It seemed like an awful thing to say, at some point early in this century, that there were only two publishers left in the country. After AmaBooks capped their pens and left, there was one. In 2024, after 25 years of immense work – then there were none.
Just to clarify: AmaBooks did not entirely abandon their craft; the principals moved to Wales for reasons that might become clearer in this article, among others. Since then they have maintained one foot in the Zimbabwean publishing industry scene and published three titles from their stable, while also editing for other entities, with hopes of doing more books and a short story collection sometime this year. The roses are green and may never bloom, in the words of the song. We hope for the best but expect the worst.
In its simplest definition, publishing is the dissemination of information or ideas to the public. It acknowledges newspapers, blogs, social media sites and even simple inkjet printers. Thus, so long as man can draw on sand with a finger, or on the walls of caves with crushed ochre and blood like his vintage kin, or on living room walls with crayons of wax, publishing will live.
In the book world, a publisher is a midwife turning raw material into literature. AmaBooks and Weaver were the last of a class known as “traditional publishers”. They took original material and turned it into money for everyone. They invested their time in processing the raw manuscript, researching the market and paying consultants to ensure factual accuracy and quality, and then invested their own money or sought funding to facilitate printing and distribution. Finally, they marketed it and, at the agreed time, paid royalties to their writers as per the agreed split. While they handled the nitty-gritties, literature turned into a source of passive income for the writer.
The reign of these juggernauts was quite a golden age, but not without its problems. In Zimbabwe’s highly charged political climate of the past two decades, they faced various accusations, such as pushing an agenda – pick one: “white supremacy”, “regime change”, “neocolonialism”. These labels are tempting, considering that between them they have published the hardest-hitting political commentators and satirists, such as John Eppel, Chris Mlalazi, Chenjerai Hove, Raisedon Baya, NoViolet Bulawayo and others, across colour and cultural divides, who have been brave enough to tell the stories we weren’t (and sometimes still aren’t) supposed to tell. Some of their writers, like Hove and Mlalazi, went into exile for their works.
In mouthing that vitriol about them being “unpatriotic”, it is convenient to omit that they have also published the praise poetry of Pathisa Nyathi, the fiction of Bryony Rheam (a writer I often accuse of being depressing and melancholic, but never political), Wim Boswinkel and Elspeth Parry, and many titles that have nothing to do with the Zimbabwean “situation”. Even the “dissident writers” they have put out are not always grinding an axe with the establishment. Let it be clear that AmaBooks and Weaver Press came into the game at the turn of the century and millennium. These were unprecedented times; the national politics and their absurdities would have been hard for any “serious writer” to ignore.
Meanwhile, the economy responded in its own way. Many industries did not survive the lean years; publishing would naturally be among the first to fall. Most of the players we knew before – entities like Mambo Press, Longman, Zimbabwe Publishing House, Baobab, et al – were folding, relocating or concentrating on school textbooks. Somehow, AmaBooks and Weaver pressed on, claiming a tight monopoly on literary output, one that earned them a prime spot in the gatekeeping of the Zimbabwean narrative, at least as far as creative writing went.
There came the dilemma: the world out there held too many stories for only two entities to put out. Even in the finest economic climates, this would have been overwhelming. Add preference to that: Jane Morris would tell you that she publishes what she likes, so if your work did not appease her, or Irene Staunton’s literary sensibilities at Weaver Press, that was just about the end of your literary dreams. To compound matters, one thing nobody really said about the old process is that publishers preferred (and still do prefer) their writers to be already published, with a ready market. It is the paradox of employment and experience: they won’t hire you without the latter; you don’t get the latter without the former.
In response to the dearth of outlets for creative writing, an additional strain of publishers emerged – despised by the purist, adored by the previously disenfranchised. The method of operation was not entirely new; in another lifetime, they were called “vanity publishers”. They receive money from the author, process the book and hand over the finished product to sell. Sometimes the publisher has access to some spaces and helps the author to market their book, but in most cases they deliver the bound work over and wish them the best. The inherent danger in such an agreement is obviously quality control. Whatever your opinion on the texts AmaBooks and Weaver put out, the writing was pretty solid.
The purist’s rage is justified in considering that the current crop of publisher will print anyone with a chequebook. They might not even have the same level of care and expertise to fine-tune the manuscript, and that does not matter, at least to them; they get their money upfront and will see the author only whenever they want to print more copies, which seldom exceed a few score.
In the good, old primitive days ere the age of rampant personal computing, one could see how publishing thrived as an industry; the simple typing of a manuscript was someone’s job. Now, anyone with Microsoft Word can write, copy-edit and typeset their book, then go onto Canva or some such and design a cover. Throw digital platforms like Amazon, whose services come at near-zero cost, into the fray, and all bets go out the window. It doesn’t take much to become a published author now; you can do it on your phone, regardless of the work’s merits. Personal computing has been as revolutionary to the publishing world as the Gutenberg press. The new publishers would not fare so well without the lower barrier of entry that home computers have afforded them. This advantage is accompanied by improvements on digital printing, which have brought lithographic printing to the edge of extinction. Digital printing allows for lower volumes at reasonable pricing, while lithography tends to be cheaper with scale and volume, but imposes a higher barrier of entry.
Proponents of the new form of publishing also praise the liberalisation of the market for allowing a wider range of voices into the coliseum. For those who believe in the freedom of expression, there is little to argue against that. They have also said that there are higher fiscal proportions for the writer, and that’s a good thing. Another will retort that 100% of a springhare is less than 15% (a standard royalty figure) of a kudu. The last writer I worked with in my capacity as a freelance publishing consultant printed a measly 20 copies for his first run. When one considers economies of scale, such volumes become costlier, and the process requires him to be very disciplined with the income and to know more than a bit about marketing. Suddenly, that seemingly oppressive royalty split justifies itself, with all the roles along the value chain that the author has to fill. Publishers used to bear the risk; now, it is all up to the author. They might even discover that a good product can perform poorly on the open market.
Consequently, many writers of the new method hardly realise enough from their initial investment in the development process to make a profit – never mind the limits of their distribution network and skillset. Hence the term hoary: vanity publishing – publishing for the sake of the all-revered title of “published writer/author”. All this matters not as much as it pains to realise that some genuinely good books born through this process might never reach their full potential in the way of readership and recognition, for lack of capital, specialised knowledge and skill. And as far as information and ideas go, we won’t get to hear each other.
Does Weaver’s knell spell doom for the literary sector? I think not – only change. I have seen a number of great writers come out of this process. Sue Nyathi self-published before she got a good deal in South Africa, Batsirai Chigama is making astronomical figures with her sales, Hope Masike can’t seem to sit down with her book tours, and I have had my last publication translated into Swedish. On the other front, Pigeon Press seems eager to fill the void left by AmaBooks in Bulawayo, and they have done well so far. In the end, I think words will find a way, but as with all things, we have to learn from those who came before us and did it well. In these twilight years of their operations, Weaver have expressed their intention to remain available as freelance editors and consultants. We might be able to get that good quality of old for a while, and mix it up with the new methods of production, while raising equally competent editors, marketers and other players along the value chain.
With all this gone or not, only the spirit of ingratitude and a dire dearth of belief in creative energy would keep us stuck in the past and mourning what could be. So, dear Weaver Press and AmaBooks, thank you for your service, muri magamba.