Is Small Beautiful? Africa’s Independent Book Publishers
Stephanie Kitchen, David Mills and Anshita Ail
A new special issue of the journal Logos on African publishing is being launched and discussed at the London Book Fair on 13 March 2025. Below the guest editors discuss Africa’s independent publishing sector, from the vantage point of ABC.
The November 2024 special issue of the journal Logos: Journal of the World Publishing Community celebrates African publishing. Our interviews with 12 independent publishing professionals reveal a diverse and dynamic publishing scene, from fiction to academic monographs. This is a digital cottage industry powered by commitment and enthusiasm. The role of women in notable, as both publishers and readers. In Nigeria, most of those who buy books are women. We include a pioneering woman publisher from Mozambique, along with anglophone and francophone publishers and those publishing in other languages.
Many African publishers still depend on the revenue generated from textbook publishing. The digital age is offering new opportunities, however, including for ebooks. There are growing calls to strengthen African reading cultures, whether through readings, author events, or literary festivals, and the needs and benefits of training for publishing professionals are highlighted. Africa is a young continent offering opportunities for children’s books and general literature, even if the question of affordability continues to exercise publishers.
Angus Phillips, the journal editor, writes that ‘What is so inspiring is that the interviewees see themselves as fulfilling a mission beyond the simple economics of book publishing’.
This theme of money is taken up in the Introduction, discussing the challenges of running a publishing business on shoe-string. In asking whether ‘small is beautiful’ our goal is neither to romanticize ‘the small’ nor to be unduly pessimistic. Rather, we stay close to the grain of what is actually going on in the sector, listening to, reporting on, and presenting the perspectives of African publishers and authors themselves.
Again and again, our publishers make the case for staying small and beautiful. Organizational or business models that depend on economies of scale, rather than what economist E. F. Schumacher called ‘economics as if people mattered’, are not always appropriate in the creative industries. Rather, it is often the contributions of exceptional individuals that make the difference. When it comes to prizes and reputation, independent publishing houses can outclass their larger rivals, in Africa and beyond.
We highlight important literary and commercial brightspots, especially in Nigeria and Cameroon, where multilingual publishing thrives. In South Africa and Mozambique literary and activist publishers continue to make waves. African publishers have embraced new publishing technologies, making it easier to generate files for print-on-demand and ebooks. Zoom and Skype make online meetings and exchanges between authors, publishers, and other actors commonplace. Most of the publishers we interviewed are increasingly comfortable with digital and ebook publishing, although their adoption varies widely by region and imprint.
African book publishing is ever more visible, with authors and publishers taking to social media to promote their titles. The success of annual book fairs in Nairobi, Accra and Lagos hints at buoyant trade publishing within national markets. Market access through digital distribution and mobile phone apps has become easier, though the barriers facing print books (customs blockages, paper costs, shipping costs, lack of distributors) remain.
But small can be lonely and exhausting, particularly for publishers working in environments that are unconducive to productive academic research and literary writing. Sandra Tamele, when asked about the challenges of being a publisher in Mozambique, responds that ‘there are so many, and it’s always the same, it’s money, infrastructure. I think these things are linked to a lack of understanding of the value of the work we’re doing.’
Other publishers that garner similar literary recognition – such as Weaver Press, Modjaji, and Spears Media – find it hard to sustain a pan-African and international reputation and almost impossible to sell across African markets. Few of the independent publishers we spotlight are trying to increase their profits or talk of expansion. African publishing has been, and remains, a mission as much as a business, an artistic vocation closely allied with research and writing.
In scholarly publishing, little has changed in the last decade or so. University presses have nor recovered from the structural adjustment policies and funding cuts inflicted on higher education in the African continent in the 1980s and 1990s. There have been valiant efforts to revive these presses, most notably MakPress at the University of Makerere in Uganda. But such stories are exceptional. As discussed elsewhere, funding neglect, marginalization, and the invisibility of the cultural industries continue.
Our final section concentrates on ‘Distribution and digital innovations’. Marc-André Ledoux, of Nouvelles Editions Numériques Africaines, a Senegal-based ebook platform, makes a strong case for ebook development. Like many other publishers, Ledoux stresses the ongoing importance of print in Africa. At the same time, he insists that digital may be a way to overcome distribution barriers, such as the ‘obstacle course’ of ‘reading in Togo a book published in Senegal’, by making the most of book distribution via mobile phones.
The book-end to our special issue is a conversation between three generations of female staff and directors at the ABC. Together, Mary Jay, Stephanie Kitchen, and Anshita Ail reflect on the dramatic changes in Africa publishing since ABC’s founding in the mid-late 1980s, and the impact of the digital revolution from the early 2000s. Although most of the publishers on ABC’s influential Council of Management have been men, this dialogue feminizes the narrative to show how women have been key to ABC’s development, resilience, and sustainability. They have successfully fundraised, managed the digital transition, and adapted to social media and ebooks. The future of independent African publishers and ABC is interwoven, and our stories offer hope and promise.
Stephanie Kitchen has been the Executive Director of African Books Collective since 2022. She is the Managing Editor at the International African Institute, SOAS University of London.
David Mills is a non-executive director of African Books Collective, Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education, and an associate professor at the University of Oxford’s Department of Education. His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science communication system. His most recent book Who Counts: Ghanaian academic publishing and global science, co-written with colleagues from the Universities of Ghana and Oxford, is available open access from African Minds.
Anshita Ail graduated from the MA in Publishing Media at Oxford Brookes University in 2023. She is the Marketing Officer at African Books Collective.