The travails of a book searcher in Abuja

I looked up booklists—popular among them, the famous New York Times Bestseller List. Trouble is a book on the bestseller list is not necessarily new. It is there because, well, it is attracting sales—selling, selling, selling, period.Who defines a new book anyway? Is it new when you come across it, or when a publisher puts […]

I looked up booklists—popular among them, the famous New York Times Bestseller List. Trouble is a book on the bestseller list is not necessarily new. It is there because, well, it is attracting sales—selling, selling, selling, period.
Who defines a new book anyway? Is it new when you come across it, or when a publisher puts it out?
“There are books recently published, but there are no partner publishers around here, so they cannot get to this part of the world as quickly as possible,” says Ronald Mutum.
He was one of those I contacted in my quest to find the dream bookshop in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city. Surely, that can’t be too difficult. Turns out it is.
Abuja rates on a scale as Kano, Port Harcourt and Lagos within the country. Internationally, its concrete forests and massive spread of mansions also rank alongside big capitals of the world.
Compared with Lagos, Abuja has a less vibrant reading culture, and as such fewer partner publishers that simultaneously publish titles in the country.
“Despite its people’s big-spending nature, you can’t always find what you need,” Mutum says. “Most times we have to wait for particular titles to get here. Maybe a recently published book will take around two years. It is difficult because we don’t have bookshops where you can easily go and get books.”
My first check for ‘recently published’ books threw up a list of paperbacks from 2013. I closed that tab. On-line book stores offered new paperbacks as Jung Chang’s ‘Empress Dowager Cixi’:The Concubine Who Launched Modern China ‘–Not my kind of book, neither was there any way I was going to find Chimamanda Adichie’s ‘Americanah.’
In my search, I hit on Steven Levitt’s ‘Think Like a Freak.’ And then I hit the streets. In truth, I am still on the streets, combing shops and stores that famously proclaim to be the best in town. (There must be some other options, which is another story entirely). But I am yet to find my Freak book.
Poet, journalist and blogger, Samson Kukogho has first-hand experience dealing with bookshops when he published his book of poems ‘What Words Can Do’ last year.
For a newly published book “you might have to call the author or the publisher,” he says, “otherwise, it will be hard to get it, unless of course, it is a famous author with a good marketing crew.”
Fame, name and good marketing are shaky at best in Nigerian publishing, but that didn’t stop me.
“Sometimes you have to make a thousand calls to get a particular book,” Kukogho remembers. “The alternative is to go to elite bookstores where you may get them at cut-throat prices.”
That reminded me of boutique books in airport lounges, which was a mistake. What I wanted wasn’t there, which wasn’t a surprise, but the prices knocked my socks off. I straightened with the air of someone not interested and walked away.
Walking away was Abdulwasiu Hassan’s experience with a bookshop in central Abuja. So, he wasn’t looking for new releases.
“I asked for ‘Burma Boy.’ I couldn’t find it. I asked for another, ‘The Idiot’. No way. I had to go online to buy them from the US. And since then you haven’t gone back? How will I go back when I’m not sure of getting what I want?” he fired back.
Mutum isn’t exacting in his quest, but he’s willing to pay top naira depending on the book and where he finds it, even if it is one of Abuja’s expensive shopping malls.
“If I see them there, it would be an opportunity to pay for them immediately, because if I leave that shop, I may get back and not find them. I may go to any other place and wouldn’t find the same titles,” he rationalises.
“What’s more important is getting the titles I’m looking for. You can find cheap books in any part of Abuja.”
Warmed by their experiences, I went back online and bookbrowse.com gave me a list of 46 new books—eight of them published in July. Surely, even when I’m willing to spend for them, I don’t expect to get those paperbacks anytime soon in Nigeria.
‘Americanah’ has been and gone, as has Nasir el-Rufai’s Accidental Servant, but they are still touted on Abuja’s streets like the tomes of elitist success and chic they are.
I have followed Hassan’s example and ordered them online, and I have to wait for months and months before they are finally shipped in. In the meantime, there will be a new batch of books next week and the week after, which means my wish-list, keeps building and the bills keep piling for those paperbacks.
This business with books reminds me of when I first searched Abuja’s elite stores for an electronic reader. I had an academic thesis riding on e-reading technology and preliminary research involved sampling just how common e-books and e-readers were in a city like Abuja.
After days rushing from store to computer plazas, I was left with dealers looking at me with quizzical expressions and asking: “What do you mean e-reader? You mean an iPad or a tablet?” The questions were worsened by the sight of shelf-loads of tablets inside their shops.
I downloaded an e-reading app for e-books on a PC and later realised a stunning truth: Every paperback Kukogho, Mutum and Hassan wanted; I beat them to it by downloading an electronic copy.