Whenever I am asked for a bio or to introduce myself, I always say that I am a South African writer. These are the two crucial parts of my identity: I write and I am South African. For me, the two are irrevocably interconnected and, as a consequence, are irrevocably complex, each feeding off the many-layered burdens of my country’s past. There isn’t space here to go into all of this, what it means to be South African, African, an African writer and white, but let’s, for the sake of this essay keep it fairly basic. I am a simple person, and can’t help retaining a child’s naïve belief that the life of a writer should follow a trouble-free process: one writes (preferably one writes well) and then one is published.

Of course, by now I know (as I am sure you do) that that is not the case at all. When I finished my first manuscript back in 2009, I sent it to a couple of South African publishers – after all, I wrote about South Africa and I wanted to be read in South Africa. However, it was rejected. Rather than give up at once, I reworked it, sent it to some more, was rejected again. Having nowhere else in South Africa to go, I had no choice but to turn overseas. I didn’t have an agent, hadn’t even known such a thing existed, certainly didn’t know how to go about finding one, and so I trawled the internet for independent publishers in the UK and US, anyone willing to accept unsolicited submissions. In total, I sent it to more than 30 publishers. Less than one fifth bothered to respond. But eventually, the day of my father’s funeral, the manuscript was picked up by a small company in the UK named Holland Park Press. Though very small, they were able to find a way to print and distribute in South Africa, so I was able to have a launch with friends and family. That novel, Finding Soutbek, went on to be shortlisted for the inaugural Etisalat Prize and received very positive local reviews.

I continued writing, continued having no interest from local publishers, so stayed with Holland Park for four more books, until they rejected a manuscript, saying it wasn’t right for them – as they were well within their rights to do and there are no hard feelings. Again, I tried South African publishers. Again, no interest; there had already been a book by an established SA author that included a lighthouse (as mine did), and anyway, my book wasn’t likely to make any money. I struggled on. For a brief time I did have an agent and the manuscript was praised and rejected by a number of the big names in the UK. Then… nothing happened – my agent sat on the manuscript for nine months. Eventually, I managed to find myself another small publisher, coincidentally with a similar name to the first: Holland House Books. They published my novel, An Island, which went on to be longlisted for the Booker in 2021, and was published in (amongst other countries) Nigeria by Masobe and in South Africa by Karavan Press. Finally, my desire to be published at home had been fulfilled.

I do know that I have been exceptionally fortunate, despite all the setbacks. Many African writers don’t even get close to seeing the attention I have received. There are limited publishing opportunities on the continent, and those opportunities are even more limited overseas.

With time, Robert Peett, the owner of Holland House Books, and I became good friends. I shared with him my frustrations and previous publishing difficulties, and told him my secret dream to own a small publishing house one day, something like the Woolf’s Hogarth Press which they ran from their home. I wanted it to be pan-African, following in the footsteps of the Heinemann African Writers Series, which published roughly 350 works by writers from Africa between 1962 and 2003, bringing them not only to the entire continent but also to the world stage. However, my dream was a bit more modest than Heinemann’s 350 titles. I wanted to be able to pick a manuscript that showed promise, that had something remarkable and special about it, even if it wasn’t necessarily the most polished. I wanted to work closely with the writer and manuscript, very closely, to help create something exciting and valuable, publishing no more than one or two books a year.

Since starting a pan-African publishing house at that point was impossible (we were in the midst of a pandemic and I was in Brazil), we instead came up with The Island Prize, which has already helped three African authors find publishers. Hopefully, by next year, we’ll be able to add another two to that growing list. As wonderful as that is, there are still difficulties in getting publishers interested, and I still find myself thinking of my little dream.

Unfortunately, I am a coward. A great big coward. What’s more, I am a coward with very little money. You may think a Booker longlisted author would be rolling in money. Think again. I am almost 42, live with my mother, and am still a student. In fact, it was only last year that the bank told me I could no longer have a student account, that actually I had stopped being eligible for that when I was 27, but had managed to slip under the radar for so long because there was never any activity in my account. Anyway, let’s say I could gather together enough into that inactive account to start a small publishing house, just me, doing the editing, proofreading, arranging the printing, distribution, cover design, all that stuff (as many small publishers do and do well), the thing is, I am more than likely going to lose money, or at the very best break even. I would certainly not expect to make a profit, not with the literary industry in the dire shape that it is. In a sense that is no problem; I am not motivated by money. But I am worried, very worried, about how long it is ethical to be dependent on one’s mother, even if one is the baby of the family and a struggling artist. And what about my duty to the authors I publish – I owe it to them to do as much as possible for them and their books. Difficult to do with limited resources.

