It is disheartening, therefore, that many writers do not get the reward for their efforts, especially in Nigeria, where writers are mostly outsmarted in several ways by deceptive publishers. For clarity, it is important to note that I am not by any means implying that all publishing houses in Nigeria are fraudulent. No. I know some honest ones who are actually serious about their business and are not there to defraud authors. But we must agree that many others lack basic transparency, and this has negatively affected the honest ones in the industry. Some of the modern publishing houses in the country appear to be doing better, especially in book promotion. They have adopted the template of their foreign counterparts, which is commendable.
Only a few people understand this, and only a few will agree that writing is one of the toughest things that people do. It is a task with a very high cognitive load. Besides that, it is lonely, intellectually demanding, and requires a lot of constructive thinking. In fact, explaining why a lot of thinking is required in the writing process, the Writing Centre of Princeton University has this to say: “Writing is ninety-nine percent thinking, one percent writing.”
It is disheartening, therefore, that many writers do not get the reward for their efforts, especially in Nigeria, where writers are mostly outsmarted in several ways by deceptive publishers. For clarity, it is important to note that I am not by any means implying that all publishing houses in Nigeria are fraudulent. No. I know some honest ones who are actually serious about their business and are not there to defraud authors. But we must agree that many others lack basic transparency, and this has negatively affected the honest ones in the industry. Some of the modern publishing houses in the country appear to be doing better, especially in book promotion. They have adopted the template of their foreign counterparts, which is commendable.
Traditionally, writers receive a paltry 10% from the sale of each copy of their book, whilst the publisher keeps 90%! Yet, the criminal publishers in the industry, who get 90% even when they invest nothing in promoting the book, still manipulate things to snatch the author’s miserly 10%! The greed is unprecedented!
Well, I have decided to write on this because, recently, another publishing fraud was uncovered. An old friend of mine, himself a writer, in what was utterly infuriating but not surprising to me owing to my experience with another fraudulent publisher, told me that his work had been published without his knowledge! He had submitted his work to this heavyweight publisher in April of 2019 for publishing consideration. Three months later, the heavyweight publisher responded with a rejection, telling him they had read his work and that it was not suitable for the company’s publishing programme. In the well-garnished rejection, they informed him that they looked forward to collaborating with him on another project, commended his “great writing skills,” and then wished him all the best in his writing career. Some days ago, he saw his published work on children’s literature! The title he gave it had gone; the content had undergone a series of surgical operations to eliminate and drown out traces of his voice. Because I had read his manuscript and made my contributions before he submitted it to the heavyweight publisher, it was easy for me to identify the reckless intellectual fraud that they carried out. Anyone who reads both books will see it all.
Their strongest belief, I suppose, was that defacing the book the way they did would conceal their fraud. Now, what has occupied our thoughts since this discovery came to light is how to prove that the book he submitted to them was brutally distorted by the heavyweight publisher and published under another writer’s name. Obviously, this will be a very contentious matter, seeing that the heavyweight publisher will definitely produce the book’s invented “author” in court to testify about how they wrote the book and submitted it, etc.
It is heartbreaking to finish your book, edit it to perfection, and then submit it to a publisher who ends up stealing it, leaving you with absolutely nothing. The implication, in my friend’s case, is that, as things stand, he may not publish his manuscript without being accused of plagiarism. Those who have read the one currently in circulation will probably accuse him of intellectual theft. He has not been in good shape since this scandal became known.
Dear reader, if I had not been a victim of intellectual fraud myself, I probably would not completely understand the psychological trauma that a writer suffers when they learn that the work they spent several wretched nights creating has been stolen by people who now fund their luxurious lifestyles from it, whilst the creator probably lives in penury.
The tragedy is that my friend is not the first victim of intellectual fraud at the hands of a Nigerian publisher. I have been a victim of the most brazen of intellectual frauds, and this was widely reported by SaharaReporters when the reckless fraud was uncovered. You may wish to search the company’s website to read more about it. In 2012, I submitted a manuscript I had written titled “Heroes of the Night” to an Ogun State-based publishing house, Melrose Books and Publishing Limited. Unlike my friend, Melrose accepted to publish my book, and we signed an agreement dated September 17, 2012. However, in a plot to outsmart me, they secretly published my book in 2012 (the same year it was submitted to them), exhausted that edition, reprinted it in 2013, and sold it in bulk copies to Universal Basic Education Commission [UBEC], who distributed it nationwide with the warning “NOT FOR SALE.” When UBEC invited me to Abuja in response to a letter I had written to them, it was obvious they did not know that the author of the book was being defrauded. Their legal officer informed me that, as part of UBEC’s policy, Melrose had presented the agreement we signed, and as a result, they thought I was being carried along. She then provided me with an important document at UBEC’s disposal and signed it as proof of its authenticity to aid my quest for justice.
