By Mmathabo Maebela
When Nick Mulgrew founded uHlanga Press in 2014, he did not fathom that it would publish 40 poetry books in its first 10 years. This milestone was marked last month with an open online series of conversations with authors. Recently, Rhodes University graduate Mulgrew talked to Grocott’s Mail about publishing poetry in South Africa.
Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get into the publishing industry?
I was very fortunate. Someone who was in my Honours class sent me an opportunity for an internship. What we did was try to get photocopy shops in Makhanda to be allowed to sell books. I knew from that time that there was a problem with the supply of books in South Africa, and I was just sort of getting involved with publishing school literary magazines with my friends from UCT. We did one called Prufrock, which was great, but magazines are very difficult to run, especially in South Africa. Around that time, there weren’t that many places that were publishing poetry, and it was difficult for young people to find places to get published. So basically, I somehow lucked my way into the publishing industry, and what I found there was something that just wasn’t working for people in South Africa. Most books sold in South Africa are imported, and it is very much a colonial book market.
What are some of the challenges you have encountered in these 10 years?
One of the key challenges has been having very little idea of how this is going to work. I didn’t really have any big marketing plans or ideas or anything like that. I just trusted that the books were of good quality and that would be good enough. We had a very successful book by Kholeka Putuma back in 2017, and that sold thousands of copies, but we couldn’t keep up with the distribution, and you know, cash flow started to become an issue. So, a big challenge was to get proper national distribution and to get a proper sort of business going. The main challenges have been trying to do things that I had no idea how to do, like publishing books in Xhosa. So, it’s mostly been the unknowns and not knowing that it’s going to work out.
What is the one moment in uHlanga’s history that you find particularly defining?
There are a few options. The first one is Thabo Jijana’s book, which won the Ingrid Jonker Prize, because then I knew that what I had done was deemed good by my peers. Another would be Koleka Putuma’s book being huge. I thought, ohh wow, people really do want to read poetry, and it’s a matter of making something that touches people and is accessible to people. Another one is releasing the books in Xhosa, and for people to say this is a good contribution because, you know, Xhosa has such a long, storied, and beautiful literary history of people collaborating, making works, and speaking up for their perspective. And that was a tradition that I really wanted to feel like I could contribute to. One last one is that I got to work with Jacques Coetzee on a book. For me, that was personally really satisfying.
How did the idea of having an open online webinar as a way of marking UHlanga’s 10th anniversary come about?
So, the Open Book Festival is run by a bookstore in Cape Town called The Book Lounge. They have lots of events and things like that. When I came to marking 10 years of uHlanga, I wanted to mark it with people who supported me through the process. And so I approached them, saying, “Well, would you like to mark this somehow?” and these online conversations came about. Because the Open Book Festival and The Book Lounge are friendly to writers, all the other poets whom I wanted to speak to were super happy to jump on board. Maneo, Jacques, Pieter, Athambile, all jumped on, and it just seemed like an easy and fun way to mark the occasion, and to share some wisdom.
What did you hope your listeners would take away from the conversations?
I think the main thing is that it is up to you to create your literary world. No matter where you are, if you are a writer, you must create your own community, your own world, and do your own thing. It is important to find friends, to find like-minded people, and to create your own world of writing. We need to share and create real-world connections with each other because we’re living in an age in which our technologies and our discourses are alienating people from each other. Something I’ve learned over 10 years of publishing and reading hundreds of manuscripts is that people are very similar to each other. We really are, as a people, the same, and we speak in one voice. I think it’s been so hard with all of these social changes to see that we are all speaking the same language. It’s just a matter of understanding and hearing each other.
What is the one aspect of publishing that you wish people knew about?
I would like everyone to know how many different people it takes to get a book on the shelf and what portion goes to every person. A book might cost, say, R200. Well, 15% of that first goes to the government, and 40% of what remains goes to the bookstore. Then 25% of what remains goes to the distributor and the sales team that has told the bookstore the book is ready. Then you must subtract the printing. Yeah. Of the R200 that you pay at the bookstore. I only received R50. I must pay the author, the person who typesets the book, designs the cover, does the proofreading, and all the editing, and that’s why I must do all of that myself – the margins are so tight. Books are expensive in South Africa. If we had a bigger industry, it would be cheaper, and then there would be more money.
And now we’re 10 years in. In another 10 years, what do we look like?
Yeah, I don’t know. I think if uHlanga is going to survive another 10 years, we need to think as an industry about increasing the markets and readership for South African books. We need books to be accessible and affordable to people. How that happens, I’m not so sure. Removing VAT from books would be a good sign. But I would hope that, if we are to speak to each other again in 10 years’ time, we will have found better ways for people to get hold of books because South Africans read, all South Africans read. They want to read poetry. You know, poetry has huge significance in our traditions, individual traditions, and collective traditions. And there’s no reason why this shouldn’t grow. So, in 10 years, if we’re able to publish another few books and give some new writers more of a chance to shine and to show the rest of the world what their world looks like, that would be good.
Find the uHlanga online conversations on the Open Book Festival page on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@openbookfestival7744/videos
