BY MULUGETA GUDETA
One can perhaps outline some of the vicissitudes of book publishing suffered by Ethiopian writers as follows: printing costs that are skyrocketing every time beyond the reach of most writers, the cynicism of booksellers who claim an unfair share from your efforts by taking 35 percent from the copy price of books simply because they own a shop and display your works there, the low prestige with which society is looking at writers and their works, and last but not least, the cold indifference of the cultural establishment to the plight of the scribes, among others. And all this happens in a world that has long left behind the old challenges writers faced and has empowered them with new technology.
One cannot but marvel at and envy the latest publishing technology that is turning out books like toys and make publishing increasingly look like playing computer games. My childlike fascination with printing technology started more than two decades ago when the first computers were introduced and the old typewriters were discarded as useless junks. That was the time of the diskette when your work was copied from the PC to the computer and then printed by a printer or copied to another PC just like that. This was a kind of magic feat for its time. Then both the PC and its accessories like the diskettes disappeared and assumed the form of a flash with staggering memory sizes.
The era of the outsized computers, sometimes occupying a whole office rooms, were reduced to the size of a small coffee machine and then with the invention of the laptop, they looked rather like big book themselves. The laptop became smaller with the invention of the tablets and other smaller-sized computing machines that you can take with you wherever you go and work without forgetting the parallel evolution of the mobile phone which has now become both accessory to the computer and a handily replacement that can perform all the tasks of its parent machine while at the same time serving as a portable library. All this was the stuff of science fiction and the product of wild imaginations a couple of decades previously.
Technology does not stop fascinating us and holding us in owe. First, new inventions used to hit the market every two or so years. Then they started to knock at our doors every year or so. Nowadays, the gap between and old and a new invention in the telephone, computing and publishing technologies, more popularly referred to as ICT, is being reduced to a few weeks or months.
In my desperate search for some publishing miracle in the Internet, I accidentally bumped into a piece of information about the self-publishing software introduced by Amazon-Kindle and the shockingly short time it takes to publish a book: less than 24 hours! Thanks to the not so new applications and technology, one can publish for free a readable book and benefit from it in terms of publishing cost, royalty, distribution cost and all the troubles involved in the formerly complicated business of book publishing. I was indeed mesmerized by the technological breakthroughs as well as by the fact that how backward we are here in Ethiopia, and maybe in Africa, in using this technology to develop our cultures and our book industries.
The first question that hit my mind was how and when we are going to adopt the new technology to our publishing industry and thereby bring redemption to our long-suffering writers whose resilience in the face of poverty and lack of opportunities may be the stuff of legend. Technology is irresistibly invading the whole world and the hope is that in a few years from now, the new book publishing technology will certainly make its presence felt here in Africa. The challenge is how we are going to start the game of catch up in order to bridge the technological gap and stand on our feet. And the frustrating thing may be that technology is driven by new market demands and changes on the basis of previous inventions while we are not yet near the first generation of publishing technology.
Book publishing is the main tool of technology transfer and should not be understood only as a tool of novel writing, or fiction publishing. A fast and furious technological breakthrough is the main channel through which books dealing with technology, science, sports, entertainment, agriculture, business, industry and what not are transferred in record times. This is a cost-effective way of disseminating knowledge and cutting time wasted on the paraphernalia of the publishing business.
If we have one serious handicap as citizens, it is our reluctance to adopt to change very fast. We are either suspicious of change or we lack the necessary energy to adopt change and adapt to new things. We have to wait and see until we are sure whether the new inventions really work. In this sense, we are not much more mentally advanced that our compatriots of the Menelik era who suspected that Satan was behind the first film that was screened in what was later on known as sheitan bet or “Satan’s house”.
We may sometime be among the first to adopt change but the last to catch up with change. Our trajectory to technological change looks like our soccer history. We were among the first countries that started the game in Africa and now we are almost at the tail end of them in terms of soccer ranking. The same may be true to publishing technology. Ethiopia was one of the few countries to adopt European printing technology but now she is lagging behind in many ways than one, including in publishing.
Publishing in general as well as publishing books in particular, has a long and tortuous history. We are told that in 1455, the Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed in Europe with movable type. It wasn’t until 20 years later that the first book in English, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, was printed. Then in 1640, the Bay Psalm Book was the first book printed in the North American British Colonies. According to available information, books first appeared in Babylonia in the form of clay tablets, then as the Egyptian papyrus roll, the medieval vellum codex, the printed paper volume, the microfilm, and various other combinations have served as books. The great variety in form is matched by an equal variety in content.
The printing of Ethiopian works, though, started as early as printing itself but in Ethiopia, it began in 1863 in Massawa. The first commercial printing press was introduced at Massawa in 1890. Most of these presses were used for printing newspapers, magazines, religious literature, government documents and the like but little use was made for educational material.
The concept of publishing began long before the invention of the printing press. It began as far back as the invention of writing. Scribes copied works all by hand. Obviously, this was a long, painstaking process, thus, books developed along with movable type. Ethiopian priests were past masters of handwritten religious books. Yet, we did not have inventors who could transform our traditional skills and tools of publishing books. We had to wait more than a century to make the right move in the right direction.
Even now at a time when news moves at the speed of light, we may not look like grasping the impressive technological transformations taking place every day and every hour from America to China, from Europe to Asia. If we cannot be inventors, we can at least be fast users of new technology without which none of our dreams would turn into reality; whether in business or industry, agriculture or services. No doubt that we are passive consumers of Western technology but we are not creative consumers. Our new generation of young people should be more dynamic in turning themselves from passive consumers of technology into passionate inventors if not imaginative imitators.
The Ethiopian herald June 18/2022
