There is more to book prizes than merely giving out an award

When the Nairobi International Book Fair comes to a close on September 25, Kenya will have two new literary prize winners, courtesy of the Wahome Mutahi Literary Prize.This prize, offered after every two years by the Kenya Publishers Association (KPA), is in honour of the late humourist Wahome Mutahi, him of the Whispers column.

The prize is now in its sixth edition, having been established in 2006.When Onduko bw’Atebe won the inaugural award with his excellent book Verdict of Death (EAEP), he took home a humble Sh50,000. This was seen as not enough compensation for a writer, who probably takes years to compile a manuscript.

Eventually, KPA caved in to pressure and doubled the amount. What this means is that winners in the English and Kiswahili categories of the prize will each take home Sh100,000.The nominees for the English category are Anthony Mugo with his book Ask the Stars, published by Longhorn Publishers, and Nation Media Group’s Nganga Mbugua, with his book Angels of the Wild, published by One Planet, a new kid in the publishing block. The other nominee is Peter Kareithi with his book Komu Fights for Change published by Longhorn.

Mugo is a double winner of the Burt Prize for African Writing. In the Kiswahili category, the nominees are Tom Olali, who has written Mashetani wa Alepo, published by Jomo Kenyatta Foundation (JKF), Jeff Mandila’s Narejea Nyumbani, also published by JKF, and John Habwe’s Kovu Moyoni, published by Book Mark Africa.

From the above, it is clear that JKF are heavyweights when it comes to Kiswahili publishing. Out of the Kiswahili prizes, in both the Wahome Mutahi Prize and Jomo Kenyatta Text Book Centre Prize for Literature  (what a mouthful), in the last five years, titles from JKF have scooped 70 per cent of the awards.

Perhaps this is a story for another day.

MBUGUA NOMINATED FOUR TIMES!

The other story worth telling as regards the Wahome Mutahi Literary Prize, is Mbugua’s domination. Out of six editions, he has been nominated four times! He has won the prize two times and might probably win it for the third time this year.

His winning entries are Terrorists of the Aberdare (Big Books), in 2010 and Different Colours (Big Books), in 2012. His poetry collection This Land is our Land (Big Books) was the first runner-up in 2014 when Yusuf Dawood’s The Last Word (Longhorn) won. Okoiti Okiya Omtata won the Award in 2008 with his play Voice of the People (EAEP).

Evidently, Omtata is not just about tying himself in chains and activism. Maybe the story that really needs to be told about literary prizes in Kenya is the ineffective marketing of the winning titles and the prizes themselves.

It would appear that organisers are only too happy to see the end of the prize-giving ceremony. Apart from the occasional media story on the winner, nothing else is heard of the winner and the prize until the next time a prize comes around.

Publishers of the winning titles, if they are keen on selling more copies of the books, should invest in taking the authors in a whirlwind tour around the country, especially in schools, convincing Kenyans to purchase the book.

I am sure there are governors who wouldn’t mind hosting an education symposium, for schools in their counties, where the winning authors are unveiled. For once, governors would be convinced to invest in something worthwhile, by buying winning titles and donating them to various schools in their counties. That way, governors wouldn’t have to sweat it out convincing parents and teachers to vote for them.

However, this has to be initiated by KPA and the individual publishers. A prize winning title is something to make noise about. Surely, our publishers, many of whom have subsidiaries in neighbouring countries, as far as Zambia and Malawi, should employ those networks to market those books in those countries.

MARKETING

Perhaps the Kenyan book that has been marketed widely is the late Margaret Ogola’s The River and the Source, (Focus Publishers) which won both the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in 1994.

There have been a number of editions around the world of the book as well as translations in different languages.  There should be more of these.

Still, the government should be prevailed upon to remove the punitive VAT it slapped on books. Maybe publishers should seriously consider hiring Omtata to lead the onslaught against this ill-advised taxation.

This is tantamount to taxing knowledge. It is foolhardy for the Uhuru government to think it can fund infrastructure projects by taxing books. Who advises this government?