For bibliophiles in Nigeria, finding bookstores to buy books and discovering book clubs in order to mingle with people of like passion can be a little tasking. However, that is about to change as Nigerian startup bookclubs.com.ng has launched to cater for such cravings.
Bookclubs.com.ng is a directory website that lists book clubs, bookstores and literary meetups around you. It also allows you to add a listing for free. The listing could be upcoming literary events, meetups, or an announcement by a bookstore, book club, writer or publisher. The overall idea is to help people find bookstores and book club so they can participate to read the book of the month or whatever the listing is about.
In an interview with Innovation Village while disclosing what motivated the birth of the initiative, the Founder, Magnus Okeke said, “I was invited to a book club’s anniversary sometime in August, and during one of the discussions someone said she once googled “Book Clubs in Lagos” but she couldn’t find relevant results. I think the discussion was about how we can get more people to read in Nigeria.
“On that day, I was sitting beside a friend who happens to be the moderator of the book club I was part of, Bookaholics Book Club. We looked up “Book clubs in Nigeria” and there were no relevant results. I told her we should set up a website that lists book clubs in Nigeria and she agreed. She knew I was tech savvy and promised to support me if I needed help with anything.”
Bookclubs was launched in mid September, 2017 and it is still setting up.
According to Okeke, “A friend and I sent out a broadcast to friends on WhatsApp to get feedback and also list their book clubs. The traffic is encouraging. Apparently, users are more interested in checking out book clubs than listing a book club. So, we might have to list most of the book clubs and bookstores by ourselves.”
For now the bootstrapped startup is focused on solution at the moment while the business angle of the startup is not the main focus for now.
“We want to list every book club and bookstore in Nigeria. That way, we’ll serve as a resource for literary meetups and related events,” he said.
While speaking on challenges currently being faced, Okeke revealed that guests and users are more interested in checking out book clubs than listing a book club or bookstore.
“We might have to list most of the book clubs and bookstores by ourselves. It’s a challenge because some of these bookstores don’t have social media accounts or websites you could get information from but one way or another, we’ll get them listed as we expand. We’ll get there.”
