Beyond Writing: The Business of Books with Nigerian Author Chinyere Ifediora

Hello and welcome to the show. Today I had a conversation with the lovely barrister, Should I say barrister or misses? Like chingiri Ifidiora, I forgot to confirm how she would like to be addressed. So this is part of the series of conversations that I've been sharing over here on the podcast. Because I've been trying to show you guys, my dear listeners, those of you who've been with me from the get that no matter the career you choose or no matter the business you choose, that there are sound sales and business development principles that are at play in trying to get your business or your career off the ground.

Now the difference is just is just that some people like me are taking a very consciously sales oriented approach to how we get things off the ground. And there are other people out there like you listening to the show and some of the people that I talk to who are using sound sales and business development principles to get their enterprise going, they just don't realize how. Now, why am I speaking to Chingir Ephedora?

It's because so far I've spoken to the kind of people that you would expect over here on a business podcast. I've spoken to people in the merchandising space. We've spoken to someone in aquaculture. Now that is a fisheries spoken to someone who is into makeup. That's a Nigerian makeup artist who late on developed her own, her own beauty, her own line of beauty products. Let's see what else. Anyway, we've spoken to the typical sorts of people that you would expect, but I'm assuming that you would not expect to hear about an author, And not just any kind of author, but a children's author on a business podcast when you're looking for examples about how sales and business development principles work to get a business off the ground.

So yes, Senior Fedora. I spoke to her today because I think it's a brilliant and very illustrative example about how to not only how to get involved in the business, but how to get your thing going and to get some gusto, get some mojo behind what it is that you're doing. So in the conversation that lasted maybe close to an hour, we looked into how she got into book publishing. The reason why that is relevant, of course, is because of the podcast episodes where I talk about how to select which business idea.

To start, we looked into how to sell, how she goes about selling her business books. Also an important question, because I've also been touting here on the podcast that is not just enough to get into a business that you're profitable about, but you have to be able to get into a business that is profitable or viable over the long term at the very least. And you should be able to create a selling framework around this passion of yours.

Because if you're passionate about something, if you're passionate about writing children's books, but it's not a viable, it doesn't look like it has long term viability and you don't know how to sell books, then you're just going to be wasting your time and experience is going to buttress that point of view over here. That's for those of you who are passionate about other things, whether it's knitting or wedding photography or gardening or painting or whatever.

Then we also looked at, apart from writing skills, what are the skills that are required to be successful. Because some people assume that if you just become a good writer, if you Polish your craft, you become like Stephen King or you become like Chinua, then you think that the awards are going to flow in and the money and the recognition is going to flow in. So we have that conversation as well. And then we also had a conversation on what the market for kids books was like now in my usual style.

Unfortunately, it's going to be rambling as I recap the insights over here on the podcast. Apologies for that. I'll just look through my notes and then share the insights that came up during nearly hour long conversation. So, OK, yeah, good that we had the conversation because she's based in Inugu and she's been there for the past 10 years. So far I've spoken to folks in, you know, the usual places, Lagos, Abuja, let's see, Lagos,

Abuja, one person in the UK, where else? So it's nice that we have someone from the eastern part of the country, from Inugu, so that our brothers and sisters over there are not left out. Now the question of what kind of what her career is because we went to law school together. I must be, I think, close to 20 years ago. Yeah, I think maybe 20 years ago. So our law school together. And so there's a question of what exactly is she now, lawyer or author?

And yes, we went into that conversation. She's still doing legal work. Luckily, she gets to do most of it remotely because she's looking through memorandas and coming up with reviews and stuff like that, attending board meetings. You know, some of these things have been done online or thanks to COVID. Now everybody's firmly convinced and on board that you don't have to be in a physical office to get certain kinds of work done.

So that is what has made it possible for her to do some of her work remotely, some of the legal work, and she described herself as being in active legal practice, full time legal practice, until about 2019. So now she would regard herself as part time both, part time lawyer, part time children's publishers. Several times during the conversation I wanted to say kid publishers, but I got the impression that if I said kids might be disrespectful, so I

will do my best to keep saying children all through. Well, I make the mistake and I say kids, and that's not the all I say, appropriate or respectful term to use for children these days. Then please forgive me. Now, I mentioned to her that back when we were in school I thought she was going to be in some kind of church ministry. And I'm glad that my prediction sort of came to pass because she struck me as one of the lawyer types or someone who was going to do something in the church.

And so she admits that, yes, she has been involved in children's ministry as a teacher in the church. And that was where the whole seed of writing books began. Because what she wanted actually was she wanted a notebook or a series of notebooks that children could use to take notes during the lessons and then apply the learnings from the lessons. And then of course she did what most of us do, which is she had a conversation with her husband.

