It is small! I am always amazed at how little purchasing power is devoted to books; especially now that we know so much disposable income is spent downloading music videos onto cell phones and texting people silly Valentine pictures!
Kathy Knowles, of Osu Children's Library Fund, has an excellent portfolio of children's books, and her distributor in Ghana can barely make a profit, apparently, even at incredibly reduced prices for the books. He not even sure he can sell Kathy's latest books (including a lovely book about a trip to see the hippos), the way a distributor would be if sales were growing 20% a year! And this is at rock-bottom prices.
This experience echoes our own inability to interest third-parties in our (also excellent?) RWA books in Burkina Faso. People love them, but very few people want to pay, and no distributor wants to take a chance on trying to make a profit. The market simply isn't there.
I think the market happens when the diaspora starts to buy books, as happened with the Somali community. Anyone out there interested in starting a distribution company targeted to New York and other East Coast diasporas?
Kathy Knowles, of Osu Children's Library Fund, has an excellent portfolio of children's books, and her distributor in Ghana can barely make a profit, apparently, even at incredibly reduced prices for the books. He not even sure he can sell Kathy's latest books (including a lovely book about a trip to see the hippos), the way a distributor would be if sales were growing 20% a year! And this is at rock-bottom prices.
This experience echoes our own inability to interest third-parties in our (also excellent?) RWA books in Burkina Faso. People love them, but very few people want to pay, and no distributor wants to take a chance on trying to make a profit. The market simply isn't there.
I think the market happens when the diaspora starts to buy books, as happened with the Somali community. Anyone out there interested in starting a distribution company targeted to New York and other East Coast diasporas?
Leave a comment