‘Publishers Now Beg Marketers Not To Pirate Their Books’

The Managing Director of University Press Plc, Mr Samuel Kolawole, while speaking on Thursday at the annual conference and general meeting of the Nigerian Publishers Association held in Ibadan, lamented that publishers were now at the mercy of pirates whose activities, he said,were threatening to totally destroy publishing industry.

He said publishers were now going from market to market pleading with booksellers not to pirate Publishers’ books.

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He said, “There is an increasing involvement of booksellers in piracy in Nigeria. If has become so bad that publishers now go to markets to negotiate with booksellers, we persuade them not to pirate publishers books.

” We go to some markets and call them together and asked them what they want us to do for them so that they won’t pirate publishers books. It is that bad.

“Piracy is a major challenge but we have other challenges such as poor Infrastructure which every company is also facing. Piracy is eating away our profit and destroying the industry. Pirates don’t pay taxes, they don’t employ the number of workers that we employ so they are doing a lot of damage to the economy.

“Government can address the problem of piracy by empowering Nigerian Copyright Commission to be able to fight it. Government should budget enough fund for them to be able to fight piracy. If government does that, NCC will achieve success in the war against piracy.

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“The NCC is doing what it can do but there is little they can do if they are not well funded. You will recall that when government funded NAFDAC very well, late Prof Dora Akunyili did wonders so if you find the Nigerian Copyright Commission very well, they will do wonders.”

A member of the NPA, Mrs Folashade Shinkaiye, lamented that the volume of business being done by pirates was much more than what the legitimate publishing companies were doing.

Another member of the NPA, Dr Jesse Odu, also blamed some school owners for selling publishers’ books at high prices and refusing to remit the proceeds to them on time.

Odu said, “School owners will tell you they will adopt your book if only you won’t make the.books available at bookshops. Some will even tell you to write, ‘Not to be sold at bookshops’ on the books.

“If you give a book to school proprietor for N1200, the school owner can sell it to student for N2,200. My daughter was given a bill of N3500 for a book I sold to the school for N1,200. Of course I went to the school to complain.”

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