So you guys see here that when I say have a conversation with your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your spouse, your uncle, your auntie, your whatever, I'm not just trying to be facetious, but it's it actually is a very good, common, common sense approach to go about stuff. You have this idea. You have a friend. You have somebody whose opinion that you value, or you're in a significant life relationship with some someone else.

It's not a bad idea to bounce these opinions off of this person. You might get some useful ideas, some encouragement, some accountability, some hand holding. So actually it's not a bad idea at all. So she spoke to her husband. And by the way, please, ladies, this is not me being patriarchal. Guys do the same thing too. I get certain ideas and my wife comes back and I'm like, hey babe, while you're away, I thought about this.

I thought about this. What do you think? What do you think? And then she says, OK, do it this way, do it this way. I'm like, OK, that makes sense. I didn't think about it. So please, I'm not trying to be patriarchal. I think it's just common sense. And for those of you who are not married, you don't have boyfriends or girlfriends. Yeah, you can talk to your friends at work, talk to your pastor, talk to mom and dad. You never know.

And then of course, you can also use HI GB T and Google Bad. OK, no, there's no more bad. I think it's now Gemini. It's been updated, so it's now Gemini. You can use that as well to bounce off ideas and test the viability of ideas and things like that. Now this is where the story takes an interesting turn. She had the conversation with her husband because she was thinking, hey babe, see, as I'm a teacher, I think a notebook would come in handy to help the children learn this and this and apply that.

And then several days went past and then the husband calls up and then he says, hey babe, you know what, That storybook idea that you wanted to write. Go ahead, write that storybook, just like we previously discussed. Now, in her own opinion, she says her husband misheard the conversation or misremembered the conversation because she didn't talk about storybooks. He talked about she was talking about notebooks, but her husband called up anyway to encourage her to get things going about writing a storybook, not a notebook.

So right from the beginning, there was no major plan to become an author per SE, even though she had some passion around children's education and things like that that were probably spurred on from motherhood. But I think, you know, was there all along because actually suspected she was going to be involved in ministry. I didn't think children, but you know, I guess I was coming from that whole maternal aura that I got from her back when we were in school.

So this was not some major well thought out planned thing which kind of blends you the whole thesis that I've been speaking about over here on the podcast that it's OK for your business to be some ground breaking passion that you've always had. But then it is also not a problem if you stumble into the business that you are involved in today. So the origins of your business are not as important as whether it is viable and whether you can create a selling framework around, which is where I moved to the next part of the conversation where we spoke about how she sells books because, oh, sorry about that.

That's my alarm. Let me see how many minutes? OK, OK, so we've done 10 minutes so far. Just want to be sure that this episode doesn't go overboard where we were. Sorry. Where were we? OK, so selling books. Yeah. So I was really curious about that because I have sold a bunch of things so far in the past decade and a half since I graduated from school. I'm selling legal services, photography services, insurance and financial products.

What else? Commodities for export. And also commodities on the local. I'm seeing, you know, Sesame and and stuff like that. But for some reason I've always thought that I just look at books. I'm like, wow, that must be a nightmare. How do you go about selling books? I've never tried and it's always looked like a rather difficult thing to do, especially since I have a cousin who's a publisher and it looks like that is no easy slot trying to sell books.

So of course I had the conversation with her. How in the world do you go about selling books? And her answer was rather practical and common sense. And you would almost think that she was a listener to the podcast. She says that the best way for her has been to approach bookstores. She did some research and she found out that there are bookstores that stock children's books in Lagos. That's sort of like the financial capital of Nigeria.

That's for those who are listening abroad. There are books that also stock children's books in. Sorry, stores also stocking children's books in Abuja. That is political capital then in Port Harcourt, one of the major cities in the east, and then also Uyo, so Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Uyo. So she now made a list of stores to approach. Now, for those of you who've been listening to this show for a long time, I hope you guys can see how the things I've been talking about make perfect sense.

She's not a listener of the podcast where you can see the approach that she's going. Do some research, she figures out, OK, Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Uyo. Makes sense, easy, right? Then she now comes up with a list of people in Lagos stores in Abuja, stores in Port Harcourt, outlets in Uyo that she can approach. She calls some people, she writes some people, she visits some people. Now she doesn't know this, but this is what is called prospecting from a traditional sales and business development point perspective.

So you can see that even though she's not taking a conscious sales and business development perspective, you can see that in actual practice. That is what is happening to sell the books, to promote the business. And I hope you guys can see that no matter the career you choose, wedding photography, selling insurance, selling cakes, selling soya beans, selling fried fish, we cannot run away from these principles. The principles exist.

