Launch of the 12th Ghana International Book Fair – eBooks: A New Tool for Promoting Literacy and Global Development – A reading nation is a winning nation

A Paper Presented By Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, Managing Director, G-Pak Ltd, At The Launching Of The 12th Ghana International Book Fair Scheduled For Wednesday, 16th July, 2014 At The Accra International Press Center, Ridge-Accra.

The Chairman Mr Elliot Agyare, CEO, Smartline Publishers Ltd, and former President of the Ghana Book Publishers Association.

fellow publishers, distinguished guests;

It is a delight and indeed a great opportunity for me to be invited by the organizers of the Ghana International Book Fair or GIBF for short, to speak at the launch of such an important event, the 12^th Ghana International Book Fair.

The GIBF has become a great platform to gather players in this important industry, which is under a lot of stress. I am a firm believer in when the going gets tough, the tough must get going. So for us in the book industry, we need to see this Fair as one of our strategies to tame the challenges we are undergoing.

It is said that you never waste a good crisis. So we should ensure that all of us players within the book industry close our ranks, come together and strategize to save Ghana out of the challenges that face us as an industry. A manifestation of the challenges is a steep decline in reading habits with its concomitant developmental challenges.

The good thing is that the solution to this challenge lies within our power. It is teamwork, so Ghana Book Publishers Association, the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Library Authority, Ghana National Commission on Culture, the Copyright Administration Office of Ghana, the Ghana Book Development Council, the Ghana Printers and Paper Converters Association, Ghana Library Association, Ghana Association of Writers, the media, teachers and parents, we all have to play our roles if we should succeed.

Ghana has the capacity to resolve the problem, all we need to do is to think and plan smart, show and provide leadership and execute flawlessly, strategies that we come up with.

The theme for this year’s Fair in the 4^th Quarter is eBooks: A New Tool for Promoting Literacy and Global Development – A reading nation is a winning nation. The organizers could not have put it more aptly, the link between literacy and development. Joseph Addison, an English writer in the 17^th Century rightly put it “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body”. We all know that to develop, we need to exercise the mind and this only comes through reading. So we need to do all we can to promote literacy and the act of reading and writing.

We can only win as a nation if we go back to reading and writing. It is in reading our own authors that we can celebrate our culture and know ourselves. It is said that till the lion learns to tell its story, the tale of hunting will always favour the hunter. We need to stop the acculturation of our children, else we should not be surprised at some of the behaviours we see in our youth, which are deviations from our culture.

It is through reading that we will be able to learn from the mistakes and the gains of others without repeating their mistakes. We need not, and we dare not reinvent the wheel.

It is through literacy that we can offer our people and especially our children the ability to compete in this global village that we find ourselves. It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. All of us as a people need something that will stretch our imaginations—something that will help us make sense of our own lives and encourage us to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from our own.

The importance of reading cannot be overstated; I will want us to consider these 8 reasons why literacy is critical; and the way it connects to our development as a country within this global world.

