Linda Crowl -- publishing in the Pacific Islands: page 2

CONSIDERATIONS FOR BOOK PUBLISHING IN THE PACIFIC ISLANDS

Market size, television and video, climate, training, competition from other publishers and governments are all significant for anyone publishing in the region, as they are to publishers elsewhere.

Market size

The Pacific Islands region, while large geographically (over 30 million km), is small in terms of land and population ‹ near eight million, of which only one ‹ Papua New Guinea ‹ constitutes nearly 50 per cent. Even if Hawai'i and New Zealand were added to the market (5 million more people), native Hawaiians are just 12.5 per cent of the total population; Maori just 12% and Pacific Islanders merely 5% of New Zealand's population (Douglas 1994, NZ Dept of Statistics 1992).
The Pacific Islands have more than 1,200 languages, many of which are spoken by a few hundred people and have never been written. The Pacific Islands have several lingua franca ‹ English (in various dialects), French and Pijin (in various dialects). Spanish remains a colonial language in Easter Island. The majority of Pacific Islands people speak two or more languages.
The South Pacific Board of Educational Assessment cautions that literacy rates vary across the region, and are difficult to compare because figures might measure vernacular or English literacy, children in and/or out of school, and when children begin learning English in school. In order to give a general idea of the range of literacy, one quarter to one third of Solomon Islands children are not in school, whereas nearly all Cook Islands children are (Johnston 1995). Annual per capita incomes are as low as A$ 500©700 in Tokelau, Kiribati and Solomon Islands; notable exceptions are French Polynesia and Nauru (Fairbairn 1994:12). Achieving economies of scale is difficult in a market of this size and diversity.

Television and Video

Television sets and video cassette recorders (VCRs) cost far more than books, but people are more likely to spend money on the former rather than the latter. Television has moving, coloured, talking pictures, all available at the flick of a switch and watching does not require near the effort of reading books. Like people throughout the world, Pacific Islands people will sit in front of television and watch anything that is programmed, but they will not pick up any book to read. (See Ogden & Crowl 1993 for further discussion of the effects of television and video in the Pacific Islands.) Indeed, so pervasive is television that the purchase of a TV monitor and VCR often takes precedence over other necessities, including payment of school fees. Books just do not have the same appeal; therefore, publishers have a much harder marketing task.

Climate

The climate in the Pacific Islands is conducive neither to machinery nor to paper. The humidity and heat of tropical islands shortens the life of equipment. Paper curls and molds. Buildings are rarely air conditioned as electricity charges would cripple most publishers. The islands are threatened by cyclones for several months of the year.

Training

Publishing "stands at a crossroads between intellectual activity and commercial enterprise" (Altbach 1975:19) which requires skill and expertise in a variety of tasks. The scope of publishing ranges from the tedious to the international, from pursuing errant commas to making multi©million dollar deals. These tasks include writing, editing (both substance and copy), typesetting, layout, graphic design, proofreading, indexing, photography, film development, as well as all the particular tasks of printing, such as setting up signatures, making films, opaquing negatives, making plates, aligning printing machines, collating, binding, laminating. When any book is published, it must be stocked and marketed, which involves knowing accounts, outlets,publicity, salesmanship. Publishing from its beginnings involves budgeting and fund raising. Any publisher, although not perhaps doing each task himself, has to manage all of them. In a region of eight million people, the number of educated and trained personnel is small; likewise the number of people who are interested and competent in the tasks of publishing is smaller yet.
     Moreover, wages are quite low, eg, rates for those employed in printing in Fiji begin at F$ 1.57 (Kant 1995). Although publishers and printers in particular keep financial costs down in the Pacific Islands, there are opportunity costs. Where workers are kept on minimal wages with little hope of promotion or advanced training, work is likely to be sloppy. Disgruntled workers soon quit or are fired, which means that training must begin anew.
     Although calls have been made for publishing associations (eg, Williams 1986), none exist. The closest forum for book publishers is the Pacific Islands News Association; many news publishers are also book publishers. Oxenham (nd) prepared A Handbook for Publishers in Solomon Islands, and Kristen Press published The KPI Style Guide. Otherwise, little has been published to guide publishers in the South Pacific.
     Similar to the Rongorongo Press in Beru, Kiribati, many Pacific Islands publishing ventures depend on serendipity when it comes to hiring qualified professionals, gifted with the art, and trained in the skills, of producing books. In 1862 Hiram Bingham sent a manuscript (St Matthews translated into Gilbertese) to Honolulu. Thirteen months later a ship brought, not his printed books, but a printing press. Fortunately for the mission, a printer named Hotchkiss was shipwrecked on Abaiang. The mission employed him, thus was able to publish St Matthews, St Johns and Ephesians in Gilbertese (Eastman).

Foreign Competition

A tendency in the Pacific Islands is to believe that foreign publishers will offer a 'better' (a.k.a., glossier, nicer) book than local publishers are able to produce and can market it to the world, earning untold wealth for the writer. This may be true in some cases, but it is not true for all. In fact, unsuspecting individuals and parties in the Pacific Islands are sometimes cheated by slick overseas operators who promise the moon, take Pacific Islands money and do not produce the promised goods. An example is Visions of the Pacific (Arnell & Wolk 1993), a coffee-table book on the Pacific Arts Festival, which was held on Rarotonga in 1992. Largely a public relations exercise initiated by Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Henry, the book came out after the festival (thereby missing its main market) and cost the government over $300,000 (Crocombe 1994). I saw a few copies for sale in local shops in July 1995; at NZ $100 per copy, few Cook Islanders or visitors from other Pacific Islands could afford one. Many backpackers from beyond the Islands could not afford it; more well-heeled tourists, considering aeroplane baggage allowances, might not want the weight. Most of the copies were stacked in the Cultural Centre.
An Icelandic entrepreneur demanded, and received, US$ 2.5 million in advance to publish Papua New Guinea's 25th independence book. Government departments were told to pay for advertising in the book and to place advance orders at K 70 per book. Papua New Guinea's 25th anniversary has come and gone; the book has yet to appear (Book mystery 1995:14-15).
Each of these books could have been produced locally. Cook Islands and Papua New Guinea have people with experience in publishing. Even if colour separations and printing had to be done overseas, the photography, writing, layout, and management would have been done in those countries, employing local people. Therefore, a good part of the money would have remained at home, being reinvested in the economy. Moreover, the accountability would have been higher. The PNG government ‹ because it would have known the publishers ‹ would have been more likely to receive its product or, in the worst scenario, to pursue them legally if they did not produce. Island governments can seldom afford international legal action.