We just have to find out how it applies to your own particular scenario. So if you're selling insurance, it's the same prospecting. You're selling books, it's the same prospecting. You want to sell wedding photography services, It's the same prospecting. The only difference is prospecting as a bookseller is different from prospecting as a as a wedding photographer or as a lawyer. So for her from these early prospecting activities, that's where those have been the main sales drivers getting books into stores and she also talks about personal sales, you know, trying to sell through her personal contacts, you know people that you know.

Also something I advocate over here on the podcast talk to friends, family members, associates. Sometimes I recommend talk to your enemies because we can gain an enemy into a friend and a customer. Then you have benefited because after all the good book, that's what the Bible says, You know, you make a friend out of an enemy. Sorry, no is it? Yes, you make a friend out of an enemy and you have won the day. And also using her social media.

But she points out that for the stores, the stores have more space, The stores have larger social networks, the stores have larger communities and have that inbuilt community thing going on. I was like, there's a bookstore here in Abuja that my wife visits, used to visit when the kids were much younger. I think it's called Adam's, Adam's Pages or something like that. So whenever there's a bookstore in town, you notice that there's some people that are book heads or people who like to read.

And they go, they hang around these stores, they look at stuff, they buy some stuff, they talk to other people who are in stores. There's a natural community element that is going on. And so by approaching stores, even though we might not have been a deliberate part of prospecting from the beginning, she was able to oh, OK, so I can alarm 15 minutes. OK, let me wrap up. So in approaching stores, there's the added benefit that,

look, these people have larger locations and they have access to greater social capital than she does. So if it's just her and her social media and her people in church and her people at the office, there's not going to be much sales. But then approaching these people, especially since then four major cities of Abuja, the possibilities for sales go up. Now we did have that conversation that some people pay upfront, some people pay partially upfront, some people pay later, that's some of the bookstores.

But then that's just the nature of the game. I've spoken about this on the podcast as well. It's just something that you have to be comfortable with. You know the the traditional and the payment terms like I I mentioned that I don't like dealing with international NGOs because West Western NGOs at you know, American bodies, UK bodies, you know they have this thing of paying 30 days later. And I really don't like that at least for for media coverage when we provide media coverage for programs like that.

Because The thing is, you have to pay the editors upfront, you have to pay photographers upfront, you have to pay for everything upfront, but then you don't get your money until 30 days later. It's a pain in the butt. But what if I said, hey babe, just treat it like savings. So that's the way I look at it. But it's there in every business. There's some businesses where you can collect 100% upfront, some businesses where you can collect 80% upfront.

There's some businesses where you're not getting shishi until 30 days has passed or until 60 days have passed. So just it's a cash flow management thing. So just decide based on your cash flow concerns and your preferences whether you can deal with these sorts of things or or not. So OK, yeah, that was an aside when it came to payment. Let's see what else. OK. Yes, I have the the benefit about stores selling in stores because stores have larger a larger social footprint and then that helps to to sell.

And then there have been some changes in the industry. So right now there are lots of festivals going on and things like that where Nigerian authors, Nigerian authors, festival promoters, they get together to do readings and signings and store visits and things like that. And so because of that she thinks that apart from writing skills, another skill that you need to be successful is interpersonal skills. So she says, you have to be sociable.

That is not like the old days where you just that's for traditional publishing, especially in the West. You sit in your cabin, you produce your manuscript, you hand it over to the publisher, and then the publisher does everything else. So nowadays things are different. You need the personal skills, you have to be sociable, the different kind of stakeholders that you should be having conversations with, Festival organizers, people who own bookstores.

You need to schedule store visits. You need to attend festivals, you need to be networking with festival organizers. You need to be doing readings and signings, meeting and greeting people who are your fans. She thought about, she spoke about the interesting experiences that she has had reading for a young audience. You know, people who read her books, you know, things like that. So times have changed. It's no longer, it's no longer like she said.

It's no longer just doing things the traditional way. Write your manuscript, stay in your office, stay in your village or stay in your wherever and then hand it off to the publisher. And then the publisher is responsible for sales and marketing. So you need to be personable because nowadays the modern author also has responsibilities for sales and marketing in the book. Then let's see what else. OK interpersonal skills are also necessary because you have to be able to build engagement around your titles, around your books.

Engagement is necessary for community building, whether online or offline. So she says interpersonal skills absolutely important. And she also said selling skills are important because to support the books in store you need selling skills. You're going to talk to people trying to get them to stock. During the book signing, you're interacting with patrons of the store. You also have to support your other stakeholders. That's first of all, organizers and the people who own the bookstores.

