Well over a year has passed since the drastic shifts brought about by COVID-19 – travel restrictions, lost employment, overburdened hospitals, unprepared schools and a sharp rise in paranoia – all made worse for Black and Indigenous people facing the racial injustices that pervade all aspects of society. It has been a tough time for the majority and the Bookman family was not exempt from sudden troubles. Our founder saw his own diverse streams of income within the creative industries hit particularly hard. Even the most viable of them came to a complete halt, so we share the pain and discomfort with many in our creative community who experienced significant income loss and related hardships throughout 2020 and even now.
One thing that struck us deeply over the first few months of the lockdown was realizing its potentially irreversible psychological effects on children. Yes, they might be naturally resilient but youths still require special attention in their formative years. Fortunately for our sons, their father’s professional misfortunes translated to them gaining a learning coach attentive enough to help them navigate the new virtual routine they were suddenly thrown into. Meanwhile, their mother had been working from home for years in a stable job that was unaffected by COVID-19. Her work gave us enough income not to worry about losing the roof over our heads or lacking food to eat. As our household adjusted over time, we constantly had in mind those children who were in different situations, whose parents and guardians were not in a position to manage or be supported under the circumstances, or whose teachers did not have enough resources to engage them at a distance.
While we fretted for the younger generation and found ourselves having more conversations with likeminded people – educators, social workers and nation-builders, to name a few – we were blessed divinely when our good sistren, the visionary Olivia Wilmot, reached out to us with a new project. She introduced us to the extraordinary work of Richard Nattoo and, next thing we knew, we were planning and executing Ian Takes Flight, our first children’s book. Consequently, the wheels were set in motion to establish our first imprint, Sapling Books, in October.
Now that we have this children’s imprint, we are naturally meditating on ways to serve not only the young readers themselves but also the educators who could use content support from culturally attuned entities like Bookman Express. We have long said that culture is the last stand in this world we live in but the sudden unfoldments of the past year revealed the urgency needed in caring for the infants, particularly safeguarding their mental development in preparation for them to lead humanity in the coming decades.
Bookman Express (BEx) is still a youngster itself when you check the landscape of publishing houses. Penguin Random House, Hachette Livre, HarperCollins, Macmillan Publishers and Simon & Schuster are the huge mansions in the neighborhood, worth $3.3 billion, $2.7 billion, $1.5 billion, $1.4 billion and $830 million respectively, taking their annual revenues into consideration. We are somewhere on the other side of town, maybe on the way towards I. Mann‘s land, though not so far outside the hustle and bustle of the city. Our likkle yard is worth an insignificant amount compared to those giants of industry, whose scope of operations dwarfs ours to the point where they would have no reason to know that we even exist. Simon & Schuster, for instance, is said to publish about 2000 titles annually across some 35 imprints. To date, Bookman Express has published 6 titles since 2011 and we have 1 deggeh deggeh imprint. This is enough to highlight the contrast between small, newer, independent publishers and the big, traditional publishers that have existed for centuries in some cases. There is a great disparity in resources.
In a sense, our first and only imprint symbolizes where we are in the development of our company. The BEx logo is a sturdy tree that we have envisioned and are working to bring to reality; and Sapling Books is represented by a sapling, a baby tree, requiring careful attention and nurturing to ensure it gets the chance to become that future tree. So, Bookman Express is still in its infancy, still feeling its way in unfamiliar territory, still heavily reliant on guidance and protection from harsh elements. In this sense, we are no different from the children we seek to serve. Fittingly, one of our sons, Gyasi, came up with the tagline for Sapling Books:
Grow like a Sapling.
Meanwhile, his older brother, Azibo, has willingly assumed the role of company secretary while being focused and studious academically. Our children’s genuine sense of ownership for the company (even though they find plenty time for toys and electronics) has been an inspiring breakthrough in our organic process. They have proven the simple truth that the younger ones are naturally brilliant and more than capable of handling responsibilities.
Azibo (left) and Gyasi (right), also known as The Bookboys, are 9 and 7 years old respectively. They enjoy each other’s company very much.
Bookman Express is young in the game and we intend to grow like a sapling. This means we will continue our organic approach, growing at the pace we desire at any Jah willing time. Our first ten years has been a period of germination. Now that ground is broken and things are sunnier, we can spread out a bit and surge upward into the light of another decade.