Nigerian self-publishing and bookselling platform OkadaBooks has shut down its operations after 10 years of business in the country. In a newsletter, the company clarified issues surrounding the decision to shut down the business.
In November, the company announced to publishers on the platform that it plans to shut down operations as of November 30. Publishers on the platform were urged to request a payout before it finally closed down. The company in a new email, clarified to readers the circumstances surrounding its closure. One point mentioned was that its revenue which was in Naira failed to cover its expenses which were quoted in the USD.
At the point of shutting down, personal funds were being used to pay authors on the platform.
1. “We reached the painful but necessary decision to shut down OkadaBooks because it was no longer generating enough income to run itself. This includes the cost of author payouts, salaries, servers, and other technical expenses.”
2. “We have been able to maintain operations for this long because of access to external funding. Specifically, over the past 18 months, this gap has been bridged by personal funds which are no longer available.”
3. ”In shutting down, personal funds were once again pulled together to pay our authors as much as possible, which still leaves unpaid balances as you probably know by now.”
4. ”We are exploring as many options as possible to liquidate OkadaBooks‘ assets to pay off debts (including the balance of author payouts). While there is currently no timeline for the liquidation process, we will let you know if there are new developments in this regard.”
5. ”Finally, OkadaBooks is not shutting down because Nigerians do not read. The decision is borne out of the inability of our Naira revenue to cater to a substantial part of our operational costs which are primarily in USD.”
OkadaBooks was founded in 2013 by Okechukwu Ofili. He founded the platform to make Nigerian books digital and also help authors earn because bookshops were not paying him for books that were already sold. In 2017, the startup was selected for “Google for Start-up Accelerator”.