The subject of this story first got published in 2004. A lot has happened since that time, and most of it is about employers and publishers not holding up to their end of the deal. Now he’s taking a crack at building his own publishing company. But how did he get here?



What’s your oldest memory of money?
That would be the allowance I got from my parents growing up. But the awareness really came when I got into university and published two children’s books in my first year at university. I was 19 at the time.

How did you get into writing?
I had friends that loved reading and writing. We were bookworms. I also got lucky. When I was 17, an extended family friend started a publishing company, and someone in the family suggested that we worked together. The man asked me for a sample of my work, and I sent him some — which were terrible — but he liked them. After that, he gave me a story pitch and told me to write around it. He liked what I did and signed me to his publishing company.

Ah, great. Back to those books.
I published the two books in 2004 and got ₦8k in the first wave of royalties. My dad insisted that I bought shares at a bank and ₦5k went into that. I also paid ₦800 in tithes at my church. I’m not sure what happened to what I had left, but I remember that I bought gifts for my parents and my girlfriend at the time.

What came after?
One of the books was selected by an international organisation for a project they were working on at the time. They bought 1000 copies and distributed them across libraries in Nigeria.

Interesting. How much did you make off the book in subsequent years?
2005: ₦45,000

2006: ₦25,000

2007: ₦20,000

2008: ₦10,000

After the fifth payment, the publisher stopped paying me. The demand for the books had decreased, and he complained that people owed him money. In the middle of this, we had a fallout. He had some of my manuscripts he was supposed to publish that he didn’t, so I collected everything back.

That’s rough.
Yeah, I know. I finished university in 2008, went to serve in the north, and got a job at an insurance company. I got ₦30k from the company plus ₦9,775 from the federal government. I worked in three departments — admin, IT, and marketing. But I enjoyed the perks of working in marketing. I made between ₦2,000 and ₦3,000 every week on commissions alone.

The company also gave me a furnished apartment. I lived on my commissions and put the remaining money in my savings. By the time I finished service in 2009, I had saved about ₦1m.

That’s impressive.
After NYSC, I got a job at an IT firm in a state in the south-west. They were supposed to pay me ₦45k every month. I spent three months there and wasn’t paid once. Their excuse was that there were no sales, so they weren’t making money.

Continue: https://www.zikoko.com/money/naira-life/nairalife-of-a-persevering-author/