Centring Africana Voices in Contemporary Publishing

Jude Fokwang, Professor of Anthropology at Regis University and Executive Publisher at Spears Media Press, shares his thoughts on moving on beyond the rhetoric of decolonising African publishing to proposing tangible steps. This lecture was presented at the Workshop on Defiant Scholarship in Africa, Yaoundé, Cameroon, 18–20 June 2024.

Introduction

In this brief presentation, I offer a few reflections on what it entails to move beyond rhetoric with respect to decolonising publishing in Africa. As I see it, we are doing, not just talking about defiant scholarship and publishing. We understand decolonising within the context of our work as defying and dismantling the norms, assumptions and gate-keeping practices that have historically shaped who and what gets published. Whilst we celebrate book publishing as an artistic venture in its own right, we take specific exception to the prevailing tendency in Western-based academic institutions to assign “inferior status” to titles that issue from African-owned or –based publishing outfits – and in the same spirit, decry African-based academic institutions that assign “superior status” to titles that issue from Western-based publishing outfits. By propagating this false hierarchy of credibility, both scholars and publishers fall prey to the classic charge of judging a book by its cover (in this case, the source, name or ownership of the imprint) – ignoring, as it were, the substance of its contents, style and overall approach. Thus, my presentation begins with a brief statement on the origins of our platform, highlighting that our vision from its very inception was powered by the idea of building a space where historically marginal voices would flourish. I then elaborate on three ways we see this work being accomplished: defying the basic logic of free market orthodoxy, centring Africana voices and providing insights on the structure and operations of our editorial board. The final section examines our successes and challenges.

Founding Vision

On 16 June 2014, Spears Media Press was born,^[1] an offshoot of an association established in Bamenda, Cameroon, dedicated to promoting local scholarly endeavours – reading and writing by junior and well-established writers. Its creation drew direct inspiration from the defunct Kaberry Research Centre (KRC), established in the early 1980s, dedicated to supporting the efforts of local writers in preserving local folklore and life cycle rituals. Its members were composed principally of elementary and secondary school teachers who had received basic training in ethnography and were tasked with “salvaging” aspects of their respective cultural traditions in written form. Its motto, the “Written Word Lasts”, – effectively combined the twin importance of knowledge production (research) and publishing /transmission of such knowledge. These efforts inspired the creation of Spears Media Press as an outfit that would spur local research and publishing and harness extant technologies to provide global visibility for voices that are otherwise marginal or marginalised by standard publishing practices.

To this end, Spears Media Press was founded as a platform to decolonise publishing in three distinct ways: a) to liberate publishing from the stranglehold of capitalist orthodoxy; b) foster and centre diverse Africana voices and finally, c) engender editorial policies that support collaborative knowledge production and distribution.

The Unfree Market of African Publishing

The standard story of African publishing is shaped fundamentally not by what you have to say but by how deep your pocket is. In this capitalist context, only those who control or own the means of production exercise the power to project their voices, irrespective of the content of their message. Conversely, the marginalised, with limited access to modern means and technologies of storytelling, belong to the “muted group,” even if they have the most enchanting, innovative or revolutionary message. Hence, African publishing, at least, as experienced in Cameroon, has not been characterised by the absence of publishing options or books but rather by an unfree market that has restricted publishing only to those who can afford to pay. Thus, the landscape is replete with “printing houses” where prospective authors must cough up thousands of dollars to see a minimum print run of five hundred copies of their work. Most “printers”^[2] have no editorial policies, and authors are left to shoulder the burden of distributing their work after publication.

With Spears Media Press, cost does not impede publishing. A rigorous editorial policy ensures that everyone with the potential to tell a good and worthy story in a book-length format can be heard, published, and read. Our authors are afforded the opportunity for mentorship through our editorial network. They are also connected to freelance editors who provide stellar services at minimal cost, ultimately ensuring that whatever is published is of outstanding quality.

