Chris Blattman

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I now know what my first book cover is going to be…

Apparently the publishing industry has rules if you are going to publish anything on Africa:bnciztviqaauiaw

We’re obliged to Simon Stevens, a reader who put together the picture above and pointed out that whoever you are, wherever you’re from, whatever kind of writing you do, if you write a novel “about Africa,” chances are you’re going to get the acacia tree treatment. And the orange sky.

From Africa Is A Country. So good.

30 Responses

  1. I now submit my report on acacia trees at ORT. I am surprised to report that I didn’t see one book with an acacia tree on the cover although I did ignore the coffee table books. I am not a shareholder in exclusive books at ORT but would recommend them to passing trade. They had Mills on African poverty at approximately 3 pages per rand. Moyo’s books were much more expensive at nearly 2 rands a page. I didn’t see Piketty but I did see a book on parecon with a preface by Chomsky. This latter title seemed to be about parity and economics. It looked very much to the far left but a good thing about it was it didn’t not have any mathematical calculations but was prose. It was also very expensive at about 2 rands per page. The most serious point discovered by the survey was that there was no evidence of development poetry. Those who have a talent for this area of writing and are unable to secure a literary agent should just use unsuspecting bloggers comments sections preferably taking advantage of any time zones i.e. if the blogger is in another time zone then post a comment containing poetry when the blogger may be asleep. This latter method is actually a good way to get any comments up on blogs when they might not ordinarily be acceptable.
    Returning to exclusive books. They have a very useful promotion at the moment. If you buy a book then they give a free delicious Lindt chocolate. This makes a bad purchase more tolerable.

  2. In ORT airport there are excellent bookshops in the duty free area with a good selection of books about Africa. Too many of them are about the wars from the white SAS types who fought in the bush. Not enough of them are about development. Tomorrow I could count the number of books with acacia covers and report back. But the staff might call for security.
    In the png file above some of the books are in Afrikaans but originally written in English. Fuller and Lessing are from Zimbabwe.
    There is a massive baobab tree at the Victoria Falls. I think it should replace the acacia for the next six months and then they will have some time to rethink cover design.
    Is your first book to be fact or fiction. I think that someone should try development poetry. It is a neglected area of writing and has great potential to convey the tragedies and triumphs of development. There was a young man from Milwaukee. No, that won’t work.

Why We Fight - Book Cover
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