Ankara Press is going against romance stereotypes –Shercliff

Emma Shercliff is a director of Cassava Republic Press (UK) and the Publishing Director of Ankara Press. She is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Education, University of London, where her doctoral research explores and documents the role of female publishers in shaping the literary landscape in Africa. Presently based in Abuja, she spoke […]

Emma Shercliff is a director of Cassava Republic Press (UK) and the Publishing Director of Ankara Press. She is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Education, University of London, where her doctoral research explores and documents the role of female publishers in shaping the literary landscape in Africa. Presently based in Abuja, she spoke to Bookshelf about  the mission Ankara Press, how African publishing should be viewed, roles of literary networks and much more.

Bookshelf: What were you doing before you delved into the publishing business?
Emma Shercliff: I went into publishing straight from university, so I didn’t really have a professional life before then. When I was at the university I had experience with different publishing companies within the UK. I went to Harper Collins Publishers, Orion Publishing Group and the Children’s publisher, Orchard Books. So I got a feel of what publishing was like and then I applied for a graduate scheme. So I have been publishing for a long time, since 1997.
Bookshelf: Do you edit?  
Shercliff: Yes, but now I do a mixture. My background was initially sales and marketing and then editorial before becoming managing director.
Bookshelf: You’re a director of Cassava Republic Press and the publishing director of Ankara Press. How did this happen?
Shercliff: I came to Abuja two years ago and doing a PhD looking at publishing in Africa, specifically at women in the publishing industry. I wanted some field research, to spend some time with a publisher and here in Abuja the obvious person to call and ask to spend time with was Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, founder of Cassava Republic. She’s a phenomenal publisher. That’s how it started. She was so generous and said, yes, come. So I spend time there and do a little bit of consultancy on the business and gradually became more and more involved, specifically in the project I was working on – the launch of Ankara Press in December 2014. So that’s how I became involved. Now I am going with Bibi in the UK where we will set up a branch of Cassava Republic in London. So, my involvement is very much with Bibi and the UK business, even though I am right here in Abuja.
Bookshelf: Why a PhD specifically on women in the African publishing industry?
Shercliff: It came really after the research I did for my Master’s where I was looking at the lack of female writers. That was when I became interested in whether there’s a relationship with the lack of female publishers at that time in the 1960s or 70s. With what you see now, particularly in the UK, there are a lot of women in the publishing industry, but very few own their own companies.  So actually, it still remains the case that a lot of the older and more established educational publishers, those in Ibadan for example, very few of them have women on their board. I want to look at the relationship between that and, if what comes out in the end is due to the lack of women in the industry.
Bookshelf: From your research so far, what have you discovered?
Shercliff: From my initial and very preliminary research, with the interviews I have done with some of the managing directors of the big companies, I think basically once women get to a certain level; it’s difficult for them to progress above it. But there are very few women who work in sales and marketing because it’s a physical job here in Nigeria. There’s a lot of moving of books around and driving, which is a job too difficult for women to do. So, even when women applied and were taken for those roles they often did not last long in those jobs. It’s not because they don’t want to do the job, but that the environment is not conducive.
Bookshelf: Okay, back to Ankara Press. Was there any reason it launched with six books in 2014?
Shercliff: We wanted to publish commercial fiction. Also, when people bought one or two books and were excited by them, we wanted to have enough books for them to continue reading. We hope that we will eventually publish six books each year. We are now doing two and will release four more before the end of this year. We have had a lot of manuscripts coming in and reading through them is certainly taking me longer than I have anticipated. The idea was to release another six this Valentine’s Day, but trying to publish six simultaneously is a lot of work. For the designer, it’s also far easier and quicker to work on two titles at a time and much more streamlined.
Bookshelf: What was the experience like publishing the six books?
Shercliff: It was absolutely Bibi’s idea to have a romance imprint. And there are a couple of reasons for it. One of them is, for any publisher to become sustainable, there’s the need to be commercially successful. And this means fiction for the young; crime and romance – essentially those areas of publishing which open up large markets. Literary fiction is wonderful and sometimes you get a big hit but those books don’t always sell in huge quantities. The second reason, about which Bibi was very clear, was that she wanted to provide what she called ‘empowering romance.’ So she said, I looked at the romance we have in Nigeria and it doesn’t cut across a large part of the country, most of it is imported, such as Harlequin. It’s very widely read, but it doesn’t feature African characters. So she wanted to provide African romance and also show relationships that were balanced and fulfilling and not the stereotypes of aggressive male and submissive female. And the other thing was it also had to be entertaining.
