August 03, 2006

A visit to a book fair organised by the Oxford University Press (OUP) in Lahore in the late `70s brought Saiyid face to face with her calling. Initially, she applied for a job at the publishing house and was selected as an entry level sales representative to generate demand for OUP books in schools, colleges and universities in Punjab and NWFP, writes Marylou Andrew

For someone who didn’t speak and read any English for the first few years of her life, Ameena Saiyid has come a long way. Her work as managing director of Oxford University Press (OUP) has ensured that she is well known in literary circles and beyond. So it comes as somewhat of a surprise that the well-read and distinguished Saiyid was far more interested in physical activities than literary pursuits in her childhood.

The sixth of seven siblings, Saiyid had a father who worked for the Foreign Office, so she spent her formative years attending public school in New York, and it was here that the previously home-schooled girl learned how to read and speak English quickly and with such efficiency that her teachers could only be impressed.

Her close association with her elder brother Mujahid shaped Saiyid’s love for swimming and sports. She was seven when the family moved to San Francisco, and while her passion for swimming was further cemented by regular after school visits to the Jewish Community Centre swimming pool, Saiyid also discovered the world of books via the public library.

Initially her interest in the library was inspired by the fact that it was the hub of all sorts of activities that brought out her competitive streak. She reminisces animatedly about a short story writing competition that required the use of nursery rhymes, and was extremely pleased when she won.

When she was in her teens, the family moved back to Pakistan and Saiyid was enrolled in Karachi Grammar School (KGS) for her O and A levels and eventually went off to St. Joseph’s College for her bachelors. She recalls that the switches from the public school system of the US to KGS, and then from KGS to St.Joseph’s were both difficult periods of adjustment for her as the curriculum and methods of teaching were vastly different.

But adjust she did, and eventually used her varied experiences to secure a teaching job at the Lahore American School (LAS). Saiyid taught a variety of subjects at the LAS, one of which was swimming. But as much as she may have enjoyed the job, she obviously had another calling.

A visit to a book fair organised by the OUP in Lahore in the late `70s brought Saiyid face to face with this calling. Initially, she applied for a job at OUP, and was selected as an entry level sales representative to generate demand for OUP books in schools, colleges and universities in Punjab and NWFP.

This was no mean feat as Punjab and NWFP represented a vast expanse of territory, but Saiyid took to the task like a fish to water. She travelled extensively in both provinces, visiting all kinds of educational institutions. Recalling her experiences during the project, she reveals that since people were unaware of foreign books at the time, they were so impressed by the quality of the OUP publications that almost every visit to a school, college or university, resulted in a sale or in a large order.

Eventually the response was so overwhelming that the enterprising Saiyid asked for a room in some of the larger institutions and began to organise mini book fairs for the teachers to sample and explore the full range of the OUP books.

The objectives of her visit, she says, were always three-fold; to get the OUP textbooks on the recommended list of books on school curricula, but in cases where the textbooks were not immediately relevant, she would try her best to get them on the prescribed reading list. And if even this was not possible, then the third objective was to secure a large order of books for the institution’s library.

After seven years of working with the OUP out of Lahore, Saiyid learned a great deal about the business of books. When she moved to Karachi with her husband and children in the mid `80s, she was brimming with ideas for growth and expansion, the most vital of which was publishing books by Pakistani authors rather than just importing books from Britain. These ideas, a little ahead of their time, were not entertained by the OUP. But the ambitious Saiyid was not to be discouraged, so she left the OUP and set up her own small business called Saiyid Books.

Using her years of experience at the OUP and natural business acumen, Saiyid’s first step involved visiting publishers in the UK to convince them to appoint her as their agent in Pakistan. Having been appointed as a sole agent by some publishers, and partial agent by others, Saiyid returned to Pakistan and secured an import license and then started doing what she did best –– visiting schools and interacting with them in order to collect orders to place with the publishers.

The first year was a tough one, especially as she dealt with the teething troubles from her business and her children, whom she had to shuffle back and forth to school in the midst of a busy work day. Although she first set up her office at PIDC, she quickly changed her location to a spare room in her mother’s house, in order to facilitate her business and spend time with her children.

In that difficult first year, Saiyid worked entirely on her own without any staff. She would visit clients in the day and collect orders, which would then be placed with her publishers in the UK. When the orders came through she was responsible for all the banking, airport clearances, unpacking of books and then for repacking them into individual customer orders, hiring transport to send them off to customers and eventually to collect payment from her customers. She fondly reminisces that back in those days she had a large briefcase that she carried everywhere. “It was like my mobile office.”

Eventually she hired a staff of five people to help her with the marketing, import and transportation of books, and even started supplying books from Indian publishers. But just as her business was really taking off, she was offered the position of Sales Director by the OUP. Saiyid was unimpressed; she expected nothing less than the position of Managing Director, a demand which she says the OUP found a little shocking at the time.

However, because publishing was Saiyid’s first love, and she realised that access to the OUP funds would allow her to fulfil her ambitions, she persisted, and was eventually given the position in August 1988. Her first tasks after joining the OUP again were to hire editors and set up a design department which would take care of illustrations.

Next she started looking for authors, a task which was a little more difficult than she had imagined as there were few Pakistani authors at the time. However, work was started on a number of manuscripts and one of the OUP’s first Pakistani publications was a book on the separation of East Pakistan. According to Saiyid the book created a sensation because the subject was still fresh in the mind of so many Pakistanis. It also opened the market for a slew of other books on the subject.

With a mandate to publish books on Pakistan, Saiyid went about attending conferences and lectures in order to network with Pakistani authors. In 1997, on the anniversary of Pakistan’s 50th year of independence, came a fantastic achievement: the publication of a series of 37 books titled ‘50 Years of…’ on topics including cinema, sports, history, etc.

Once the publishing programme was well underway, Saiyid saw another area that required development: the marketing of OUP books. “Booksellers would normally only take our bestsellers, which meant that the public was unaware of the whole range of OUP books,” she explains. To remedy the situation, OUP bookshops were set up in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, Faisalabad, Quetta and Multan.

Another area where Saiyid has been extremely active is in fighting against copyright infringement. Feeling extremely cheated that OUP books were being copied by small time wholesalers, Saiyid turned to the law and organised several police-assisted crackdowns on these bogus publishers, to the extent that OUP books were no longer openly copied in the market. This was not the end of her copyright troubles; as the trade went under the radar, Saiyid had to work doubly hard to catch the offenders –– a task that she says is still by no means finished.

Speaking about the harmful effects of copyright infringement, Saiyid says that bogus publishers are not doing poor students any favours by copying books. “When they [bogus publishers] take away our market, we cannot benefit from economies of scale, and this drives up the prices.”

Another area where the OUP has achieved some success is in helping large institutions break away from old syllabi and evolve new ones. Saiyid gives the case of the Karachi University and its English syllabus for colleges. “It was a long, drawn-out process,” she explains, “but it went so well that even the Sindh University enlisted our help when they were working on their syllabus.”

With so many achievements under her belt, not the least of which is the Order of British Empire granted to her by Queen Elizabeth II for her work in promoting Anglo-Pakistan relations, democracy, education, women’s rights, and intellectual property rights, what else is Saiyid planning to do?

Her answer reflects her commitment to her work. “I want to continue providing high quality, affordable Pakistan-specific textbooks, but I also want to do an Urdu to English and an Urdu to Urdu dictionary. I’d then like to convert this data into a thesaurus for Pakistani readers.”

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