GSC CORRESPONDENCE

FINDING A GHANAIAN PUBLISHER:
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

By Paul Nugent
University of Edinburgh

Academics who work in the academic institutions of the "North," rather than in Ghana itself, face a tough personal dilemma. The prospects for promotion and the esteem of one's colleagues typically depend on getting published in Europe or North America. On the other hand, the product is normally priced beyond most readers in Ghana, especially if it has rolled off one of the more prestigious University presses in hardback. The bleak prospect facing many authors is that their books simply will not be read in Ghana.

In the days when the Ghanaian publishing industry was moribund, the issue was literally an academic one, in that a manuscript might be lost in press for a decade or more. But in recent years, the backlog appears to have shrunk to the extent that Ghana Universities Press, to cite the best-known example, maintains a steady output of current research. Consequently, the justification that there is no alternative to publishing outside of Ghana is no longer quite as convincing. So is there now a way of squaring the circle? My conclusion, on the basis of recent experience, is that it is certainly possible, but that there remain genuine hitches. When Francis Pinter agreed to publish my book, Big Men, Small Boys and Politics in Ghana (1995), I was initially delighted, but this quickly turned to dismay when I discovered that the cover price was to be £50. This is equivalent in April 1997 prices to about 150,000 cedis, which is not too far off the monthly salary of the lowest paid public employee. Realizing that the book simply would not be read in Ghana, I asked Pinter to explore the possibility of finding a local publisher, and gave them the name of Asempa. To my relief, Asempa was interested in the book and bought the rights to publish a paperback edition at a cover price of 15,000 cedis (a tenth of the UK price at current exchange rates).

From my point of view, the fact that the book is available in Accra, if difficult to find beyond the Legon bookshop, is something of a triumph. But the experiment seems to have worked less well for Asempa. They have needed to keep the price down in order to render it attractive and they have needed to make a large print-run (2,000 copies) to secure a profit. At present, they have not sold more than a fraction of the stock and have yet to break even, despite the fact that it was published in an election year. In all likelihood, Asempa will be more cautious about repeating the experience. The way ahead probably lies in joint publication between North American/European and Ghanaian publishers, as James Currey has managed to broker in East Africa, rather than the two-stage process I pursued. If Ghanaian publishers can produce books to the standards of Marika Sherwood's Kwame Nkrumah: The Years Abroad (Accra: Freedom Publications, 1996) and see that it is marketed abroad, more foreign academics might feel tempted to go directly to a Ghanaian publisher. The initiative rests largely with the publishers themselves, but there remains a great deal that the author can do to wake the latter up to different possibilities.