Nigerian startup, Publiseer, has announced its third expansion outside its home country, taking digital publishing services to South Africa, the country the word ‘Publiseer’ comes from.
Before this expansion, Publiseer had expanded into its neighbouring West African country Ghana, and Kenya. With this new expansion, Publiseer’s authors and musical artists from South Africa will get customer support via +27 64 396 8857. Before this expansion, Publiseer’s creatives from South Africa only got support via email and chat messaging.
An expansion into South Africa has always been in the pipeline. The founders, Chidi and Chika Nwaogu named Publiseer over a year ago from the Afrikaans word that translates to ‘publish’ in English. The founders have always known that expansion into South Africa was imminent.
“When naming the platform, we brainstormed and played around with a couple of words. Many words from different languages, but the name Publiseer really stood out. It stood out in many ways.
“One, it was just a letter different from the word Publisher and it also means publish in Afrikaans, a language spoken in South Africa and Namibia,” Chidi Nwaogu, Co-founder and CEO of Publiseer says. “Finally expanding into the South African market is a dream come true. Hopefully, we get to make several milestones here as we’ve done in Nigeria.”
The book publishing and music industry in Africa is very large. In Nigeria alone, the music industry is worth $47 million (2015). This figure is expected to reach $86 million in 2020. The music revenue in South Africa is expected to be $178 million in 2020.
Kenya’s music revenue is expected to grow from $19 million (2016) to $29 million in 2020. In South Africa, digital music streaming revenue is forecast to rise from $5.3 million in 2015 to $31.5 million in 2020, and the turnover from locally published e-books in South Africa was $209,300 in 2015.
“We know that South Africa has a huge potential for digital publishing and that’s why we’re here,” Chidi continues.
Launched on August 4, 2017, Publiseer publishes, protects and monetizes the creative works of writers and musicians from low-income communities in Africa, at no charge, with just a single click.
As of writing, Publiseer has published 133 books and 518 tracks by 121 authors and 240 musicians, generating over US $3,000 every month in revenue. Publiseer has received several awards and recognitions during the past year, which includes being nominated for the 4th AppsAfrica Innovations Awards and being the first African publisher to be inducted into the International Publishing Distribution Association. The digital publisher came into the limelight when it emerged a finalist at the 2018 Harvard Business School New Venture Competition and got accepted into the Venture Incubation Programme by the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town.
