Of Pirates, Copiers and a Land Cruiser Dream - my speech at Moto Festival

When the publisher accepted my manuscript for ‘The Last Villains of Molo’ I was ecstatic. I knew that I had crossed the bridge to fame and fortune. I remember strolling into a car showroom to view the car I would soon be able to buy – I have always loved the Landcruiser SUV.

21 publications later (13 solo publications and 8 collaborations with other writers), the dream of instant riches from book sales keeps fading.

The realisation that the Landcruiser would not be coming in my lifetime hit me a few years ago, when I toured a university that was studying my book. (Sidenote: As a writer, that is the greatest feeling – having your book being studied is great, and not just for the book sales, but for the pride of having made a mark in the literary scene).

We spent a few hours discussing the book with the university students, who had read every single word and could dissect it better than I could. And then one of them asked me a question that she said had troubled the whole school: ‘Discuss the symbolism of the cover design of The Last Villains of Molo’. To help them by illustration, I asked for a copy of the book, and then someone handed me a photocopied version.

That is when it hit me that the reason they could not answer the question was that nobody had seen the original cover of the book. They were simply reading off photocopies of copies of the original. To this day I remember the feeling of loss as I handed the book back.

I recalled this incident as I made a virtual appearance at the World Book and Copyright Day celebrations dinner this weekend. The dinner was part of the Moto Books and Arts Festival themed ‘Firing up African Literature’. (Moto means 'fire' in Kiswahili).

When we talk about book piracy in Kenya, we talk mostly about only one aspect of it – unscrupulous printers who pirate books. The Kenya Copyright Board famously raided one such illegal business to find over 50,000 pirated books worth over $100,000.

There is, however, another angle – students photocopying texts instead of buying them. My research, after that university incident, found that the problem was even bigger. The education system focuses so much on examinations that after the end of semester examinations, the student is not motivated to keep the book, so there is no incentive to buy a new book every semester. This is coupled with a society that loves free things – you should see throngs of people running with jerricans in their hands to siphon fuel from oil tankers at accident scenes.

There is also a distribution problem. We need to improve access to books. We also need to communicate better to debunk the myth that photocopied books are cheaper (photocopying my book is about KES 250/-, but a legal e-version – which I will get royalties on – is KES 200/-). And we need to let our students know the impact of their actions – I have on many occasions had photocopied versions of my books to autograph, which tells me that the students do not know what they are doing is wrong.

What does this situation do for the literary scene?

For starters, it makes it difficult to make a living as a writer. And now that I think about it, I can’t place the name of any author in my circles who is a full-time writer. Most writers I know are something else first, then writer second. Which makes the literary scene poorer because we are dedicating only an hour or so a night (on good days), when there is little energy to write.

Publishing is a business, and because they are not making money from publishing, publishers are divesting from the creative fiction genre into the more lucrative textbook industry where they can control piracy via mass production and rapid distribution. The result, less investment in upcoming authors.

This robs the reader of the opportunity to discover the writers and the writing that they should.

I ended the speech with a rallying call for all the players in the industry – writers, publishers, book sellers, regulators, and readers – to come together to fight this menace. It takes blood, sweat and tears to get a book done, and even more blood sweat and tears to get it published – we should have the opportunity to make a living from our sweat.

Looking forward to the next festival, where I can possibly attend physically.