Printing not publishing
IN THE book industry there is a noticeable new development which has largely been influenced by the technological boom.
Digital printing, which seemed unattainable, is now available in Zimbabwe. Nowadays as you walk in the Harare city centre, on either side there are large different types of attractive banners advertising cheap printing and photocopying services.
This flourishing printing industry has been a double-edged development particularly when looked at from the perspective of the book industry. Cheap photocopying, for instance, has given rise to book piracy. On the other hand, cheap printing has somehow come to the rescue of publishers and self-publishing authors but it sometimes has led to reduced quality of new literature.
Indeed, not all is glory in this printing sector. There is now a careless and dishonest team of printers who are posing as publishers and those likely to fall prey to them are new writers in the dark. Bookshelf has as of late raised its voice louder about the dangers of impatience in an unpublished writer. Still, the message is thus for the upcoming writer, and not those who have mastered the difference between printing and publishing.
These printers, obviously untrained in book publishing, have made the whole publishing process look cheap for certain writers who also lack book industry knowledge or are pushed by friends and relatives to “please publish your good book” and then they go to the so-called “printer/publisher”. Editing, proofreading, typesetting, designing, or binding, is taken for granted. And they wrongly declare the book they print ‘published’ at times even without the ISBN.
One sad example is that of greedy printers encroaching scholarly publishing because they have heard the textbook pays. In addition to photocopying the already published textbooks unaware of the copyright law, they compose, design and print their own especially few-paged Early Childhood Development books which they give to book vendors to sell in the locations. The books have bad illustrations and where they want to teach children to learn words by way of images, for instance to show what a ‘whistle’ or ‘banana’ is, the images/illustrations are sometimes suggestive.
The book piracy these corruptible printers promote is visible in the city and yet they behave like legalised thieves. Why shouldn’t they when writers have been warned not to disturb them and this is like being told to watch the robber while he takes away your property!
It must be acknowledged there are new printers in the city who have shown great desire to learn and know their professional role in the book sector. One such company is, according to verified information available to Bookshelf, considering partnering a local writers’ association which is launching a publishing department. The collaboration will encourage professionalism because the writers’ association will guarantee there is no “short-cut publishing’ especially among the new literary voices.
According to one of Bookshelf’s favourite educative books, “A Guide to Book Publishing” (1990, University of Lagos Press) by Datus C Smith Jr., ‘printing is a separate industry from publishing. Book publishing firms may own printing plants, or a printing firm may own a book publishing houses. But that does not remove the distinction between them’.
What this shows is that printers or printing companies are but one of the major branches in the book industry. The other branches are the author, bookseller, and publisher. This partnership is however incomplete if it does not include the reader/society, and other groups like the library, etc.
Disaster looms when some dishonest, unintelligent printers in the city are assuming the personality of a publisher whose job they know little about. As long as he has been paid for his printing job, he does not care knowing the meaning of having his company name given the acknowledgement ‘printed and published by’ on the first page of the book! Whether the author goes on to launch the book or the book succeeds or flops it is not his business.
Sometimes Bookshelf thinks that the long process a book takes to be published by the traditional publishing houses is justifiable. The traditional publishers, through experience, take their time. When the book is at the printing stage, they instruct the printer but also are open to his intelligent suggestions. From the printer, the book goes through another process until it is declared published.
It takes some love for learning about the book industry on the part of our new printers in town to refer poorly written manuscripts to the right people.
When the manuscript has been worked on by the right people (e.g. manuscript readers, editors, and others), the printer will then receive it in a better form that ensures satisfaction for everyone involved in the project, including the author.