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| Mazwi shopkeeper Tafadzwa Makura |
Imagine a world where anyone can wake up a published author. Mazwi Online Shop promises just that – and to abolish several other publishing protocols.
Forget about a publisher sitting on your manuscript – you can be now your own agent, editor, publisher, vendor and cheerleader from an integrative vendor dashboard.
Mazwi, an e-book marketplace for local publishers and independent authors founded by young technoprenuer Tafadzwa Makura in 2012, was developed to democratise the public space for anyone to be heard.
The disruptive start-up stands out of Zimbabwe’s hive of technological start-ups as a forward-thinking, make-it-happen e-commerce response to a cultural problem.
A growing number of previously unpublished authors are scrambling for vendor dashboards on the Zimbabwean version of Amazon.
“We look to capitalise on failure by mainstream e-book markets such as Kindle Store, Nook and Ibooks offer a service that is sensitive to local realities,” Makura told Far South.
“The expansive reach of these traditional players sometimes means a one-size-fit-all approach which is out of touch with emerging markets and we are progressively customising our service to answer the needs of the Zimbabwean market,” he said.
Mazwi is built around problems in today’s book sector chiefly piracy and issues of accessibility, affordability and visibility of local books.
Besides mostly new authors, notables such as Charles Mungoshi, Shimmer Chinodya, NoViolet Bulawayo and Ignatius Mabasa feature prominently on the marketplace.
“The immediate challenge was combating piracy and Mazwi came about to guarantee as much with Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology to protect books in the electronic format from being replicated,” Makura said.
When customers purchases an e-book on the site, they can download it to their devices a maximum of six times after which they cannot download it. File-sharing is disenabled to curtail piracy.
Moving away from international practice where one must have a Mastercard to purchase e-books, Mazwi has incorporated mobile money transactions which are in vogue locally.
“The issue of payment methods was a challenge for both Zimbabwean authors and customers on the international marketplaces. We have incorporated local mobile money methods to make the transactions less cumbersome,” Makura said.
“You will notice that with the other platforms, one needs credit which is seldom the case because people do not mostly keep their money in banks. We have noticed, for that more transactions are being made through mobile money transfers,” he said.
“One of the more revolutionary aspects of Mazwi Online Shop is possibly the pricing model. While we do not control pricing, we encourage authors and publishers to consider the average Ecocash account – think of around $5.
“Pricing around that and below makes business brisk because once you demand more than that, you are asking for money which is probably not already in the account. That way it may be harder to get someone to settle for the product,” he said.
Mazwi is also grafting in interactive plug-ins to connect writers directly to their audiences. The author page is a mini-website which offers readers the option of following their favourite writers to stay posted on their new projects.
Mazwi was initially pitched as an e-learning solution at the Zol Start-Up Challenge in 2012 but has since evolved into an e-book retailer.
In 2010, the young men behind Mazwi pitched at British Council’s Culture Shift. The idea behind the start-up confab was to connect players in the culture industries, chiefly the book sector, with technoprenuers and generate potential solutions.
“Writers presented on problems we had already looked at. We reached semis again and had to compete for the finals a week later. During that window, we decided to make Mazwi a solution for the book sector,” Makura said.
Mazwi linked up with tech giant Binu, who in turn connected them to World Reader.
“We got a seed fund and, in the same week, developed the application to allow readers to access e-books on their mobile phones, becoming the first African company after World Reader to develop reading apps for feature phones. By the time the finals came around we had already won. Three months later Econet introduced same service,” Makura said.
The disruptive young man refused to stop there. Their app could only allow people to read while connected to Internet which was rather constricting because most people cannot afford unlimited connectivity in Zimbabwe.
“So we had to rework the entire system around the Amazon model but we had to carefully customise it for the local market,” Makura said.
By July 2014, Mazwi had released an Android app to make books available for offline reading and later developed it into a platform-agnostic marketplace, equally functional on desktops and mobile phones.
While Mazwi are not gatekeepers when it comes to content on the vendor dashboards, they require complicity with the Constitution.
They have significantly introduced a region control mechanism for books limited by rights from circulating in certain regions.
Mazwi looks to maximise their operations in Africa. “We are not thinking of going beyond the continent. African is the fastest growing region in terms of numbers and the economy. There are plenty of possibilities here,” Makura said.
