Piracy hurting book publishers

• After seizure of school set books, Longhorn reveals it losses Sh400m annually to counterfeits

Nothing gives publishers more sleepless nights than the spectre of their books being pirated. And now with new technology at their disposal pirates can reproduce a book that easily passes off as the original, even to a trained eye.

So it was with a sense of palpable triumph on Tuesday last week that three publishers led police to a city-based printer where they seized thousands of pirated books worth millions of shillings. Publishers say the raid on Business Forms, on Likoni Road in Industrial Area, is the biggest seizure yet.

Buoyed by weak copyright laws, pirates operating mostly in downtown Nairobi, have over the years waged guerrilla warfare on publishers. Even when raids are done, they do not yield enough in terms of seizures to sustain serious prosecutions.

But Mr Edward Sigei, a legal officer with the Copyright Board of Kenya, who will be leading prosecution in to the latest case, believes they can get the maximum penalty: a Sh400,000 fine.

Business Forms is one of the biggest printers in town, handling big business, including government contracts. Mr Sigei says piracy costs the book industry 35 per cent in earnings. The local book industry is estimated to be worth Sh10 billion.

Mrs Nancy Karimi, the chairperson of the Kenya Publishers Association (KPA), says the raid was a major breakthrough as this was the first time a big-time printer was caught in the act.

“Previously, we have raided small time printers on Kirinyaga Street,” she says. “With this raid we are now forced to doubt the integrity of printers.”

This confirms fears among industry insiders that some of the established printers could be engaged in parallel manufacture, industry lingo for printing more than the order given by a publisher and selling the extras.

Longhorn Publishers were most affected, as more than 7,000 counterfeit copies of its book Utengano, were seized. The Swahili novel authored by Said A. Mohamed is currently a secondary school set book in Kenya.

Mr Musyoki Muli, the manager of Sasa Sema Publications, the general division of Longhorn Publishers, valued the 7,counterfeited books at over Sh5 million.

Mr Muli said Longhorn hoped to move 600,000 copies of the book, for the three years it would be used as a set book, but they have only managed half.

“This being the last of the three years, we can safely say piracy has eaten into half of our earnings,” he explains.

Mr Muli adds that Longhorn loses Sh400 million to pirates annually. Also seized in the raid were 2,000 copies of East African Educational Publishers’ The Government Inspector, by Nikolai Gogol, which is a set book for secondary schools in Tanzania, as well as copies of East Africa Through a Thousand Years, handled by Evans Brothers.

The printer said he thought the people who gave him the printing orders were agents of the publishers.

“That’s obviously a lie. Being a seasoned printer, he knows that before any book is published, publishers invite tenders from printers,” says Mr Kiarie Kamau, the General manager of EAEP.

Interestingly, one of the suspects had been arrested and taken to court for the same offence.

“These people take advantage of existing legal loopholes and get away lightly,” says Mr Muli. Mr Sigei says the Copyright Board is seeking to have the Copyright Act amended to seal those loopholes.

This has put booksellers in the spotlight, as they are used to offload counterfeit books into the market.

“We have made a number of raids in Kisii and Mombasa where we have found pirated books being sold by booksellers,” she explains. “We have resolved to blacklist booksellers dealing with counterfeits.”

Crooked booksellers on the lookout for higher discounts collude with pirates, who offer them with super discounts. Mr Kakai Karani, the KPA vice-chair says that as a rule publishers give maximum discounts of 35 per cent to booksellers.

“But pirates who haven’t invested as much as publishers,” he says, “offer up to 60 per cent discount, which some booksellers cannot resist.”
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