Manoeuvring Through the Traffic Jam: A Conversation With Magnus Okeke About OkadaBooks and Digital Publishing in Nigeria.

Abstract

OkadaBooks is an Android application and online platform for publishing and reading books electronically. It was founded by author and engineer Okechukwu Ofili and won mobile service provider MTN Nigeria’s App of the Year Award (2013) in the category ‘Best Overall App’ (Osuagwu). At the time of writing, OkadaBooks offer their users more than 200 000 titles which have been downloaded more than one million times. OkadaBooks content ranges from novels and poetry to contemporary African comics, self-help literature and children’s literature. The newer material is to a large extent written by non-established writers who use the app as a way to reach readers rather than to earn money by letting the reader access their texts for free. Other writers’ books can be purchased through the app using a variety of payment methods. This interview with Magnus Okeke was done via email in September 2018, five years after the launch of OkadaBooks. Okeke became OkadaBooks’s first employee at the end of 2014. He leads what he calls a ‘proactive customer support team’ who assist customers via phone, email, playstore and other channels. Okeke has studied computer science at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos, Nigeria, and is currently studying to become a product manager.

Notes

1 Sally Kenneth Dadzie is the author of more than ten crime fiction and horror books. The Fourth Finger, His Little Black Book and Fish Brain Clan and Fish Brain Madhouse, which are part of her Fish Brain series, are her most downloaded titles at OkadaBooks. Some of these were published as a series of posts at the author’s blog moskedapages.com. Afro: The Girl with the Magical Hair was written and published by OkadaBooks’s founder and CEO Okechukwu Ofili.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Swedish Research Council [grant number 2016-01144].