Here’s another problem: in case you haven’t noticed, Africa is huge. Second biggest continent, 54 countries, more than 2000 languages, various danger zones and civil wars. Not to mention crippling famine, illiteracy, poverty, and corruption. How does one arrange distribution and keep costs low enough that books can be accessible to more than a few? And don’t talk to me about eBooks. Too many Africans don’t have devices or credit cards – I don’t have a credit card and need to borrow my mom’s when I want to buy a book on Kindle.

And then finally, let’s be honest, as a friend said to me when I told him about my idea: “Great, just what the industry needs, another liberal white woman trying to do good.” Yup. There’s no getting away from that one. I am white, and for many people that is a problem – one which I do understand. I didn’t say anything at the time, but what I should have done is said: How much does it really matter? We need to be coming together, making changes, building one another up, helping one another, doing it together. Surely I am allowed to play a part in that? What good is standing on the sidelines and complaining?

And then, a few days ago, I picked up a book someone had given me along with a whole lot of others they were getting rid of: The Ordeal of the African Writer by Charles R. Larson. It is almost a quarter of a century old, having been published in 2001, yet so much that Larson writes is frighteningly relevant to this day:

For most African writers today, submitting a manuscript is still a process fraught with difficulties. There are still too few publishers to fulfil the needs of the continent’s writers […]. And African writers have not been much more successful in submitting their stories and poems to European and American publications than they were in the 1950s.

Moreover, he observes

the dilemma that African writers face in having to publish overseas: they are forced to rely on critical judgments made by people outside their cultures who may not understand what they have written. It is bad enough that non-African editors in European and American publishing houses make the decisions about what to publish from Africa. It becomes a double blow that these books are reviewed by western critics after they are published.

To be honest, I became so depressed by what I was reading, thinking about the good writers I know, the ones who are overlooked, who may always remain overlooked, that I crawled into bed and moped for days, thinking, “What is the point of anything at all. Really, why bother? Does the world even need books anymore?”

A few nights later, insomnia made me pick up the book again, wanting to finish it and remove it forever from my TBR pile, my life, my head. Yet, in the concluding chapter, there it was – something wonderful, something like my little dream. Larson makes a proposal that is, yes, very idealistic, but I am an idealist (when I’m not curled up in a ball of angst and despair). Look at what he suggests:

an inclusive pan-African publishing house, funded by people and institutions both from Africa and the West, with an unpaid advisory board predominantly from Africa. Crucial to the entire proposal is the belief that Africans should be in control of the publication of their own writers and that the degree of the dependence on the West be determined by Africans themselves.

He notes that there will be a need for fundraising, as well as a need for volunteers (bearing in mind that Chinua Achebe volunteered his time, absolutely for free, in selecting the first 100 books of the Heinemann African Writers Series). For the first few years, Larson suggests that publications can be selected by means of a pan-African novel competition – which The Island Prize already does! Then, it is vital to publish across the continent at the same time, in both English and French, and to keep the price as low as possible so that it is not only accessible but affordable. Good networks with publishers and distributors are vital.

However, Larson’s wish that authors are given large advances so that they can live off them for a few years is perhaps too idealistic even for me. Remember, as I said before, the industry is in crisis across the globe. People would rather play on their phones or stream series than read. And let’s not forget the exorbitant cost of living… and… well, you see, now I am talking myself out of the idea again.

But just to the right of me, in a corner of my desk where I stack all the things I am working on that can’t fit into drawers, is a pile of books, notes and a rough scrawl I’m working on about Africa and humanism. One aspect of that, a key one, is the concept of ubuntu; the same thing about which Achebe spoke in 1998 in his “Africa Is People” speech, “Africa believes in people, in cooperation with people.” That, precisely that, is what Larson’s dream is all about, and mine too, and which I would like to see come to reality in some form or another. As Bessie Head writes in A Question of Power (number 149 in the Heinemann African Writers Series), “May I never contribute to creating dead worlds, only new worlds.”

I don’t have the answers, but slowly I am gathering ideas and dreams, trying to build networks and shared opportunities, looking for ways in which to assist in the creation of those new, living worlds.

 

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