The menace of book piracy in Kenya is real and is believed to deny authors a good market share within the country. The negative impact is so real that in 2017, the Kenya Publishers Association identified Nakuru County as the center stage of book piracy in Kenya.
According to KPA, school textbooks are the major targets in the piracy trade, given that they make up the bulk of the Kenyan market, with guaranteed sales. What’s more intriguing is that these counterfeit books are sold at the same amount as the originals. This is because, to many buyers, it is hard to differentiate the fake from the original.
The greatest threat to learners is that the scanning of the original by pirates may contain errors that may confuse or mislead the students, thereby compromising the quality of education.
The impacts of book piracy in Kenya extend to the income of authors. More so, the publishing industry is supposed to make good revenue from selling books. However, hundreds of millions of money are lost to piracy, and others miss on royalty income with each loss. Authors also lack the morale to develop new books, culminating in the loss of employment in various departments of the publishing industry.
Book writers are shunning the creative industry thanks to book piracy in Kenya, and creative writing no longer makes any sense. The time and effort spent producing a book do not yield the right results.
Publishing transcends printing and incorporates content creation, book designing, editorial world, marketing, warehousing, legal and financial aspects. When there is a prevalence of book piracy in Kenya, the government loses value-added tax. This results from untraceable book sales.
On the other hand, honest distributors and bookshops experience low book sales, which goes back to the author, who misses out on everything. It is a chain reaction that affects major players in the publishing industry, and the government must try and fight book piracy in Kenya to a triumphant end.
There need to be concerted efforts from the government, players in the publishing industry, and the citizens to weeding out book piracy in Kenya to give authors the morale to develop more books for the Kenyan market.
