By Khumbulani Muleya
HARARE, ZIMBABWE: Book Fantastics, a local online and mobile bookshop based in Harare, attended the new International Booksellers Conference in Sharjah, the UAE’s third largest emirate, a city known as the United Arab Emirate’s cultural and literature hub and 2019 UNESCO Book Capital of the World.
The two-day event ran from the 16th to the 17th of May and was curated by Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) whose vision and goals are defined by Sharjah’s ruler who is an author himself Sheikh Sultan Bin Mohammed. The conference is an exclusive platform for booksellers from the Arab region and around the world to network, share ideas, and explore new business prospects.
Founded in the year 2020 , Book Fanatics has the sole mandate of promoting black literary voices in Zimbabwe and facilitate the circulation of local literature within Zimbabwe and beyond, particularly with focus to poetry, fiction and nonfiction titles. The literary initiative was amongst the more than two hundred booksellers, distributors and publishers representing fifty six countries from the Middle East, the South Asian subcontinent and African countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Rwanda and Nigeria. Despite not having exhibited or participated in the panel discussions, Book Fantastics, led by literary activist and reader Brain Garusa, attended the event to learn and share experiences.
Garusa took advantage of the conference, which took place at the opulent 19,000-square-meter Sharjah Publishing City facility, to learn more about the role of bookselling beyond Zimbabwean borders and also be exposed to in-depth analysis of current trends across several domains that impact bookselling.
Different panelists highlighted various ways booksellers can build their companies in the 21st century, with themes such as how to curate book catalogues, customer service staff training and other topics included in the program’s outline.
Speaking to Munyori Literary Journal, Garusa said, “When we started Book Fantastics, we believed and sometimes still believe it is a game changer in book distributing trends. We never thought it would allow us to see places beyond the Zimbabwean borders, let alone the African continent. Our dream has always been to reshape the Zimbabwean bookshop by going beyond book selling. We wanted to have conversations with authors and those conversations to extend and facilitate dialogue amongst author’s themselves and in turn spur similar influences between authors and readers”.
The mobile book seller seeks to reach and meet consumers at their convenience and has established personal relationships with various Zimbabwean and African authors as well as publishers from the globe. “We have Carnelian Heart Publishers who have also trusted us with books from their stable. We have been working so well with Harare Book Club, one of the few book clubs that has committed itself to zero infringement of copy rights,” he added.
Book Fantastics stocks books on demand and, from its inception, it has had have had success with a selection of novels from mostly established writers like Tsitsi Dangarembga and author of ‘A Family Affair’ Sue Nyathi.
“To date we have sold close to two hundred copies of their titles combined. We also have big names like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie author of ‘Half of A Yellow Sun’ and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o whose books have performed well, we are however disheartened by sales performances from local authors who have given us their books for distribution. Self-published and indigenous books struggle to sell, very few clients are willing to try new local authors, sometimes we record zero sales on certain titles,” Garusa said.
Two years of a pandemic have reshaped the global bookselling industry. While the publishing world is changing, the Zimbabwean book industry remains in a vegetative state waiting for a lifeline, with it’s only hope hinged on the performance of the overall economy.
“During the conference we heard of festivals to be held in Ghana and Nigeria soon. We are not sure if we are going to have our own Book Fair this year; this is the state of the book sector in Zimbabwe”, lamented Garusa
Without books there wouldn’t be booksellers, so the Sharjah International Booksellers Conference was a moment for independent booksellers to celebrate the resilience of the book, which has for many years defied predictions of its death through the advent of different entertainment attractions like radio, television, video games, and the current age of kindle and social media.
