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Factors Influencing Indigenous Publishing in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

Bobana Badisang*
Affiliation:
Botswana National Library Service
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Extract

Citing Ayi Kwei Armah, Kotei has this to say about the plight of indigenous publishing in Africa: “if you [the writer] set out to print anything on your own, the printing costs will stagger you. If you manage to print, the distribution difficulties will blow your mind. If you give your stuff to a local publisher, you will sympathize so much with his problems so that you may not write again…So all our work… appears first to an audience which either regards us like some glass-enclosed specimen…or like an exotic weed to be sampled and made a conversation piece…or else we become some international organization's pet”.

This article assesses the development of the indigenous publishing industry in Sub-Saharan Africa - the economics of publishing in relation to production, marketing and distribution of locally published materials, indigenization, current trends in publishing and the book trade in general, and the roles played by the different bodies concerned.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1994

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