Why Kenyans don’t buy books: they’re too expensive
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
12 June 2022
There is a common belief that Kenyans have a poor reading culture. That
they stop reading books the moment they leave school. This view is based
on the observation that the only books that keep publishers and
bookshops in business are educational textbooks. Yet in developed
countries, we often hear about many (non-text) books that sell many
millions of copies. Why isn’t this happening here?
I think it has something to do with economics rather than culture. A
typical non-educational book costs between Sh1,000 and Sh2,000 in Kenya
and about $10 to $15 in the USA or Europe. The two prices are almost the
same yet the income levels are very different.
The minimum wage in Kenya is about Sh70 per hour while in the developed
world it is about $15. So, a minimum wage worker in the USA, for example
needs to work for just one hour to earn a book while her Kenyan
counterpart has to labour for over 20 hours (almost three work-days).
But still, I don’t think minimum wage labourers are the target market of
authors and publishers. In addition, those at the lowest ranks in the
workforce usually don’t have any money left to spare after paying for
basic essentials.
So, we should look at the skilled work-force. Teachers are a good
illustration. The entry level basic salary for a graduate teacher
employed by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) is about Sh35,000 per
month. With this money, the new recruit can buy about 23 books at
Sh1,500 each.
In the USA, the entry level salary for teachers is about $42,000 per
year, which is $3,500 per month. This is enough to buy about 280 books
and an average price of $12.50 each.
My conclusion is that, books are just too expensive in Kenya. One must
be truly interested in the topic to invest such a huge sum of money. In
the developed world, books can be bought with pocket change;
impulsively!
We can find the equivalent cost of a book using the Kenyan income level
by dividing the salary (Sh35,000) by the number of books (280). The
answer is between Sh70 and Sh125! Now think about it: would you think
much about buying a good book at that price? Probably not.
On the commercial side, we must also ask: can authors and publishers
afford to sell books at about Sh125? If not, what needs to be done to
price the price to this level?
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