It’s not even a year and a half since twins Chidi and Chika Nwaogu, one an author, the other a musician, launched Publiseer in their native Nigeria.
Since then, as TNPS regulars will know, Publiseer has launched portals in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, all the time expanding its distribution outlets.
Last month it was Baker & Taylor, and this month it’s Bibliotecha’s CloudLibrary.
That’s an extra 3,000 library outlets in the Publiseer distribution bank – an impressive showing for a shoestring start-up operating on the continent where it seems the big western retailers have little interest.
This deal comes hard on the heels of news Publiseer is in talks with Google Play. Currently Google Play has just two localised ebook stores in Africa and only 3,800 miles between them. That will be South Africa and Egypt.
Any addition to the Google Play Books network would be welcome. Currently Google Play Books leads the ebook world in terms of localised stores, with 75, compared to Apple’s 51, Kobo’s 16 and Amazon’s 13.
But 75 localised ebook stores is still nowhere near global reach.
As we prepare for the 2020s, now less than thirteen months away, the odds are still in favour of Google Play being the first ebook retailer to rise to the global digital books challenge.
But at this time it does look rather like Google Play’s ebook expansion programme has stalled alongside that of Apple, Amazon and Kobo.
