Our motivation is deeply personal: to tell our stories well, says Eghosa Imasuen

* NLP opens new office in Kenya

* …Books tend to come lower on the scale oin times of scarce resources. It’s our duty to stay the course

By Anote Ajeluorou

IN spite of the obvious challenges publishing houses are facing in Nigeria with high costs of running businesses generally and low patronage of books particularly, Narrative Landscape Press (NLP) has ventured out to other climes in East Africa where it has set up a new shop as part of its expansionist programme to conquer the African market and make cross border literary offerings as seamless as possible. In its 9-year history NLP has made remarkable impact in announcing one interesting title after title to thrill book lovers in Nigeria and beyond. Medical doctor Co-founder and novelist Eghosa Imasuen and co-founder Anwuli Ojogwu first cut their teeth in publishing at Farafina (Kachifo Ltd) before venturing out to start NLP, an Independent book company that is redefining literary publishing.

Imasuen spoke on the journey since 2016, noting that though it’s been particularly difficult, yet, “We are quite glad with where we are. It’s been a difficult year and several opportunities have been lost due to the economic difficulties of the past year. But we are still here and we consider the difficulties as a simple deferment of said opportunities. We will get there eventually. Regarding the growth of our catalogue of books, we believe we have been able to keep up in a very competitive market by prioritising competence. Writers understand that with us their books will come out well: properly edited, designed and produced.

“We founded Narrative Landscape Press Limited in 2016 as a publishing services company. There was some background to this decision. I’d joined the publishing industry in 2013 when I became the chief operations officer at Kachifo Limited. My qualifications? I’d left a medical career to run my family’s business in banking and real estate three years prior, and I’d been a writer for about a decade.”

More than ever before, it would seem Nigerian writers have suddenly rediscovered their creative mojo and are looking for the new publishing company that speaks their own language of a new narrative fervour. Writers and independent (Indie) publishers like NLP seem to have come to a junction of sorts and, unlike traditional publishers, are willing to take risks to midwife these new works from manuscripts through the rigours of editing, production and marketing, and into the hands of readers. Indeed, it is a new dawn for literary, particularly prose fiction publishing in the country, because month after month NLP announces new authors being signed on, and equally reeling out new titles. The acquisition of the rights to the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for the Nigerian market lent fillip to their the duo’s quest to venture into fulltime publishing. Since then it’s been one success story afters another.

“What my future business partner Anwuli Ojogwu and I had found was that in the previous few years, with the flowering of Nigerian writer at the dawn of the new millennium, new skills were being developed in publishing creative writing, and such skills were marketable,” said Imasuen, the author of Fine Boys. “So we founded our company. But we always knew we would go into publishing our own titles traditionally. We did this in 2018 when we acquired the rights to all of Chimamanda Adichie’s books for the Nigerian market.”

Dr. Eghosa Imasuen

At the beginning was African Writers Series (AWS), the big deal for literary publishing in pre-Independent Nigeria (nay Africa) till the 1980s when a 1986 Structural Adjustment Policy (SAP), an International Monetary Fund- (IMF) induced economic devaluation policy adopted by the military junta turned the Nigerian economy upside-down and publishing in Nigeria took a turn for the worse. Now it would seem NLP and other Indie presses have firmly stepped in and AWS seems such a distant echo that nobody feels its absence any more. Imasuen believes the literary resurgence NPL is helping to midwife is a deeply felt one that stems from the reshaping of African narratives and rescuing them from the mouths of others (West), with Africans taking ownership of telling their stories without inhibition, “Our motivation is deeply personal: to tell our stories well,” he said. “We have also tried to diversify our business opportunities. We have recently established an audiobook production company as well as a book scouting company.”

Integrating the African book ecosystem is at the heart of NLP’s recent move to Kenya, and the motivation to take full ownership of publishing infrastructure within African shores. For Imasuen and his perceptive business partner, it’s a matter of time before all the elements converge for a harmonious whole for African publishing. Although publishing may be prohibitive at the moment in Nigeria, for instance, the need to drive a homegrown paper manufacturing industry is unmistakable, according to Imasuen, “Production of our books overseas is always going to be a temporary matter. For any nation’s publishing industry to thrive, it must control production within its own shores. We have plans, some of which I just mentioned had been deferred because of the economic challenges of the past year. But we will get there.”

Although Africa may seem challenged on many fronts, the two driving forces at NLP believe certain conditions need be near perfect for any business to thrive, including publishing: “A perfect condition for publishing: a good economy. A fair playing field. No handouts. It’s a business. We thrive when others are thriving.”.

A shrinking readership provides a healthy source of headache for any publisher, with economic scales stacked against books. Notwithstanding the ringing cry everywhere that Nigerians aren’t reading enough for publishing economy of scale, what’s the fate of Indie publishers like NLP and how is it surmounting challenges before it?

For Dr. Imasuen, “In the balance of what consumers would rather spend scarce resources on, books tend to come lower on the scale. But we persevere by staying on the shelves. Economies are always on a swing, things will improve eventually. It’s our duty to stay the course.”