is that thing of the visual, the head, what the eyes have been designed to actually do, and digital does not actually capture it. This digital thing has come from watching movies or so but you watch a movie for an hour and a half and that is all. It is different from reading text and which is a funny thing for me when people say that maybe flash fiction will work, maybe shorter stories will work; we are now translating it into the fact that what is attention grabbing text-wise should be shorter, you are making accommodations for it. So, what will happen to full length books, are you going to say that will phase out to?

Femi Morgan poses with a Parresia title

Do Nigerians read? 

Nigerians read and it is very annoying to hear that Nigerians don't read. I have had a second hand book customer for the past ten years. All I have known him to do is to import books to sell; that's his sole means of livelihood. He brings in containers of books, each container has over 100, 000 books and he sells them in two months. So, when people say that Nigerians don't read, I don't understand it; I can excuse us to say  books made in Nigeria by Nigerians are  expensive in that people don't want to put down that N1,500 to buy a book but they'd  rather put N200, N100, N150, and those books sell which means if our dynamics were all in place and we could sell a brand new author for N500, then you will know that Nigerians read. I think that it is our own pricing system that's faulty which is as a result of our production challenges.

We have There Was A Country that's being pirated now so maybe we should do the research to see how much of that book has sold and based on that you should be able to tell whether Nigerians read at all. So Nigerians do read and another thing that's our challenge is that does a regular Nigerian on the streets know that our books exist the same way they know Sidney Sheldon, John Grisham--do they know Helon Habila?

If a magazine can do a print run of over 20, 000, even at the price of N1,000 and sell, who buys those magazines, in the scenario that Nigerians don't read? 20, 000 people to the Nigerian population is still minute but it's a monthly thing, and is still being sustained and it still sells. You cannot say for instance that they survive on advertising. No. Some of these magazines actually do well on sales too.

Plans for cheaper versions of Parresia titles?

It's an avenue we are exploring. We call them the student editions. There are two versions. The regular versions with the nice paper and all, and the student versions which is the regular paper that will be sold at the cheaper price. And another thing that we want to explore is street sales, so we actually have vendors carrying these books, it all boils down to PR, it boils down to marketing.

--This interview was sent in by Temitayo Olofinlua

Social Media and Publishing

Last month, we were at the Social Media Week, specifically, the event on Social Media and Publishing. Tagged "Publishing in the Age of Social Media" the speakers were: Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, the Publisher, Cassava Republic Press; Azafi Omoluabi-Ogosi, the Managing Editor, Parresia Publishers; Gbenro Adegbola, CEO First Veritas Educational Content Delivery Ltd; Tolu Ogunlesi, Journalist and writer  and Ebi Atawodi  Head, High Value Events & Sponsorships at Etisalat. 

The event raised several questions: if there are over 90 million active mobile phone users, 48 million Internet users and 6.5 million Facebook members; what does it hold for the publishing sector? How can publishers tap into this massive opportunity? What is being done? What can be done? 

Here are some interesting quotations from the event. This is the first of our instalments on social media and publishing. 

"It's going to take a lot of patience. I was 18 when I got my first email address. Things have changed a lot since then. The young people now will do their socialising on social media and not for long, they will have the buying power and will be able to buy books online...so in another ten to fifteen years, it will be easier to buy things online" Tolu Ogunlesi

"People will soon start to use it for content creation when the internet gets quicker and cheaper. It depends on how we engage with the audience. We need to look at these things relatively to the market that exists here." Ebi Atawodi

Social Media, Attention Span and the Novel Form

"What I suspect is that we will have novels in instalments. There will be a lot of fiction in little bits." Gbenro Adegbola

"Short form or long form, people will have the challenge to read from the screen. I do not like Kindles, I am a book person. There are people who prefer books in paperback regardless. It plays its part as a marketing tool, to create awareness about our work, our books...in the long run and presently, that's what social media can do." Azafi Omoluabi-Ogosi

"The large part of what social media would do would be on the road to the finishing. Soon social media will expand in the way that we engage with books, not just the finished book but the way books are made. " Bibi Bakare-Yusuf

"The history of the novel has changed fairly, from the War and Peace era.  As time went on, our attention span has reduced. We think of Africa as a place where things come to us and not a place of innovation. How can we think of books in new formats? More publishing houses are returning to the novella form and short stories in the West. I don't think that social media is just about marketing but also  about content." Bibi Bakare-Yusuf

"We should stop talking about the digital ousting the traditional but about newer forms, experiences. I am thinking of Teju Cole's "Small Fates". We should be looking at newer forms but not as digital as coming as a threat to oust the traditional form." Gbenro Adegbola

Quality vs content proliferation

"Curating reduces the number of quality in terms of choice; I prefer ten well-edited books to 100 books. If you feel that you have the writing prowess, go and engage the shorter form." Ebi Atawodi

"When the US Postal Service was first invented, it was to send posts, newspapers. It was expensive. So, people would make holes in newspapers to send messages. There is nothing that we can do about that-the quality of books. Quality books will find their level. I think that there will be a backlash when quality starts to fall and content proliferates, we will have to return to another form." Tolu Ogunlesi

"We are just at the point where people put themselves out as self-publishers. They do not know that your book needs to have that ecstatic appeal to buyers. Some publishing houses have done this; they have their traditional arms and their self-publishing arms. Eventually we will get to that point where, if we are not getting enough quality, it will drop." Azafi Omoluabi-Ogosi

"People like drama; they like something that's interesting, what people are talking about. Part of the problem is from us--the content generators. We have to make people interested. People like to carry on interesting issues. Don't blame the audience. If the content gets to them and is interesting, it will spread like wildfire." Ebi Atawodi

"Social media as a marketing tool has nothing to do with quality control. Whatever process it takes to get the book out, social media is just a tool to push out the book." Azafi Omoluabi-Ogosi

Social Media and Book Sales

"Face-to-face is important, and it is social media that drives that. The social media space is our advert space. We place our information there and people turn out. Most of us, book lovers, are social people and love to interact. Never mind if they don't buy books. How many books do those that social media drives to your events buy? That's another question. For publishers, we like to socialise with our readers but that does not necessarily translate to sales." Bibi Bakare-Yusuf

"There are people who come to the bookshop, love to read, who do not have power or internet in their houses. There are people who come into the bookstore to buy books because they heard about that particular author online, on social media. Even if we dont have the book in the store, we go to look for it. Social media will help us to find new authors, new writing, even while the curating goes on." Ore Somolu, Patabah Books

"It is rare to have attendance and sales tie in together. There are many reasons that drive attendance at events. The author drives attendances and sales. Organising book readings is a funny one. There are times when people came, were entertained yet there was not much book sales. It is complex. We use social media to drive book events. There are book clubs that have started on social media." Azafi Omoluabi-Ogosi

What do you think: can social media be used as a tool to transform the publishing sector in Nigeria?

--Quotations compiled by Temitayo Olofinlua