Meanwhile, Melrose’s staff had informed me through several email correspondences that the company had not yet published my book. They always gave a truckload of excuses each time I made an enquiry about the status of my book. Tired of their never-ending excuses, I opted to withdraw “Heroes of the Night” from their publishing schedule in December of 2014, two years after I submitted it to them, unbeknownst to me that the book had been published since 2012 and distributed nationwide. It was in 2017 that a friend of mine drew my attention to published copies of the book seen in a secondary school library in Edo State whilst there for NYSC programme. I also received several calls from my former secondary school back home in Cross River that my book, “Heroes of the Night,” was being used there. They were proud that their former student had written a book! The book had my name as its author and the same title I had given it. The details of the illegally published book were in conformity with the agreement I had signed with Melrose Books and Publishing Limited.
In reaction, I sued Melrose Books and Publishing Limited at the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court via suit number FHC/L/CS/173/2018. Officials of the company, aware that the evidence against them was watertight and with absolutely no hope of getting out of the case alive, called for an out-of-court settlement, which I grudgingly agreed to after much persuasion from my lawyers. I did not trust the sincerity of Melrose and its officials; I had no reason to trust people who had overseen that magnitude of intellectual fraud. The executed “terms of settlement” were then entered as the judgement of the court on Thursday, May 4, 2023. Melrose officials, in a bid to create the impression that they were serious about the so-called settlement, paid some of the money and have since fled, refusing to liquidate the judgement debt. No one knows their whereabouts right now. Not willing to back down, I commenced an enforcement proceeding to recover the judgement debt. Since going into hiding, they have vehemently refused to honour court summons and have equally refused to comply with the court’s judgement.
The court, infuriated at their attitude and determined to enforce its judgement, has ordered that all the company’s Board of Directors, namely: Adelekan Adesanya Iyiola (Chairman), Femi Adelekan (Managing Director), Adelekan Adewumi Adekemi, Adedamilola Adelekan, and Adebola Adelekan, should be produced in court at all costs. As things stand, they risk getting imprisoned for their blunt refusal to obey the judgement of the court. As we found out, they have abandoned their official premises and are now operating from a hideout as a strategy to evade arrest. It is left to be seen how long they will remain in their hideout before the law smokes them out.
These are some of the harrowing experiences that Nigerian writers face in their bid to get published. I decided to highlight my personal experience on a similar matter to lend credence to the fact that intellectual thievery in the Nigerian publishing industry has become commonplace, yet not much has been talked about such an important problem, which can kill creativity in the country as authors become discouraged from writing books that will eventually be stolen by those who claim to be publishers. Publishers taking advantage of authors who seek to push their creativity into the world is a serious matter that is rarely talked about. It is why most authors now resort to self-publishing to protect their work from possible cases of fraud.
Whilst there is enough legislation in place to deal with these recurring intellectual frauds, it does not seem to be enough. I think that the Association of Nigerian Authors [ANA], which is the largest body of writers throughout Africa, should consider collaborating with relevant government agencies like the Nigerian Copyright Commission [NCC] and others to put machineries in motion to protect writers from getting their works stolen by greedy “publishers” who either sideline authors altogether or legitimately publish their books and then devise ways of ripping off the authors. This is important because preventing the theft seems to be better than fighting it after it has occurred. At that point, the author puts in a lot of money, which he does not have, to reclaim his intellectual work, but there is no guarantee that the author will be victorious in the end.
Nigeria is a country where authors do not get paid an advance against royalties before their books are published. Although this is gradually changing with the new generation of publishers, 99.9% of publishing houses in Nigeria do not pay an advance to authors before going to press. They accept your work, if they please, publish it, refuse to promote it to justify their outrageous 90%, and then tell the author after five, six, or even ten years that they have an accumulated royalty of ₦5,000, for example, without justifying the ridiculous figure.
If creativity and all forms of intellectuality must thrive in Nigeria, new ways that complement the available legislation must be urgently formulated to protect the invaluable work that authors spend several miserable nights creating to educate our society. We must not forget that without writers, the world would be a sorry place, submerged in gross darkness.
I hope that the latest victim gets justice as he embarks on this long, tiring journey, with multiple and overly frustrating adjournments waiting for him. Even my case, which had such irrefutable evidence that Melrose Books and Publishing Limited had to admit in open court that it had defrauded me, could not be salvaged from the claws of these endless adjournments! Personally, I have always felt that when seeking justice, long adjournments, when repeated, hurt the victim but favour his tormentors. The tormentors understand the system and how weak it is, and they manipulate it to their advantage to frustrate their victims and wear them out. I hope that whatever happens, the latest victim remains steadfast. Their shenanigans cannot last forever.
The uncomfortable truth is that there are possibly several victims of intellectual fraud scattered throughout the country who are either unaware that they have been defrauded or whose voices are not loud enough to reach the uttermost part of the desert. This is why we must begin conversations on how to rid our publishing space of such deceptive so-called “publishers.” This is why, in my case, in line with the court, we are determined to do whatever it takes to arrest and detain all the aforementioned members of the Board of Directors of Melrose Books and Publishing Limited. No one should carry out such a massive fraud and be allowed to sleep peacefully at night or even in the afternoon. We must not allow intellectual fraud of this magnitude to fester and continue to deprive authors of the deserved fruit of their labour. The labourer deserves his wage, and so do authors!