1. Exposure to New Things: Through reading, you expose yourself to new things, new information, new ways to solve a problem, and new ways to achieve one thing. Exploration begins from reading and understanding.
2. Self Improvement: – Reading does help you form a better you. Through reading, one begins to understand the world more. Self-improvements start from the reading; through reading, you create a structured path towards a better understanding and better actions to take in the future.
3. Improve Understanding:- The more one reads, the more you understand one thing: the A to Z of a thing. Reading also increases the understanding of the rules of life, in order for you to adapt, adopt and socialize better. To play well in a game, you first need to understand the rules well.
4. Preparation to Action: –Before you take action on anything, where should you seek for help and guidance? Reading is an essential way that can help you out. In today’s world, getting reviews and feedback from other people can make a big impact on your next decision, and the pros and cons of each choice.
5. Gain Experience from Other People: – When you are reading, you are actually gaining the knowledge and experience of someone else. It can hasten your success towards a goal, as you don’t need to repeat the same mistakes while focusing on the right path in achieving one thing. It’s like a mountain of gems for you to discover in books, which contain people’s successes, failures and advice. Life is too short for you to keep repeating the mistakes of others, in order for you to reach the results that someone might already have reached. There are more than four thousand billionaires and 12 million millionaires today. To become one of them, the first thing is to learn and get to know their past, what they did in the past that brought them where they are today. Reading is a great path to get to know them, and learn from these great people.
6. Tools of Communicating: –Communication is a most important tool which can be transmitted through reading. As you communicate through reading, you understand more, and thus you can communicate better with people. As with a person that knows nothing, he hasn’t had anything to share, and he probably doesn’t even understand what people are sharing. Through reading, you build a more solid foundation for communication. It is one of the most important tools we use every day to connect with each other. Whereas if you don’t read, you can’t even connect with the world and what people are talking about out there. Reading connects us with the world.
7. Connecting Your Brain:When reading, you’re in full silence because reading connects directly to your brain. In silence, you seek for more; in silence, your brain is clear and focuses. Thus, you learn and grow, and therefore you feel and see from the point of view of the author about everything in life. Hence you shape a better self. Watching & listening does not do this – this is what we miss with the newspaper reviews on TV and Radio.
8. Boost Imagination and Creativity: – Reading exposes you to a world of imagination, showing you nothing is impossible in this world. By reading, you are exploring a different angle to see a thing you’ve known, on how different action leads to different results. Books are beyond imagination. It’s like a huge spider web, where you keep linking to more and more to things you knew, and things you just learn, structuring new solutions and answers.

With the importance of literacy established, we need to accept that we are currently in the digital world. Much as we still have traditional hard copy books, and I believe that they will still have their place in literacy, it has been found from research that in the US, people who moved to e-books are now still picking the hard copies and keeping both. So for those of us in print industry there is work for us to do in producing hard copies. However the e-book phenomenon is here and without appreciating it and understanding it, we stand the risk of being left behind in the global world. It is not an issue of whether it is a blessing or a curse – we need to tame it and ride it to our benefit.

The eBook is a book in electronic format, downloaded from owners or the Internet onto various digital platforms from which it can be read or be printed as books. eBooks present many benefits and advantages that will help address some of the challenges that we face and help democratize knowledge and drive global developments.

It is very simple and easy to purchase and download ebooks through the Internet. With the speed at which the penetration of mobile broadband is spreading, the challenge of internet availability will soon be a thing of the past. Surfline and other Ghanaian firms are piloting the LTE technology already here in Ghana.

What are the benefits and advantages of eBooks,?

1. EBooks are delivered almost instantaneously. You can purchase, download and start reading them within minutes, without leaving your chair. You don’t have to go to a bookstore to buy them, neither wait for them for days, weeks and sometimes more to arrive in the mail.
2. No trees are required to manufacture paper for the pages of eBooks.
3. When you need certain information, you can get it immediately, by downloading an eBook.
4. eBooks take up less space. Digital storage only, you don’t need a library or a room for them.
5. eBooks are portable. You can carry a whole library of hundreds of books with you, on a digital medium, lightweight.
6. With today’s technology you can read eBooks everywhere, on the trotro, taxi, airplane, and while standing in line.
7. eBooks are more safely stored and carried from one place to another than ordinary books. They also withstand time more than hard copy books.
8. eBooks can show links, for easy access to more information and related websites.
9. eBooks are searchable. You can easily search for any information in an eBook, instead of turning page after page.
10. eBooks can be interactive and contain audio, video and animations, which can enhance the message that the author is trying to convey.
11. Since eBooks are delivered through the Internet, there are no packing and shipping expenses. How are we taking advantage of this global market, if others can come into our space, we should also go into theirs.
12. Fonts in eBooks can be resized, making it easier to read for people with sight challenges. With additional software it is possible to turn some of the eBooks into audio books.
13. It is possible to purchase an eBook 24 hours a day, every day of the year, from the comfort of your own house or office. You can purchase and download an eBook.
14. People are already spending a lot of time in front of their computers, so why not read and eBook, instead of doing something else?
15. eBooks are very easy to sell and distribute, but they will require new skills how are we preparing for that.
16. It democratizes access to books, as the people living in the urban areas and the rural areas, those in the developed world and those of us in Ghana can have access to the books at the same time. It also means that for us as publishers we also can have access to the global reader at the same time. The question is how are our Ghanaian authors and publishers planning to take advantage of that. If the Ghanaian market is small we don’t need to stay only here. We can publish hard copies for the local market and the eBooks for the global and local markets too.
17. eBooks can be printable, so that if you wish to read an eBooks in the traditional way, you can very inexpensively print it with your home printer or at any internet café or com center as we used to call them. For us the commercial printers how are we taking advantage of the eBook and the spread of digital print technology to distribute books differently.