While we hope to keep our platform financially sustainable, we also recognise that we would contradict our vision and mission if the “marketability” of book proposals were the singular criterion for deciding what we publish. In this spirit, we do not reject weak proposals but rather work with their prospective authors to achieve a satisfactory standard. Where we cannot find a willing mentor within our team, we contact experts within the thematic area to solicit help. We are thus committed to supporting junior scholars and storytellers within and outside the African academy in telling their stories.

Centring Africana Voices

Because African publishing has historically been determined by those with the deep pockets to tell their stories, shaped, of course, by prevailing power structures and forms of stratification, women have met with relatively lesser success in telling their stories. At Spears Media Press, we fiercely advocate the plurality of voices that go beyond gender. From an intersectional perspective, gender, ethnic identity, and social class are organisational principles that combine to privilege certain people and, similarly, disenfranchise others. We are committed to publishing the perspectives of Anglophone Cameroonian women and members of groups designated as ethnic minorities or “indigenous,” such as the Mbororo in the Grasslands and beyond. Our platform also provides scope for African diaspora voices (whether recently established or those who were displaced by the transatlantic trade). If anything, we are critically aware of the fact that the same challenges that have shaped and plagued publishing in Africa are similar to those faced by diasporic Africans in the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe.

We are also convinced that one’s level of formal education should not determine whether one gets published. Our platform is exploring innovative ways to document and disseminate the voices and perspectives of literate and non-literate folk. We are familiar with the engaging stories of senior citizens in Anglophone Cameroon who never enrolled in formal schooling but have extraordinary mastery of their histories, botany, agricultural technologies, forms of spirituality, and memories of their encounters with colonialism. We continue to seek manuscripts that centre these voices, convinced that they would add to our collective tapestry of knowledge with the potential to shape current and future praxis.

Another element that defines our vision to decolonise publishing is our dedication to publishing in African languages. We uphold the principle of linguistic relativity that accords validity to all languages – which regrettably has not been fostered by many postcolonial African regimes. We are working with linguists and activists to ensure that multiple perspectives in as many African languages as we can afford to support are published. We envision a future where readers can read not just the bible but also fiction, poetry, drama, etc., in their mother tongues, including African and Caribbean Creoles that issue from the colonial encounter.

Another important consideration in our endeavour is versatility in the scope of what we publish. This is founded on the conviction that genuine knowledge is forged across disciplines, genres, and the multivocality of ideas and perspectives. While grounded in the humanities and the social sciences, we are open to scientific knowledge that has practical application in the lives of our readers and patrons. To this end, we continue to encourage the development of an ethnobotanical project that will preserve knowledge of our plants and their uses, especially for medicinal purposes.

Building a platform for alternative voices also requires a fundamental shift in one of the hallmarks of Western publishing – defining what is publishable and marketable. It is standard practice for publishers and editors to dictate how authors articulate their ideas. While the practice of peer-reviewing is celebrated and fostered on our platform, we also recognise that a fundamental building block of defiant scholarship is granting full autonomy to authors in choosing how best and what to articulate. Thus, insofar as what is said remains within the legal, ethical, and disciplinary scope of our operations, we are staunch advocates of authors retaining the right to “write as they like,” guided expectedly by feedback from peers and the editorial team.

Structure and Editorial Outlook

The editorial advisory board comprises scholars from the humanities and social sciences (six females and five males) who direct the platform’s vision. Discussions from our quarterly meetings have resulted in establishing two innovative book series: one on Gender in Africa and the other on African and Diaspora Histories. Each series has panellists drawn from a multidisciplinary network across Africa and the African Diaspora. Our platform is energised by the range of topics the advisory board has covered and for which they seek proposals.

The editorial advisory board is also tasked with reviewing and recommending proposals for publication. Its members are invested in decolonising publishing in their decision-making, including mentorship to prospective writers whose manuscripts must meet our minimum standards. As I see it, this is one of the indispensable ingredients of decolonising work, particularly as it pertains to publishing. Interested persons are welcome to read more about our book series on our website or contact the respective editors with their proposals or questions.