Local competition

Despite Melville and Stevenson's romantic literature and despite smiling hotel and rent-a-car personnel in the Islands, the region is not pacific. Local competition is quite fierce. Robert Holding, who ran Wesley Bookshop in Apia and now runs Books Pasifika and Pasifika Press in Auckland, discussed the politics of publishing:

    'Feelings run high on the development, structure and usage of language, and are often complicated by unrelated "political" factors .... a Samoan teacher will not use colourful well-produced readers because diacriticals are part of the text .... Hidden agendas abound.
     'Books have been either withdrawn from sale or denied publication by politicians and officials. This can occur when projects are government sponsored and fall foul of official approval. More often than not this relates to a personal, family, or village issue rather than to the academic worth of the book. It is a very real problem for some books to gain the recognition and usage they deserve. This applies equally overseas where professional jealousy knocks published authors. An excellent language resource book is not used by a major institution for this reason, and unnecessary time and effort is being spent on producing a similar work.
     'It is not unusual for authors to be strongly criticised for interpreting a cultural tradition in a particular way. Upset customers have demanded that books be removed from bookshop shelves, complaining that such a book should not be allowed. Older people in particular are often unable to accept books as a medium of expression; rather they are seen as statements of absolute fact. Possibly this can be explained by the mana associated with the Bible, being the first book published in Samoan it embodied truth and authority' (Holding 1991:7).

John Saunana spoke about the need for editors,

'If I find a good editor in Solomon Islands ‹ one I would be comfortable with ‹ I will consider whether to publish there or not .... We need some neutral outside [person] who can be flexible ‹ care enough to look into your brain to see what you have in mind without imposing his own opinion' (quoted by L. Chapman 1993:27).

It is difficult to be apolitical when everyone knows everyone else, when traditional rivalries are of long standing and when economics and politics of scarcity come into play.
Competition can be so fierce that lives are threatened and business suffers. Fata Sano Malifa, publisher of the Samoa Observer and books, "has been sued, assaulted, received death threats, seen his printing plant and newsroom destroyed by fire in mysterious circumstances, had his paper ripped up in parliament, and been accused of inciting the public" (Aiavao 1994). Although authorities have determined that the fire was caused by arson, no one has been brought to trial. (Arson resulting from publishing feuds happens throughout the world, e.g., Halberstam 1979:158-161 for examples about US media.) Sano and Jean Malifa were able to restart their newspaper and book publishing with generous contributions by friends and faithful readers. They are reprinting Sano's Song and Return because the fire destroyed their stock. Fortunately for them, they had a copy of the book from which to reprint. However, heaps of Sano's as-yet-unpublished writing was lost forever in the fire (J. Malifa 1995).

Governments

The duty on books entering Western Samoa is 25 per cent. This comes on top of the publisher's price, shipping costs, and the overhead costs and profit of booksellers. As Western Samoa has one of the lowest per capita incomes of the region, the cost, relative to income, of purchasing books is obviously quite high. In a country that aspires to a higher standard of living, education is key. If people cannot afford books, education will suffer. Even institutions, such as the Nelson Memorial Library, Le Univesite Aoao o Samoa, the Teachers' College and the USP Centre and School of Agriculture, cannot afford books sufficient to meet demand.
     In order to avoid importing books, some governments of the South Pacific operate government printeries to publish laws, regulations, debates, reports and statistics. They often provide wider social services, e.g., by printing school books. The costs remain substantial as all paper must be imported. In Western Samoa, the duty on newsprint is 20 per cent, and 60 per cent on plates, film and ink.
     Printeries, however, are not at the top of Pacific Islands governments' priority list. The present global paper shortage and greatly fluctuating currency exchange rates strain already financially troubled governments. Solomon Islands established a government printery in 1963 (L. Chapman 1993:12), but the country has had severe financial problems and privatized the operation in 1994 (Crowl 1994). Governments can and do throw their weight behind specific projects, which illustrate political priorities. For example, the government of Fiji has a Fijian dictionary project; it has nothing comparable for Fiji Hindi.
     Moreover, sometimes governments seek to censor publishing operations when they become too critical of government. For instance, the Marshall Islands Journal published stories about Judge Byrd's ruling against President Amata Kabua in a land dispute and Kabua's subsequent dismissal of Byrd. Government withdrew all its educational texts printing from Micronitor (MIJ's parent company), causing severe financial hardship for the company. The government then opened its own print shop (Marshall Islands Journal 1991; Crowl 1991).
     A last example is that of Word Publishing Company of Boroko, Papua New Guinea, which pays local authors, artists and printing employees to produce readers, social studies for schools and simple reference books, in addition to publishing its newspaper, The Times of Papua New Guinea. Word published valid concerns about the devastating amount of logging done by Malaysian firms. The PNG government, under pressure from those Malaysian firms, sought to put Word out of business by increasing competition and preventing market access (vom Busch 1994).

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