THE MYTHS OF THE AFRICAN PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

The European and American publishing industry are more than a century old, hence can never be compared with the African publishing industry that are only some decade old. African publishing houses are still evolving and are never at the same level with their American and European counterparts and writers shouldn't expect the same treatment. An European and American publishing houses can comfortably run a completely traditional publishing because these publishing houses are fully developed and they get grants from the public and private sectors who understand that literature is necessary for learning and an educated society will prosper the nation. These grants enables the publishing house to seek out creative books from the writers' community that will affect the society positively and the authors whose books are selected get royalties for their work. It's not like that in the African clime. African publishing industry are still evolving and they get no aid or grants from any angle, hence most of them are still in the hybrid publishing level. The writer is expected to pay almost all of what's needed for their book to be published. Literal Guide Publishers International for an instance is an African publishing company, they extend traditional publishing opportunities to only creative Teenager writers through the Literal Guide Book Writing Competition. They seek sponsorship from the society to make these happen. But adults are given hybrid publishing option.

Considerable, the American and European society have a large reading community and lots of novel lovers who devote their leisure time seeking out new authors while reading old ones as well.

In Africa some people only have time for academic books and they graduate only to get jobs that alienates them from ever getting to buy a novel, since their jobs are repetitious task, they will prefer to feed their stomach and neglect to feed their head because creativity is not required in their work space. You must write, advocate and educate to get their attention. Only vanity authors will decide to leave the bulk of the work to a publisher alone. The goodnews is that Africa has a small reading community which have began to grow as the day goes by, but a fraction of this small reading community are cult followers to either one or two prominent African writers who are believed to be exceptionally good and can never be compared by any other. The other percentage read only American authors with a believe that African novels are not compelling enough. So, other African writers need to bring their best foots forward to be able to make these readers look away from their favourite authors to look towards a new direction. Literal Guide Publishers have what it takes.

African writers ought to work together to privately or publicly grow readership which will lead to the overall growth of the reading community in Africa. You will reap from it when your book is ready. The least an African publisher could do is to support the author in so many activities necessary in growing readership around the new book which is what you stand to gain in Literal Guide Publishers International. Queuing to get published abroad might take several years, why not consider to work with us instead. Passionate African writers need to reach out in partnership with a worthy publisher like Literal Guide Publishers. There is need to acidiously and collectively work to build the reading community in Africa. Don't wait till your book is ready to realize the realities of the market. If you are a writer who share the same passion, then let's talk in whatsapp : +2348064308507 Or email: Literalguide@gmail.com