Successes

We are particularly proud of our growing number of first-time authors in all genres of literature and scholarship. We have also published award-winning authors in the humanities and social sciences and continue to attract scholars and writers of all stripes. Our platform also provides space for junior writers to mingle and learn from more accomplished and senior authors, who are often delighted to share their knowledge and expertise with junior writers. This empowering space furthers our vision of what it means to decolonise publishing.

Since 2020, we have held virtual launches for our new titles, organised two very successful Spears Poetry Festivals, held an open house in November 2023 to mark the International Day of the African Writer, and held countless one-on-one sessions with prospective authors. We see our authors as stakeholders in the enterprise of storytelling, and sufficient energy is devoted to explaining our values, vision, and operations.

Our partnership with the African Books Collective has also ensured that all our titles are distributed globally in paperback and eBook formats. Thanks to them, our titles are available through ProQuest, Project Muse, and many other platforms, and it is always a delight to visit their stand at the African Studies Association annual conferences. We plan to build on this partnership in the coming years to ensure our titles remain affordable and available on the continent.

Challenges

Like many other publishers on the continent, especially those represented by the ABC, our biggest challenge is distribution. ABC needs the infrastructure to print and distribute our titles in Africa. This means that in the meantime, orders must be fulfilled from the UK, where the organisation is headquartered, a costly venture that is either shouldered by the author or sometimes by the press on behalf of the author.

The limited availability of print-on-demand technology means that publishers or authors are expected to print their titles in bulk (most printers require a minimum print run of 500 copies)—a cost many of our junior or first-time authors can ill afford.

We have also witnessed many instances of copyright violations, especially the illegal distribution of digital editions of our titles. Since ABC distributes these editions, we hope such breaches will be addressed soon.

Finally, book publishing is an expensive business, and most of our authors or patrons have not effectively grasped what it takes to process a book, from its submission to the final product in one’s hands. The average cost to produce a work of fiction is about $7000, and for academic or nonfiction works, it goes up to $10,000. Overall, we aim to recover the cost of producing each title, but this remains untrue for most of them. Even the successful titles have not made up for the ones that perform poorly in the market. We hope to overcome this challenge by seeking funding to invest in open-access books (something we have already done with seven of our titles).

Conclusion

Our place and work may seem obsolete in the current neoliberal era, which champions the doctrine of “do-it-yourself” and individual resourcefulness (characterised by an assortment of self-publishing platforms). Whilst these “do-it-yourself” pursuits are driven principally by the profit logic, we remain convinced that a measured dose of expertise and professionalism is not at odds with decolonising work. Many would still be disenfranchised if all the publishing tools were readily available to everyone who desired access. This is where we see our fundamental vocation – harnessing the skillsets and tools at our disposal and building partnerships between storytellers and the market in inclusive ways that privilege the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity, class and more. We insist, therefore, that all voices should not only be counted but, importantly, that what they have to convey should also count. Expanding the scope and reach of these voices is where we see the sacrality of our work. 

Jude Fokwang, PhD is Professor of Anthropology at Regis University and Executive Publisher at Spears Media Press. His areas of research have included democratization and traditional leadership, gender, youth identities and citizenship as well as associational life in urbanizing Africa. His latest book is Cultivating Moral Citizenship: An Ethnography of Young People’s Associations, Gender and Social Adulthood in the Cameroon Grasslands (2023).

[1] Spears Media Press became a member of the African Books Collective on 15 September 2014.

[2] A distinction should be made between printers and publishing houses. The former is primarily preoccupied with typesetting and book design, the cost of which is normally covered by the author. Full-fledged publishing houses have an editorial board, a production team, and a distribution network tasked with acquiring and disseminating marketable titles. Unlike printing houses, royalties are paid to authors by a publishing outfit for the publication of their work.

This lecture was first published on the site  A Platform for Alternative Voices: Centring Africana Voices in Contemporary Publishing. We thank Jude Fokwang for his kind permission to reproduce his lecture here. 
There is a Read African Books companion blog by Stephanie Kitchen, African Books Collective director: Cameroonian Book Publishing as ‘Defiant Scholarship’.