May, 2007: Drive To Encourage Young Writers Suffers Setback
Our company's drive to scout for and encourage young writers by publishing their books suffered a major blow in May 2007,
by way of a disagreement between our company and Miss Ese Odibo, who was our pilot scheme for the project. It began when our
company requested Miss Odibo to take advantage of the industrial action embarked upon by university lecturers in Nigeria,
to undertake a computer and internet course at the expense of our sponsors. To our dismay, Miss Odibo sent a text message
to our Executive Manager, to the effect that she does not have the time for a computer/internet course, and that in any case,
she does not need it for now.
When she paid an unscheduled visit to our office two weeks later, our Manager tried to make her see the advantages
in being computer and internet literate. She made a verbal promise to come and embark on the training the following
week. As it turned out however, she neither turned up, nor sent in word to explain her failure to report and be introduced
to Dayspring Computers where the training was to take place. To say the least, this ran counter to our expectations,
as her being computer/internet compliant would have made it possible to arrange interviews for her online, to promote sales
of her published story. It would also have made it possible to ask her to visit websites that will enhance her writing
ability, as well as join book/writes' clubs and thus be abreast with international trends.
As her refusal to cooperate would hamper our promotion of her works, we informed her that since she was unwilling to
be helped to grow, we had no option than to stop printing her story, or commit any more funds into working on her unpublished
stories. In the face of the above, she came to our office two weeks later to request for her hand-written manuscript,
which was duly handed over to her.
The company is to stop printing her story in June, when the already-printed covers are exhausted. In the meantime,
2000 covers of her story The Lion And The Ram had been printed, and about N20,000.= paid to her as at March 2007,
excluding other fringe benefits like recharge cards totalling about N5,000.= given to her.
July 29, 2006: Site-Builder Frustrates Our New Site
Plans by our publishing house to have a sister site through which we can handle more sales has continued to suffer a
set back as our site-builder
www.realarts.com (the administrators of
www.lagoshost.com) have so far frustrated our dream. It all started in December of 2005 when we stumbled unto the site-builder's advert
in
Success Digest. We called the number given below the advert, and spoke with one Mr. Chibueze
Okoji who introduced himself as the CEO. Upon our enquiry, he claimed he could build a site for us and nuture it to
the point where sales could be effected through the site.
We paid the required fees but as it turned out, it was the beginning of a wild-goose chase as the site builders were only
able to deliver an amateurish exhibition site. Worse still, the realarts crew were unable to effect corrections
on errors made in the course of building the site, viz:
2. We requested that for the FREE BOOKS Page of
www.verygoodbooks4u.com, the Free stories should pop up as soon as guests click on the titles. This was as far back as March 2006. But
till date, when you click on the titles, what pops up is a notice telling you the page could not be found;
3. We requested that the CATALOGUE Page of
www.verygoodbooks4u.com should contain the blurb of the books but so far, they've not been able to do this several months after;
4. The cover of
THE GREAT CONTEST--one of our books which is not yet available for sale
adorns the HOMEPAGE of
www.verygoodbooks4u.com. We requested that it should be replaced with the cover of
FRIED ICE CREAM which is our star
book for now; but several months after, the change is yet to be effected;
5.
The delay has cost us damages worth millions of naira, and we have briefed our lawyers who are currently working on how
best to file for claims and get a motion prohibiting the site builder from further parading himself as a site builder.
