CEPF recently supported Elizabeth Harper and her team in the development of a bilingual field guide to amphibians of the Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests of Tanzania and Kenya.
Elizabeth Harper, Post-doctoral fellow, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
What was the most important lesson learned?
Finding the right publisher is a crucial factor in making a book accessible to your target audience.
Describe how you learned this and whether / how you have adapted your approach or specific project elements as a result.
Our primary objective was to summarize the existing knowledge of the amphibians of the Eastern Arc and Coastal Forests of Tanzania and Kenya in the form of a field guide, and to make this information readily accessible to a broad audience by including text in both English and Kiswahili.
Our search for a publisher proved difficult. Large companies expressed interest after seeing photographs of the colorful and charismatic frogs of the Eastern Arc. However, they were concerned that the guide was too regionally specific, and suggested that we write a book about African frogs instead. We already knew that it would prove challenging to adequately cover the 122 species in the Eastern Arc and Coastal Forests: We had no intention of attempting to cover the amphibians of the entire continent.
Fortunately one of the larger publishers suggested that we contact Camerapix Publishers International, a Nairobi-based publisher specializing in books with a focus on the landscape, culture, wildlife and travel of Africa. They were receptive to a regionally specific guide, worked within our budget, took care of the layout and formatting, kept the price of the 320 page guide to $24, and were willing to edit in both English and Kiswahili.
The most important advantage of working with Camerapix was that they could distribute the books directly to bookstores throughout East Africa, making the field guides accessible to our target audience.
Distribution can be a surprisingly challenging aspect of publishing. I had been forewarned by other authors that many publishers distribute only in the U.S. and Europe, even when their subject matter is entirely African. By using a local publisher, we were able to ensure that our field guide would be available to researchers, students and tourists in Tanzania and Kenya.
May 24, 2010