You have to support them in coming up with sales and marketing ideas, marketing collateral, things like that. And then of course, the personal copies that you're also going to sell on your own because you can't just rely totally on the income that will come from having your books in stores. So you heard it from someone who hasn't taken taken a very hard sales position like like I have? That these skills are absolutely essential and you should be paying attention to it.

And I hope that you guys are beginning to see the connection that weaves through all these things. I've spoken to somebody in Abuja running an NGO who's spoken about these things. The lady in the UK who's into merchandising, who's spoken about these things, the lady in Lagos who's into who has our own makeup line, these kind of skills have come up. What else? The fellow in aquaculture who's spoken about these sorts of things, I hope you guys have been able, are being able to see right now.

But I've been able to convince you guys of this, my core thesis, that we can't run away from these things. You're either going to do it consciously like I'm trying to do, or you're going to do it unconsciously or through osmosis because you discover this good idea. Or your husband says try this. Or you speak to some people and they say try that, but it is all sales and business development skills at the end of the day.

Then let's see what else. OK. We've spoken about the changes on the national stage. She says that Nigerian books and African books are becoming much more popular, especially for children, because there are fairs and festivals. So it's becoming a big scene. And yeah, so the final question was on whether this is profitable or not. And this was our frank answer. She says It is not yet a profitable space, but it is potentially profitable.

And I agree with that because actually the size of the market and the value that can be derived from the market depends on the participants being able to determine the value in the space and then promote the value in the space. That is what builds the market and that is where the authors are going to be able to take value from it. So Harry Potter and all those stuff, and what's that one? Not To Kill a Mockingbird. What's it called, this dystopian youth fiction in America.

Now, the reason why those books in America and the UK are big is not just because it magically happened, but it's because people are able to get together and think, look, we can get young people to read this kind of fantasy, fantasy and dystopian material. This is how we can sell it. They get together with concerted effort. They're able to create and market and then derive value from it. The same thing is going to have to happen on the Nigerian stage or on an African stage.

So for people like Chingiri Fedora who are writing these kinds of books, they're going to have to. Stakeholders are going to have to sit down and have those conversations. Children are not reading. What are the kind of things that they're reading? Are we getting wholesome values for this? What are local alternatives, local wholesome alternatives that we can get from an educational point of view, social, cultural, religious point of view?

How many festivals can we organize? Book fairs? How are we going to do this? Create this asset, you know, do all that. And this is where all the potential is going to come from, since that is already going on. And since that's already happening, and I agree, because I've started seeing some books pop up in Abuja because my wife is a reader. So you go to some stores and then you see a book and like, wow, OK, nine children's books.

Interesting. That didn't happen when when I was a kid. Because back in my day I was all any blighting and any blighting and gosh, well anyway, everybody knows any blighting I think anyway. So yes, not your profitable, but potentially could be profitable. Yes, definitely. The work is going on. And she admits that she has one book that she has broken even on. Now, why would you say break even for reading a book? That is because there are lots of costs that are involved in book production.

There is the printing of the book. There is the promotion of the book. Because think about it for different cities, phone calls, visits. I mean, you have to book flights or pay for bus trips at the very least. Then you also have to pay for the publishing and the typeset and then all of that. You also have to pay for illustrative work for the books because Chingiri is a, she's a good writer, but she is not a good illustrator.

And well, you know, lawyers are good with words, but lawyers are not very good with drawing. You know, architects are the ones who can draw very well. Yeah, I know stereotypes, but those are the kind of stereotypes we grew up with in Nigeria back in the day. If you're a lawyer, you're good with words. If you're an architect, you're good with drawing. So these are all the costs that go into the production of the book. And so because of that, she's been able to break even.

But I agree with her, I think the future is bright. It's a potentially huge market. It's a good thing that our children are reading more and that there are lots of alternatives beyond any blighting. Any blighting is not bad, don't get me wrong, but it's good that we have lots of local alternatives now in this space for our kids to read and to learn. So if you are interested in finding more about Mrs. Ifidiura, then her details are going to be in the show notes.

There's also going to be links to her, well let's say Amazon page or Amazon account. So if you want to buy a couple of books for your kids to read, if you are Nigerian, then please support her and then do so using the link that is going to be in the show notes. If you're not Nigerian, you're based in the UK, based in America, you're based in wherever. And you're curious what kind of books, what kind of artistry, what kind of literary greatness do we have coming up with Nigeria?

This is a good example of contemporary Nigerian fiction. And so, yeah, supporter. And yes, use the link and use the details over there. And support her, Buy her books, reach out, say hello. Tell her you found out on the podcast. So thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.