Bookshelf: How easy or difficult was it to select the first six manuscripts?
Shercliff: The first six were already commissioned before I came to Ankara Press. That process took a long time. But I can tell you about the later submissions where we had quite a lot and some of them were quite frankly, not very good. We work hard on the editorial side. One of the two books we are publishing this Valentine’s Day, ‘The Seeing Place,’ is about an upcoming actor, where the casting director was originally a man and the upcoming actress was a woman and we thought that went with the stereotype, so we reversed that and now we have the casting director as the woman and the upcoming actor as a man.
Bookshelf: Do you think romance novels are the way to go in today’s publishing?
Shercliff: To me it’s a part of the business I am really excited about. Because when people see this new series they get really excited, pick them up and say, yes I want to read these. We have had really good response and I think partly it’s because there is nothing like it in the market. We have got coverage on CNN, CNBC, and the Guardian UK. People are just genuinely interested.
Bookshelf: Do you have any writing background?
Shercliff: In Nigeria many of the publishers are writers. It’s very different from other countries where I have worked so far – the UK, Australia and the United States. If you want to be a writer be a writer, if you want to be a publisher become a publisher. So I never wanted to be a writer but a publisher.
Bookshelf: Why do you think the reverse is the case in Nigeria?
Shercliff: I don’t know. I am thinking more about the contemporary publishers, about Parresia or Farafina where some of the staff are also writers. There are advantages to being a writer because you are in a writing community. But for me, there’s that clear distinction between the two and for me it’s publishing. Publishing should be seen as a career in itself.
Bookshelf: Some publishers in Nigeria probably evolved due to the lack of publishers to publish their works and so they decided to alter the status quo. What would you say about that?
Shercliff: I think the establishment of literary networks like Farafina, Kwani and Chimurenga came from that background. One thing for me that’s remarkable about the African publishing industry is the mutual support, whatever country you come from. We have had a lot of help from Kwani and Chimurenga and vice versa. There are just few of us so we work to support each other and it’s mutually beneficial.
Bookshelf: Where does your passion for the job come from?
Shercliff: I love books and reading. I really enjoy the business side; the sales, marketing and publicity. For a lot of people when they think about a publisher, they think if you are publishing it’s just the editorial. But an important part of it is getting the marketing right, getting the product across the market at the right price. For me that’s where I feel I can make a difference.
Bookshelf: What challenges do you think the publishing business is facing in Nigeria?
Shercliff: I have been to many countries in publishing, probably about 40. Here in Nigeria, number one is the lack of a good editorial staff. I think it’s very difficult to find good editors here and that’s partly because of the lack of training. There’s the need to have training schemes. If it’s seen as a profession,  people might go into it like how they go into banking or become a lawyer. I think that the sales distribution network is tricky and the retail sector is not developed enough, even though the NPA and the Booksellers Association are doing some good work, there’s a long way to go. If you publish a book, trying to get it out into the market is a bit costly and another issue is that the printing here in Nigeria is not very good. The difference between what’s printed in India and Nigeria is very clear.
Bookshelf: Any particular reason for releasing your books on Valentine’s Day?
Shercliff: Its very nice timing for us and we decided to hang onto the two new books just published until then. It’s a time of love and romance.
Bookshelf: Can you give readers some insight into the two latest novels, ‘Love Next Door’ and ‘The Seeing Place’?
Shercliff: ‘The Seeing Place’ to be released tomorrow, February 14th, is by a new Ankara Press author – Aziza Eden Walker. It’s set in Cape Town, this is the one that has the upcoming male actor and female casting director. So she casts him and they form a bond and eventually everything culminates. Then the other, ‘Love Next Door,’ is written by Amina Thula, whom we have already published in the first wave of books. It’s set in Johannesburg and is about a girl who moves into an apartment and luckily enough, meets this next door neighbour who is a teacher as well as a sculptor.
Bookshelf: What does Ankara Press hope to achieve with romance fiction?
Shercliff: Our mission is to publish a new kind of romance. We want to provide readers in Africa with stories set in Africa with African characters, storylines and setting, so that they wouldn’t always have to read about love in the West. But I think also, one of the things we are really keen to do, is provide examples of relationships that are fulfilling and loving, fun and entertaining. There’s sex in some of them, but not all of them. No relationship is a stereotype or conforms to a particular formula and what we are trying to do with these novels is give examples of lots of different types of relationships and show that even with slight problems they could be fulfilling in many different ways. So, yes, it’s about providing entertainment that Africans can relate to.