Mrs. Bowry with her newly-published book of short stories
For local homegrown writers such as Berbician, Stephanie Bowry, it is no easy road when it comes to publishing and selling her work. Given that the local writing industry (if there is even one) in Guyana has little or basically no framework for the marketing of writers’ works — their poems, books, stories, novels, etc– Guyanese writers, from time to time, have faced enormous challenges and difficulties in selling their work and making a great profit from those works.
Bowry, who has just released another book of short stories, can be seen riding the entire town of New Amsterdam on her bicycle trying to get copies of her new book sold. She regularly travels to the city just to market her work. She is having a very difficult time selling her work and making some ‘small change’ (profit) from it, since even the book stores want most of the profits if they were to sell her books.
“It could almost discourage me if I allow it to, but I am determined not to be discouraged”, she asserted. Printing the books, she said, is okay, “because you pay for that, but the selling of the books– now going all around, looking for market is kind of difficult and I am hoping that our government should take it in hand to encourage the writers”.
She stated that she is sure that in the schools there are students who would like to become writers “but unless they are encouraged now, they would not take up the challenge…it is not easy to walk around going from store to store or stopping people on the road or going from house to house, asking people to buy and very many of them say, “I am broke right now; come back month-end”, the writer might have to beg his bread”.
She noted that she has heard of the online system whereby her work can be put on websites that sell items such as Amazon.com and E-Bay, but Mrs. Bowry would be glad for some assistance in that regard in how to put her works on those websites, and even this has costs attached to it. “I am not very au fait with the online system but I am hoping that it would be a good way; I think it might be a good way from what I hear”.
‘True- true Story’ Volume 2 has just been released. Volume 1 which was released in December of last year, she added, was well- received and this encouraged her to bring Volume 2. “People are already asking me for Volume 3,” which she boldly stated, is on the way. She has already started work on that compilation and revealed that she will thrill readers with the ‘Leelawattie story’. “I like very much that I was able to get some information on what I didn’t know– some amazing information about Leelawattie and I am excited about that.”
This compilation features “true stories– things that our parents and grandparents would tell us about long ago…the funny things, the weird things and unbelievable things like ‘don’t throw water through the door after 6 o’ clock; don’t say you are going when leaving a wake’ and so on”.
Readers, she noted, will enjoy the most form this collection, the culture of the stories, “and because people like stories– even adults like stories– they are like big children, so they like a story and knowing that the story is true, that it belongs to Guyana, to the Guyana culture, you know, it makes it interesting and it is written in language you can understand and appreciate”.
Bowry added that she gets the ideas for these stories through talking with people and listening to their stories, “so all I needed was to meet with people who would know, interview them, and they would tell me a little more of the story which I didn’t know and then I would find out a little more from someone else”.
The books are available at a cost of $1,000 at Laparkan in Georgetown and Dave’s Television Station Channel Eight in Berbice. She also has copies and can be reached at 333-4451 and 676-5442.
Bowry wrote several poems, both documented and undocumented. She is hoping that one day she can put those that are undocumented in print so that the public can read them. She has quite a few religious monologues that she performs in churches and other occasions and has performed her poems and songs as well as monologues before President Donald Ramotar, ministers, government functionaries even at various events across the country.
The writer also gave her view on the textbook copyright issue and said that she does not think people should copy others’ works. “I don’t think they should, because, when you come to think of it, the amount of work a writer puts into that book– sometimes you don’t sleep for the night– you’re on the computer, working, up soon in the morning and then somebody benefits more than you. You manage to get 100 books out and then somebody gets 400 from your 100…something is wrong about that”.
“I don’t know how to stop it”, she noted and did not offer any suggestions, “but something is definitely wrong and even those who do the photocopying– if they examine it and put themselves in the shoe of the other person, they will see something is wrong”.