The Afroyal Portal For Artists

International Thu 30-07-2009

The Afroyal Portal For Artists
By Akinyi Princess of K’Orinda-Yimbo

This is going to be a huge bonus for us as a people. A portal for all Africans and Afroancestral artists, sellers and buyers, whether they own a computer with online access or not. They can log in to the AFROYAL PORTAL FOR ARTISTS anywhere and as often as they can afford, say from an Internet Café or a friend’s computer anywhere in the world.

All they need to have is their Codename and Password. I had years to think about this project and the more I thought about the idea the more it became convincing. For a number of reasons. One of the most important is the fact that many similar online products do not cater to African and Afroancestral needs.

Take writers’ groups for example, where the artists post their articles, short stories, first chapters of their books, a few stanzas of their poems. There’s hardly anything in there, if ever at all, with the African touch. An African poet is not going to dwell on some golden autumn no African can identify with.

Of course (s)he can write about the autumn. But for the African reader to identify with what (s)he is describing, (s)he has to use “African colours” to describe it: the colour of the Saharan sand, loaminess, the potter’s clay, the colour of the river waters during a flood, red bananas or sparrows.

Other artists will have other ideas. The Afroyal Portal is for all people in the creative arts. Sculptors, painters, basketwork, jewellery, textile and fashion designers, musicians, writers. The subject matter is as always the artist’s choice. (S)he can even dwell on the neglected subjects such as natural African cosmetics ingredients, herbal medicine, homeopathy, religion, rites and rituals, African meditation techniques that are now threatened with extinction or the age-old psychological healing methods and acupuncture.

Self-help books sell best because the buyers are looking for the help, not the entertainment factor. What is strictly forbidden by us are indecent words and punches below the belt. My team and I are will scrutinise and edit every piece, and we retain the right to reject any material that does not meet our set standards. We have different categories for writers and how we choose to accept or reject their work.

This harsh measure is necessary because our final aim is to help the artist – whatever her/his work – to sell the very same work and to be published by a European or American publisher, which would afford the artist a wider clientele and international publicity.

For writers who might need extra coaching, we have worked out a range of products. This is necessary because whereas a writer needs to sell as many articles, essays, poems and books as possible to make money, the painter or sculptor has just her/his single original piece and sells it at a high price because it is the one and only piece in the world. An art lover is ready to pay the high price in order to be the only owner, a reader has the choice of hundreds of thousands of books in the same genre to choose from. So we want our writers’ work to be unique, even a new niche.

The rage in fiction at the moment, internationally, are vampires and aliens. I’m convinced that an African can write something here that no other person can. Our “unknown” world was always full of kind and good or cruel and malignant spirits and ghosts in all shapes and sizes, all manner of culinary preferences.

Even the world of the living too was always full of those who changed into birds, talking goats, flying elephants, beautiful princesses in the form of mangy old mongrels, infants who said “Greetings, Mama, here I am!” the moment they were born, and grew up to be the most alien of aliens. We even have fairy tales (in Luoland) where children created their parents, choosing who they should be before getting around to the child – human, animal, bird or plant.

Our extra assistance will include:

Skills

Writing
Ghost-writing
Line-editing
Developmental editing
Proposal writing/editing

Genres and Specialities

General fiction
Mystery
Mind/body/spirit
African Fairy Tales
Memoir

Ancient/Historical

Autobiography
Social Issues
First Novels
Literary Fiction
Thrillers

Romance modern and historical

The Afroyal Portal For Artists will be a members only site. That means that, although anybody can log in to the site, only accepted members can publish their creative art on the site. All other visitors are welcome to make their comments about any artist’s domain on our Public Forum section.

We do this to protect our member artists because we know how sensitive artists are about their “babies” and art is a very subjective affair. What one person dislikes another person will passionately love. Placing comments away from the “baby” psychologically makes negative comments more palatable.

The annual membership fee per member is €99 (ninety-nine euros). In addition, any adverts on a member’s domain generates income per click for the member, not for us. To control this, the member will get a special codeword to enter the administrative site and see how many people clicked on her or his pages, the advertisements there, and how long the person stayed on her or his domain.

Because of this moderate fee, and because the team consists of a select handful of writers, editors, agents and publishers, we have to limit the number of our members. Here, I now personally appeal to all of those interested: DO NOT APPLY FOR MEMBERSHIP IF YOU ALREADY HAVE YOUR OWN SITE SOMEWHERE ELSE. Remember the purpose of Afroyal Portal For Artists is to assist in promoting those budding artists with no direct access to the Internet. So, be fair.

Don’t join us simply to further promote your work to a wider audience. Think of your brother and sister, aunt or uncle out in the rural area creating those lovely sculptures, beads, pottery, basketwork that only the occasional chance tourist buys – these are our people on this site.

Think of all those genius African emerging writers whose authentic works are rejected by the Western publishers scattered all over the continent, simply because these geniuses do not portray “that Africa and Africans” that these Western publishers want the world to see – in the ever subtle but bitter quest to uphold Western hegemonic delusions.

We want these geniuses to be exposed to readers who love them because of their work, not because some Western publicity has instructed people to love the genius. We want these geniuses to sell to the world online. We want them on our site. Don’t take up their space.

The site will be ready to go – at the latest – in August. In the meantime prospective members and everybody else can visit us and sign in at www.akinyi-princess.de

All who sign in will receive our free newsletter full of tips on writing, the writing market, writing jobs on the Internet, health and lifestyle. They can also join our Public and Private Forums. And of course the creative writing products are on offer to anyone needing assistance.

But our members come first and are judged from a different criterion. We may decide to devote more of our time to a struggling member with obvious potential and reject a non-member in a similar situation for this very reason – to devote more time to our members.

We hope to be forgiven for this. But maybe one day the team will be large enough to take on all applicants and adequately instruct them on how to improve their writing and how to market their fiction and nonfiction.

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