If book publishers can ascertain the integrity of their sales representatives, it will reduce the level of indebtedness by the latter, while also promoting a long lasting relationship between the two parties.
This is the view of the Nigerian Publishers Association (NPA), which hopes that in line with global best practices, there should be a new paradigm with respect to approach to their sales representatives.
Country Manager, Cambridge University Press, Aladesuyi Lawrence, spoke on the theme: ‘Book distribution and the future of publishing in Nigeria’ during a seminar as part of the just concluded Nigerian International Book Fair (NIBF) held at University of Lagos multipurpose hall on Wednesday, last week.
Aladesuyi lamented that for years, book publishing firms in Nigeria, have been at the mercy of sometimes dishonest sales representatives who often help themselves to the sweat of publishing companies by refusing to remit cash from sales of books collected from them.
Aladesuyi said unlike in saner climes, this trend has been allowed to prevail in Nigeria because this is a society where background checks are hardly carried out on prospective business partners.
He said: “If I registered a company 20 years ago and I want to use it today, I need to revalidate; but to do that, a discreet check must be carried out on me on my various activities including why I refused to sustain that company. But we are happy that now background checks are gradually being carried out in Nigeria because people want to take informed decision.
Some reps will owe Cambridge (Press) and still run and register with Longman Press. The advantage (of verifying prospective sales reps) is that you are dealing with somebody you know. Human beings are relatively different. Unfortunately, we are also in a society where people commit crimes and damn the consequences. But if you want to carry out a plan today and somebody has to do a check of your activities 20 years ago, these things won’t come up.”
Aladesuyi who challenged publishing firms to take a leaf from Cambridge style of distribution, described as ‘wasteful’ the manner in which distribution is being executed.
“Some of us run offices in each state of the federation. Some of us have vans to distribute nationwide, while those who don’t have contract them out. All these make business becomes unproductive,” he noted
Rather than incur huge bills, Aladesuyi suggested that publishing firms could have regional distributors at the zones, adding that they could then dump the books at the regional offices for their clients to pick up later.
President of Nigeria Publishers Association, Gbadega Adedapo, urged government to address inconsistent electricity supply, and ensure improved policy on importation of printing materials.
Gbadega described the seminar as an eye-opener for NPA to start doing things differently in the book distribution chain.
He said the event was also to checkmate those who masquerade as sales reps but eventually pirate books.
“We had always thought that only the poor patronise pirates, but we realised that it also includes the rich probably because the awareness is not there, while others simply find it difficult to identify the original from fakes. This is why we must as well acknowledge the integrity of our book sellers,” he concluded.
