Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The African writer and the ebook

Having recently embarked on an ebooks publishing journey, I believe I am now in a position to share a number of observations with my fellow African writers. The first is that the African writer who is thinking about writing an ebook starts out with the odds staked against him. The first hurdle stems from the fact that Africa is still technologically challenged, when compared to other countries.

While internet penetration has significantly increased over the past few years, the amount of technological sophistication that one finds on the content still leaves a lot to be desired. If one looks at Zimbabwe, the country's banking sector is only just joining the internet revolution. The majority of people in Zimbabwe do not have Visa and MasterCard enabled debit cards. Credit cards are also something that many in the country have never heard about. Zimbabweans can also not make online payments using PayPal because, believe it or not, the sanctions that were imposed on the country are not that "targeted," after all.

The issue of availability of payment methods is of particular importance to the African writer who sets out to write an ebook. The ebook writer in the UK or in the United States is assured, even before he or she starts writing, of an audience that is composed of his immediate friends, family and acquaintances. The initial sales and reviews that these people bring are crucial to the success or failure of an ebook. That is because sites, such as amazon, afford more visibility to those books that have the largest number of sales and reviews.

Let me now use myself as an example. I recently published my ebook, "She froze her balls and other stories," which is available on amazon. While most of the people I know are interested in sampling my book, which is selling at US$2.99 in the US and $4.99 elsewhere, they do not have the means to make the crucial initial purchase, possessing as they do no Visa or MasterCard linked banking accounts.

Even those who do have these cards are, I have discovered, held back by fear that putting their banking details on the internet will expose them to fraud. So, whether my book is a masterpiece or not, the only satisfaction it can afford me is that of fulfilling my authorial vanity. (Every writer craves the sight of his name on a publication.)

That is all for today, vatsigiri vangu. Till next thoughts.

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