We ignore the new technologies to our own peril, as they will not be wished away. What we need to do is to master them quickly and find ways in which we use that to redefine our business models. Otherwise we will become like the businesses that thought they were in a horse-business while their competitors like the Fords etc. who define their business as that of transportation, survived. Even that business model has been overtaken, that industry now sees itself as being in the communication business as people do not need to travel to do what they have to do anymore.

It is all about redefining ourselves otherwise we become extinct. Yes eBook is a critical New Tool for Promoting Literacy and Global Development. We ignore it at our own peril.

Mr Chairman permit me to also raise a few issues that require all of us to take action that will lead to the development of our country.

1. The President and Minister of Education’s commitment to 100% and 50% respectively of local content in the publishing and printing of textbooks is worth our commendation. With this commitment from the government, I will call on the Ghana Book Publishers Association, and the Ghana Printers and Paper Converters Association to cooperate to ensure that we actually keep the 100%, even a 50% of that money in Ghana. It is in the strategic interest of the publishers to allow their Ghanaian printers to keep the work here. It might mean some short-term sacrifices but in the long run it will inure to our benefit and that of our people.

To paraphrase the Minister of Education, do you know what it will do to the psych and confidence of our young pupils when they know that the books they read and use at school are published and printed by their own Ghanaian parents. This will help stabilize the cedi, which depreciation is adversely affecting us all and we are all complaining about. It will give jobs to our children and it will give them that competitive advantage they need to compete in the global world.

2. To reverse the poor reading culture in the country will require our entire collective efforts to fix it. It includes the following;
   1. I urge the Executive through the Ministry of Education and Parliament to consider the proposal by the Ghana Book Publishers Association and the Ghana Printers and Paper Converters Association to get the National Book Policy and the Textbook Distribution Policy passed into law as an Act of Parliament to save the Book Industry from collapsing.
   2. I urge the Ministry of Education to consider as a matter of urgency to procure supplementary readers for schools. The last time this exercise took place was in 1999. It is good to get the pupils textbooks, but we know it is not enough. There is the need for supplementary readers, 15 years is too long a time. I urge that we invest in our children. Let’s remember a reading nation is a winning nation.
   3. I also ask that even as the Ministry provides the supplementary readers we need to re-introduce reading time on the timetable of schools. In the absence of that most of the children are not reading. Currently as part of Graphic CSR we are donating Junior Graphic to some schools, but for some of the schools to find time to read is a problem. These schools will need reading to be made mandatory for them to see the importance.
   4. It is important that the Ministry of Education and other governmental agencies consider and recognize the Ghana Book Publishing Associations, the Ghana Printers and Paper Converters Association and other stakeholder associations as partners in this endeavor and engage more actively to develop the Ghanaian Book Industry
   5. We as parents and guardians also need to lead by example. How many of us are reading for the kids to learn from us. How many of us are buying books for them, it could be eBooks for the kids as gifts and getting them to read.
   6. The radio & TV stations should measure their newspaper review and encourage people to read.
   7. Because we are not reading we are not encouraging our authors to write. It is important that write. Our graveyards are filled with too many unwritten books. I encourage our leaders, political and corporates to write. President Mahama has been writing for Daily Graphic, so I am sure we might get books from him before he leaves office, if not surely at the pace at which he writes we will get his memoires when he completes his term. We need all our past Presidents to leave us their knowledge in books. It is important for our history and development. I am sure I am talking to myself too.

Watch out this year for a book published by Graphic, authored by Mabel Aku Banasseh, our Court Correspondent on the proceedings of the Supreme Court on the Electoral petition. Book your copy now, I have seen the transcript, it is a masterpiece.

Mr. Chairman ladies and gentlemen, I pray we will embrace eBooks as a critical new tool blending it creatively with traditional books to drive literacy for global development. God bless us all.

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