Publisher keeps the written word alive

David Waweru was told two things before he started a publishing house that dealt with trade books: That it would not survive for long and that Kenyans have a poor reading culture.

That was eight years ago.

Today, Mr Waweru’s Word Alive Publishers has 66 titles and 55 of those titles are active, Christian -inspired books.

He will early next year launch the publishing house’s first fiction book, Eyo, by Abidemi Sanusi — a new Nigerian author who tackles a dark story of human trafficking.

Book industry

“People are willing to buy quality and want value for their money,” says Mr Waweru, who has worked in the book industry for 18 years, with eight of those spent building his dream.

He started Word Alive after doing a survey of about 40 to 50 local bookshops back in 2001.

The survey found that despite the assumption that Kenyans do not read, these bookshops were raking in profits although 99 per cent of their trade books were western literature.

These were not cheap books, by price or quality.

But Mr Waweru found that local publications were poorly packaged and sold cheaply.

He now wanted to penetrate this market, estimated to be worth Sh3.5 billion but mostly driven by textbook sales.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that textbooks account for 95 per cent of the books published in Africa, including Kenya.

“I realised that I grew up reading Western literature and that African writers were for the class room. They were not for leisure reading or entertainment,” says Mr Waweru.

In the West, publishing trade books is a commercially viable venture.

In the US, the book industry is worth $35 billion (Sh2.6 trillion) and the trade books account for 8.6 per cent or $151 million (Sh11.3 billion).