Government’s punitive tariff on imported books

Apart from publishers or their umbrella association apparently not being consulted, there are also concerns that the punitive tariff may have violated the 1950 UNESCO Treaty – also known as the Agreement on the Importation of Educational, Scientific and Cultural Materials or the Florence Agreement. Under this treaty, states agree not to impose customs duties […]

Apart from publishers or their umbrella association apparently not being consulted, there are also concerns that the punitive tariff may have violated the 1950 UNESCO Treaty – also known as the Agreement on the Importation of Educational, Scientific and Cultural Materials or the Florence Agreement. Under this treaty, states agree not to impose customs duties on certain educational, scientific, and cultural materials that are imported.   The materials covered by the treaty include printed books, newspapers, periodicals, government publications, printed music; works of art, antiques over 100 years old, scientific instruments used in education or research and educational films. The aim of the Florence Agreement and its additional Nairobi Protocol of 1976 is to facilitate the free flow of ideas by fostering the free circulation of educational, scientific and cultural materials through the dismantling of custom barriers and other trade obstacles.
I think it will be pertinent at this point to offer a full disclosure. I publish tertiary books and academic journals through my company, Adonis & Abbey Publishers (www.adonis-abbey.com). And yes, we print and are domiciled primarily abroad. But my opposition to the punitive duty goes beyond my interest as a publisher who occasionally brings into the country some of our titles printed and published abroad. I am also an academic who need books and journals published outside the country not only for my teaching but also to remain on the same page with my international peers. With the punitive tariff and our weakened currency, academics and institutions trying to bring in needed books, journals and other materials will have to pay dearly. And this, at a time every one is moaning the decline in the standard of our education and the absence of a reading culture among the citizens. How will our young ones get access to those classics from Shakespeare and George Orwell or such novels from James Hadley Chase that shaped my early adulthood? There was certainly a reason why most countries in the world do not charge duties on books and there was a reason way back in 1950 why UNESCO decided to champion the Florence Agreement. Our government simply missed the point on this count.
I can of course understand where the government is coming from with the policy. It wants to protect the putative printing industry, which is fine. The main problem with this is that the government confuses printing with publishing and therefore fails to appreciate the peculiar challenges publishers face in the country. For instance since the structural adjustment policies of the 1980s in the country, book publishers in the proper sense of the word, have virtually gone extinct. The few surviving ones are just hanging in there. There has been a triumph of self-publishing with all this portends for quality and the country’s aspirations in an increasingly knowledge-driven world.  There is no knowledge-based economy anywhere in the world where book publishing is a mature industry of its own. Publishers discover talents, develop their manuscripts and help to internationalize the knowledge in such works.  The crisis in Nigeria’ publishing industry is exemplified by the fact that there is hardly any publisher in the country that publishes indexed and rated journals. Where are the country’s equivalents of Random House, the Penguin and the Taylor & Francis? Rather than the government seeing this as serious, it is trying to play the undertaker to the few that are still standing.
Nigerian publishers face a litany of challenges. For instance while many Western countries have book distributors, who take printed copies off publishers and then give them monthly or quarterly sales report, in our dear country publishers also double as distributors and retailers. They often have to contend not only with the piracy of their books but also with the fact that most of those who retailed their books will contrive one reason or the other not to remit returns from sales. How many publishers in the country pay royalties to their authors?
It is trite to believe that if you discourage the importation of printed books with punitive tariffs ‘proper’ publishers will start patronizing local printers. The fact is that many ‘proper’ publishers in the country are in it out of passion or hubris, not the money. They prioritize the quality of their books over anything else. They dream of being able to compete with the Random Houses. And the truth is that an overwhelming majority of our printers cannot meet the demand of such class of publishers.
Buying books is not the priority of many Nigerians – for several reasons.  A few years ago, I set up a bookshop in Surulere Lagos, believing that one way of ensuring the sales of our books is to have our own bookshops.  The shop could go for one week or more without anyone walking in. At a point one of the sales ladies advised me to open a ‘peppersoup joint’ beside the shop as a way of attracting people to come in. It was that bad.  The shop closed after two years. I have been to some bookshops here in Abuja and stayed there for hours without any customer walking in.
I believe printers deserve to be encouraged but so do publishers. It is wrong to assume that local printers can satisfy the needs of all class of publishers in the country. Just one example: since we began publishing in 2003, and with over 120 titles and several journals, I have never had any need to meet my printers in the US or the UK.  Manuscripts are submitted in PDFs and when printed, will be exactly as it appeared in the PDF you submitted.  And if you want to print paperbacks, it will only take five working days from the time you went to press.
In Nigeria, an overwhelming majority of our printers accept manuscripts prepared only in Corel Draw and will often bring error-laden Galley Proofs. You will need to go over this Galley multiple times for errors – boosting costs in the process. And it will sometimes take up to three months from the time you submitted your work to get it printed into a book. The few printers that can print from PDF quote astronomical prices. The impression one gets is that most of our printers are there to meet the needs of self-publishers. If the government must slam duties on imported printed books, it first has to make sure that the local printers have the capacity to deliver quality works, efficiently, competitively and on time.
My personal opinion is that the government’s punitive tariff on imported books is not only anti-scholarship; it is borne out of an improper understanding that traditional book publishing is virtually dead in the country and urgently needs reviving with government support. And no one is even talking of journals publishing. Have we wondered why the Chimamanda Adichies have to be discovered by foreign publishers? When was the last time our local publishers discovered new talents or helped to internationalize the works of our scholars and talents?  
There are very few ‘proper’ publishers in this country – most of whom are staying in the business out of passion or hubris. Virtually every one of this class of publishers will want to print their books abroad because the quality is not only better, it is faster, often cheaper and with less hassle with the printing process
 To slam a punitive tariff on imported books is especially targeting the few publishers who dare dream and dare go for quality.  How many international publishers will be willing to sub-licence publishing rights to a Nigerian publisher if they feel the quality of the work will diminish their brand value? I was very angry that one of the titles we brought into the country – Ibrahim Babangida: The Military, Politics and Power in Nigeria by Dan Agbese – was pirated. But I was even angrier at the quality of the pirated work, which I felt reflected poorly on what we have been trying to do over the past eleven years.