My Mother Lost Her Vision, So I Made African Books into Engaging Audiobooks

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

I am a ‘late start’ female founder from Ghana after a 25+ years successful career in IT for Development, Service Delivery and Content Creation. I am fuelled by a passion for books & the immense potential of the internet and mobile phones for spreading African knowledge.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

AkooBooks Audio is a platform and experience provider focused on transforming Black/African books into engaging audiobooks that reach new audiences on mobile phones. Our library of African audio is available anytime, accessible anywhere on a wide variety of mobile devices at flexible subscription plans and low retail cost in various Ghanaian and African languages and not only in English.

What is the origin story?

The seeds for my business Akoobooks Audio were first inspired by my mother, Nana Dadson, a children's book author and avid reader. My mother lost her vision over a decade ago and unfortunately with that her ability to read African literature independently, as only a fraction is available in digital form. Soon, AkooBooks Audio was born.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

We are creating a literate social environment that goes beyond equipping schools with textbooks and libraries and enabling learners to use their knowledge appropriately and meaningfully in everyday life. Shortage of reading material for effective literacy, limited know-how and slow adoption of digital book distribution prevent efficient and effective African knowledge transfer and stunt our growth in the digital economy. With Africa recording the highest penetration of the use of mobile phones, the potential of audiobooks and digital reading comes in.

Our team has over 30 years combined experience in technology, publishing, entertainment and media.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

Mothering my teenager and planning how to open up a restaurant/cafe.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

We look at the number of titles in our catalogue and currently run a retail per streaming download model. As a digital publishing company, subscriptions are fast becoming a a way of competing with other online entertainment models that are free. We want to move to an all you can eat streaming model.

Mobile platform offers new sources to inform decision making, we share data with publishers to help them make the right production choices for future catalogues. Our key performance indicators (KPIs) for our audiobooks include: a) Relevance- how many users start listening to an audiobook; b)Drop off rate- how many users stop listening to an audiobook c) Finish rate-how many users finish the book to the end. Also, data on preferences, Narrators, Genres and Barriers.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

We’ve won 3 business awards that have enabled us to roll out our web based African audiobook platform which is also available on the Google and Apple playstores. We have licensed over 300 African titles from African publishers all over the African continent. We hope to partner the Ministry of Education to bring digital books into Ghanaian classrooms.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

Audio and AI/machine technology. Our programme promotes audio literacy and pilots it in local languages, bringing a wealth of ideas and experiences to people who are illiterate in English.

We see the opportunity to skip the translation phase of books and go directly from English audio into producing ‘straight into audio’ local language versions. The new interpreted local language adaptations can then be transcribed in local languages and form the basis for new local language literature for young people.

With our audio data, Akoobooks Audio is at the forefront of utilizing African voice interaction and ML technology to connect African books and authors to new readers worldwide.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

I have only been following the platform for a few months and pleasantly surprised to find a good coverage of African tech content that is engaging and insightful.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

To be positive and believe in myself. When I encounter failure, take a step back and realize that failure is part of life and to ask myself if there are any lessons to be learned or if there are other ways around it. Being a woman in a male dominated career space like tech or publishing can be challenging, but our femininity is our greatest strength.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

Overseas capital is flooding the African fintech and African digital streaming subscription services market for entertainment (movies -Netflix and music -Spotify). I look forward to seeing similar developments in the online reading space!

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