Nigeria has launched it’s very own online bookstore, iKasuwa.com, a platform where consumers can finally purchase literary works and books as opposed to relying on “brick and mortar” shops where accessibility and availability to works of literature is limited. Despite the fact that many publishing houses have been established recently, in addition to numerous book festivals in different parts of the country, a gap still remains between Nigerian authors and book lovers.
This development not only gives Nigeria’s literary ecosystem a boost, but also promotes publishers and self publishing authors by giving them an opportunity to list their books for sale. For a while now, readers could hardly access a bookshop or publisher with an operative online website.
Adetayo Adegbemle, CEO of Stone Age Media, iKasuwa’s parent company, explains that the iKasuwa was designed to satisfy a grossly undeserved market. “Hardly would you find a bookshop or publisher with a functional online website, and even if you find, they do not have facilities to sell to booklovers and customers”, he explains.
“We are a Startup that’s ready to fill a gapping niche. The demand is huge”.
Nigeria, with over 170 million people, offers a book market that runs into billions of dollars.With internet penetration standing at about 38 percent and about 70 million connected mobile devices, the market for selling books online is worth exploring.
Online shopping in Africa has blossomed in recent times, riding on the back of improved broadband access. Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, is leading the way in e-commerce growth, with 65 percent of the country’s 50 million internet users having at one time or the other shopped online. However iKasuwa will be tasked with devising a way to break even as Nigeria’s e-commerce market has the potential for costs to spiral.
According to a recent study conducted in Nigeria by Ipsos, a global market research company, on behalf of PayPal, those who have not shopped online, making up 24 percent of the country’s total internet users expect to do so in the future. The research shows that nearly half (47 percent) of online shoppers in Nigeria purchased digital goods in the past year. Shopping on mobile browsers seems to be the most popular way to do mobile shopping with 43 percent of Nigerian mobile shoppers stating a preference to shop using the phone’s browser, compared to 34 percent who prefer to shop from an app.
iKasuwa sells digital books in PDF, ePUB, and Audiobooks, as well as in hard print. For a register seller, an account is created with a special dashboard where products can be uploaded and transactions monitored. A lot of authors and publishers have already began to show interest by listing their books for sale on the platform.
