David Gachuhi Nganga.
The 1998 Nairobi US embassy bombing attack that left many Kenyans and United States officials suffering while many died during the attack inspired a work of fiction from a budding Kenyan writer.
David Gachuhi Nganga from the sleepy village of Kiambugi village of Kiharu saw an opportunity to author a fictional work that gives insights into possible strategies on how to hunt terrorists and named it Terrorist Hunter.
After going through a series of challenges that included lack of electricity to power his laptop as well as financial constraints to self-publish, his effort ended in a 200-page book written on longhand, he recalls. He believed that he gave his best shot in the world of imagination and hoped that his work end up being and popular and make him a mountain of cash. But even before his book was published, he had to repeat all the writing as his childhood friend vanished with the draft copy on longhand!
“He promised that he would assist in taking the book to the publisher and that was the last time I saw him. There were few mobile phones then and that meant I could not locate him. I went to Nairobi to look for him and that proved futile.
"I was left with the alternative of recalling every chapter and typing the same from scratch,” he recalled.
The writer would later be advised to register as a self-publisher after facing a new hurdle of getting a willing publisher. Gachuhi took some valuable advice from his friends and registered as a self-publisher at the Kenya National Library Service and protected his works at the Kenya Copyright Board when he finally self-published in 2007. It was joy and relief for Gachuhi after easily selling the first 10 copies and he had high hopes that his book would be the best selling and translate to tidy sums and an improved standard.
True to his hopes, the United States Embassy was among his clients who bought the first 100 books and later ordered 150 more through an intermediary.
“I used to sell at least 10 books on a daily basis and that came with a lifestyle change. I transferred my children from public schools to private schools. I could now comfortably afford their fees. I also started attending publisher’s forums and this too exposed my book to more markets,” said Gachuhi in an exclusive interview.
He recalled that his book was reviewed and featured twice in a leading Kenyan daily newspaper in 2007 as the best seller and he could only marvel at how his work had started being recognised nationally. But things took a different turn a year later when he was informed by a friend that he had bumped on his book on the internet and that it had been converted to digital form by an American university in 2008. The book was later translated to other languages and placed for sale on the internet without Gachuhi’s consent.
“I was furious since I knew too well that I could not get anything after the sale of my work whose copyright I had already protected,” he said.
Instead of concentrating on selling and marketing for his debut novel, the placing of his book to online without Gachuhi’s consent took him to uncharted waters. He started writing protest letters to government agencies so that he could be rescued from the outright theft of his intellectual works
"I wrote a letter to the Kenya Copyright Board and mentioned institutions such as Michigan University and also the Indiana University that had copied my works without consent. They said they could not help since US was outside their jurisdiction," said Gachuhi.
Gachuhi has sent emails to US Embassy in Nairobi and to Google but he is yet to get what he believes belongs to him.