‘We encourage kids to read via personalised storybooks’

Isang Awah is the owner of My Rainbow Books, which  publishes personalised children stories with non-fictitious characters. Here, she talks about how the books encourage children to develop a reading culture, and what led her to establish the company. Bookshelf: How did you start publishing personalised books? Isang Awah: I have always loved reading and […]

Isang Awah is the owner of My Rainbow Books, which  publishes personalised children stories with non-fictitious characters. Here, she talks about how the books encourage children to develop a reading culture, and what led her to establish the company.
Bookshelf: How did you start publishing personalised books?
Isang Awah: I have always loved reading and writing. Years ago, when my children were very young, I used to read storybooks to them. I also told them fictional stories that featured them as the main characters. I observed that they were always excited about these stories which featured them and never tired of hearing them. At the time, it did not occur to me that personalised storybooks could be made. When I was studying for my Master’s degree in the United States, I came across some personalised books and ordered some for my children and my friends’ children. When I got back to Nigeria, everybody was so impressed and excited about the books because they had not seen such books before, even though most of them had been travelling abroad often. A friend asked if I could get one for her son the next time I travelled to the US. I realized that it would not make much sense to constantly order them from there. Besides, as much as I liked the books I had bought, I was not completely satisfied with them. I desired to see books that would reflect our African culture and have black children in the illustrations. To meet this need and also satisfy my desire to contribute positively to the society, I decided to start a company that would make personalised books. So that is how MyRainbowBooks came to be. You will notice that our illustrations have black children who are sometimes dressed in Nigerian fabrics, such as Ankara. It was, and still is, important to me that our children see images that look like them in the storybooks they read.  Our books encourage children to read, build their self-esteem, pass on values, and also celebrate our African looks.
Bookshelf: What did it take for you to begin?
Awah: I started by writing the stories that I would use for the books. I have been writing since I was a little girl, and have a Master’s degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Harvard University, so this bit was relatively simple. Of course, I first told the stories to my children and other children, and watched for their reactions and comments to decide what stories would fly. After getting the stories down, I sourced for the following: an editor, illustrators, a software developer, and a printer.
Bookshelf: Are they in Nigeria?
Awah: No; my editor is a white American who lives in New York. My illustrators are also foreigners, as is my software developer. However, the books are printed in Nigeria.
Bookshelf: What is your procedure for production like?
Awah: We have software that creates the customised storybook. We then send this for printing, and when the book is ready, we deliver to our client, a brand new storybook customized for their child with the child’s personal details such as names, photograph(s), age, friends’ names, and so on. Both adults and children are always thrilled when they open the book and see their child’s name as the main character or hero in the storybook. And of course, I am always happy to see how pleased and excited they are. I think that’s what I love the most about my job – seeing my clients so happy with the product.
Bookshelf: What inspires the kind of stories you write?
Awah: Different things and people. Ideas and inspirations come in different ways. For instance, I was invited for a child’s birthday a few months ago. Immediately I walked into the hall, I was inspired to write a story with a certain theme. The main thing I try to do in and with every story is pass on some moral value or lesson, regardless of what the story is about. We have different stories with different themes, but every single story has one moral value or the other. When clients come, they usually pick from the available stories, though of course, we can add extra pages if they desire to add new things in the book. We can also re-do the cover so that the child’s photo may be on the cover of the book. A client may also request for a new or exclusive story, though this is expensive and requires more time. Getting a new story takes time because even when the story is written and edited, illustration takes a lot of time. Of course a new story is also expensive because payment for editing and illustrations will all be made in dollars. We have three classes of exclusive stories. In the first class, we create the story for your child, but will add it to our list of stories after the personalised book for your child has been printed. In the second class, we allow a year to pass before we add the story to our list of available books. In the last class, we never add the story to our list of storybooks. Naturally, the cost is dependent on which class of exclusive story the client opts for. Whatever the class, when we are working on an exclusive story, we like to know the child’s favourite things, clothing style, activities, colours, and food, so that the story may reflect these.
Bookshelf: Do you make just hard copies?
Awah: Yes. As a policy, we give the client only hard copies of the book(s).
Bookshelf: Do you print them yourself?
Awah: No. We have certain printers that we work with. We are very particular about quality, and use only printers that can give us the quality of printed jobs that we want.
Bookshelf: You are the sole writer?
Awah: Presently, yes, but in the near future, we’ll publish personalised stories written by other writers.
Bookshelf: What is your mega vision for the business?
Awah: Our vision is to be the leading brand of personalised books in Africa, and our mission is to provide quality books that engender a reading culture, build self-esteem and instil the right values in children. What we want to do is encourage reading. Everyone complains that the reading culture is all but gone. That is very true as most children are either glued to the television, playing video games or on social media all day. I cannot think of a better way to encourage a child to read than to give him or her, a book about him/herself. If somebody gives you a book about you, you will not put it down until you have read every single page. And, of course you want to give your child a gift that is a keepsake; so you see that our personalised books make perfect gifts as they contribute positively to the child and are also keepsakes. Last year, we went into making personalised gift books for adults. Our book is a perfect way to let someone know how much you love and appreciate him/her, and we have gift books for all occasions – birthdays, valentine’s day, wedding anniversary, mother’s day, retirement, and so on. We also run an annual national creative writing competition for children in which participation is free. In addition to all the fabulous gifts we give out, we publish the best entries in the annual My Rainbow Books’ Children’s Collection. Every poem or story published in the collection is written by a child between five to sixteen years old. It also has valuable articles on reading and writing. The competition is our way of giving back to the society by creating a platform for young Nigerian writers to be exposed. Part of our vision is for the competition to grow from national to continental level, and eventually, globally. Presently, the collection is sold in bookshops in the country, but we are working on having these books sold globally so that the featured writers will receive international exposure. We have been so blessed to have the support of fantastic judges, the UBEC, and various companies such as Seven Up Plc, Learn Africa Plc, and Reading House Africa in the previous editions. We are confident that with God on our side, and with the support we get from organizations and companies that partner with us, we’ll achieve these dreams and more.