Amanda's Business Acumen

She had been going to the public library now for years to lent books. For about two years now, there hasn’t been anything like new stocks there, the number of secondary school kids has increased tremendously and so also is the noise making there too. The management of the place has relaxed their rules that the place is gradually turning to market place in terms of noise.

Many of the books has been on electronic format, she preferred hard covers. It cost dearly to access them and downloading them Is not cheap too. 

The publishers and authors don’t seems to have third world countries at heart while shifting to e-books mainly. “Don't they know that the economy is so poor that to download the books where permitted cost dearly?, she queries. The data to do that is never cheap here. To do that is to spend one’s 3 percent salary.” She concluded that it is not intelligent to engage in such activities when other needs are staring one in the face.

     They were offloading kitchen items when she came, the kitchen manager had made it clear that all kitchen staffs must join in the offloading of the kitchen items whenever any order from the kitchen department comes. Initially, it was the duty of the firm supplying the items but the manager maybe reached an agreement with the firm to be offloading the items in order to cut cost. Ever since this law came into effect in the fast food company where Amanda works part time, the manager had made shift a monthly thing. Since last month this law came into effect, she had been struggling to adjust his mind and body to the new reality. 

“ What happened, why are you coming to work now?”

“ Traffic Is too tight today in my area sir”

“These your colleagues, are they living inside here, how come all of them navigated the traffic except you?”

“ I am living far from here sir.”

“ Yesterday, you were all old that the products were coming today, they all woke up early to beat the traffic, they did, I did, only you?. It looks nonchalant to me”

“ I am sorry sir, I couldn't help it”

“ Try seriously to help it, for this firm has been helping it on your well being for more than a year now”

“ I am really sorry sir”

     She had been writing an article to post to this platform she joined six months ago and it had taking her hours to finish thousand words, and when she was through, it was well passed mid night. She joined them to finish offloading and then, cutting, boiling and frying begun.

The work is not easy, but the salary had been helpful a lot in her stabilization and that had been the fuel she needed to pursue her writing now for four months. Writing is something she love doing, to be paid doing that is motivation of high standing to her. 

So far, she had noticed that writing is not easy when monetary competition is involved. Thousands of writer would be gunning after one trophy. Most were in their writing apex, most in their basic while others are in their university writing level. 

       Reading other people’s work in this platform had convinced her that he has a lot to learn. She had quickly figured that writing has a lot in common as cooking. A good cook like a good writer don’t always guarantee success or acceptance. It depends on what you’re cooking and who you are cooking it for. 

If the taster were from western world for example, you can't necessary prepare Asian or African meal and expect them to enjoy the meal and judge in your favour. 

It is almost impossible to receive any meaningful reviews in such situation for they don’t understand what you set before them. So as a writer, it’s important that you know who would be tasting your meal and tailor your work to suit their taste and what their society values. 

       This approach had been how she tried to penetrate the market and it had not been easy thing for her. Her approach had been based on guess work for she had also realised that to really write about something or somewhere well, you need to have experienced that thing or place first hand to be able to write 60 percent about that thing. 

All her life, she had never left the shores of the Nigeria. All the cultures and traditions of the other races she knew had been gleaned from novels and movies. She had been buying her writing materials from the city’s main market like most people and most traders from neighboring nations go there to do. In fact, all her life, it had been that market that had been supplying all her main needs. 

The mini market near her house she had neglected for years and buys only food items from there and other things she don’t consider priority. She had believed it be inferior to the main market. She was more than surprised to realised that it contains everything she can think of even cheaper. What an eye opening experience it had been to her. To and Fro journey to main market always cost two hundred naira and the mini market takes her three minutes track. 

     She calculated about how much transport has cost her to the market for a year and shake her head in surprise. This platform she post her works on had undergone changes that is good and bad at the same time. 

Almost all the platform she knew charges monthly flat fee of 5dollars, no matter whatever reorganization that went on there. The highest had been ten dollars a month. But her platform that had been free till few days ago had turned into lotto site and 20 dollars a month ticket is needed for you to stand a chance to win 1k. 

That reorganization smells madoffy to many. More than one thousand members takes part In the weekly contest of the platform and If about two-fifty of them became paying members monthly, they would be paying the site 5k monthly and there was nothing like second and third placings rewards in the competition.

She shakes her head in astonishment of the business acumen of the platform management.