About year or so back a fellow I know tells me he had a book ready for the printers. Now that was news for me. He was the last person on earth I’d have thought would write or translate any sort of book! Yes is one of those incidents which force you to lament that either this world is weirder than they say it is, or you’re hopelessly out of touch and all you can do is raise your eyebrows every time something you never expected. And when a guy who doesn’t talk much about books or any issue that comes close it\s only human to be taken off guard. Now it\s important I emphasize that he told me his book was a done deal with no ifs and buts. It was a hundred-fifty-page book about some person who he says was an active politician of yesteryears. I had no opinion because I never heard of such a guy!
Anyways, this guy wanted to ask me about the financial side of which I definitely am not anybody’s best source. He says he plans to have ten thousand copies first print. Sorry what was that? Ten thousand copies? Wow! That’s, I tell you, was some big “Wow!” Well at least ten thousand copies at this time when the book publishing industry was wobbling on the weakest legs any industry could be cursed with. Of course, like in anything, here too are there’re exceptions. This could be misleading. By exceptions we’re not talking about the quality of the actual works. Mostly exceptions happen in the form of fans and cheerleaders of whoever claims authorship of that book. The social media is bombarded with real high volumes of wonderful ‘book reviews,’ readers’ comments and adverts so much so that you’d think here was the next Nobel Prize material! Well that is a different story.
So I tell this guy ten thousand copies was way too much in times when selling three thousand copies in a few months is treated as news about bestseller! Believe me, the book publishing business has plummeted to such lows as if there weren’t times when ten thousand copies were the least you can see. It wasn’t even worthy of small talk!
“Did you ere the guy’s book sold ten thousand copies?”
“And…?”
“And what?”
“And what happened after those ten thousand copies. Tell us about the reprints.”
“I’m afraid I don’t get you.”
“Look, selling ten thousand copies is no news. You’d be laughing stock of everyone if you go around telling people that. The reprints make the days. And when they go into the forty and fifty thousands in the reprints then you’ve got real news.”
Believe no exaggeration here. But would the fellow listen to what I’ve to say? The way he was talking he appeared to think that finally he has come up with the book of the decade sort of work; but what has to be said has to be said. I suggest three thousand copies were enough. He wasn’t interested! He jumps in to the crux of the matter. “How much profit do you think I’ll make?”
What! Getting back the printing expense is already taken for real profit and this guy he was going to break some bank! I told him I couldn’t tell him that. In not so many words he hinted that he was thinking in the few hundreds of thousands birr. Now I mentioned this guy before and he had some land on which he planned to build a house. He shows me his notebook where he has written all the building materials he needed and how much or how many of each he planned to purchase. The detail would have left you opened mouthed because the guy planed all this before getting a single cent, In fact, the most probable scenario would be he might lose maybe half or even more of the printing cost. Finally being told the real story he abandoned the project.
There was this man on the doorsteps of the sixties in the village I used to live until a few months back. He lived with a daughter in her mid-teens and a house maid. When he rarely talks you’d think his was a life neither remarkable nor conventional. It was hard to get the real picture. But one thing almost everyone knew about him was that he was an addict when it comes to buying lottery tickets. Be it the not so impressive weekly prizes or the multimillion-birr highly tempting prizes he missed absolutely not a single event. Sadly he never, I mean never, won except the consolation prizes here and there. But that never prevented him for planning what he’d do with the prize money! Especially when it came to multimillion-birr episodes he always upgraded his plans. He must have been the perfect candidate for the most optimistic soul in a world where pessimism reigns with full force.
Now there is nothing wrong with pre-planning. I mean if a young man plans what to do with the millions of birr his fiancés dad throw his way when he marries her must be a really ambitious guy. I mean hadn’t it been for the mouthwatering possibility of coming into the tens of millions birr world he probably would have married his high school sweetheart by now. His fiancé’s dad would give him the millions he expects; wouldn’t he? Well, not always. Years back I’ve heard of already planned wedding having been called off because the would-be groom was boasting all over the place he was going to marry the daughter of a very rich man and this news reached daddy. What does daddy do? He decides the young man was in only for the money and urges his daughter to call off the wedding. She did!
The guy must probably think; “Aha! I’d be saying goodbye to a lot of things and a lot of people too. I might be a nice guy but I’ve to stick to my new upper class once the millions flood in. Isn’t that what’s supposed to be? Isn’t that why those who ascend the richness ladder with lightning speed just ignore all of us? It’s about class dummy! Don’t torture your mind to reason with their action or Google-search all those human behavior sites. The past however good I might have thought it to be wasn’t that nice, In fact all those experiences which were star-studded stink!”
Say this guy is expecting a very big raise which would take his life into a completely different world, a world where money wouldn’t be much of a problem. How nice that would be? Say he was sure that the highly anticipated tripling of his monthly income would come anytime. So what is wrong with planning? Nothing! Of course a second scenario of “What if things don’t go as expected?” would save the guy from developing the ulcers which everyone seems to have these days.
Believe me many of us perhaps even brilliantly plan what to do with money we expect to come from somewhere. Nothing wrong with that. The problem however is that again of us fail to see the other side of the coin; and when nothing happens and not a cent makes its way to us nice would be the last word to describe our emotion; wouldn’t you say?
BY EPHREM ENDALE
The Ethiopian Herald September 8/2024