The Book Business: A Critical Insight into the Nigerian Book Publishing Industry could only have been written by someone with vast experience and knowledge. The author, Dr. Ode Okore, was educated at Columbia University, New York. He has worked as a book editor on both sides of the Atlantic divide – the United States of America and Nigeria – and has used his broad experience, knowledge and intellect to give a lucid and scintillating diagnosis of the book publishing industry in Nigeria. Dr. Okore is bold and full of self-confidence, even authoritative, in the way he has taken on issues concerning the Nigeria book industry as well as the universities especially in the crucial areas of how they produce and consume intellectual products, books.
The central message of this book, however, is to be found in three key chapters: Chapter 1 (The Editor: His Qualifications and Training). Chapter 2 (The Editor as star) and chapter 10 (The Publishing Giants: How they retard the growth of the Publishing Industry). In all these chapters, Dr. Okore hits hard at the lack-lustre manner in which the industry is being run, mainly by people whom he describes as round pegs in square holes and square pegs in round holes. Here too, Dr. Okore comes out not only as a good writer and critic but also as a remarkable teacher as he clearly exposes to us all that the editor does before and during manuscript preparation.
He is emphatic that the editor has two main responsibilities: the first is to make a book accessible to the reading public and the second is to present the author in a credible and positive light. This is indeed an important lesson to all editors, writers and publishers. Writers and less experienced editors will certainly be fascinated by all this and this is one of the major attractions of this engrossing and hard-hitting book.
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