From Pacesetters to Pearls: Moran keeps the reading adventure alive

Let us go on literary excursion down memory lane, shall we? Here we find Pacesetters Series that mesmerised readers in English speaking Africa, from the seventies all the way to the late 90s.
The series were published by Macmillan, a UK multinational, with offices in Eastern Africa, Western Africa and some representation in Southern Africa.
Heinemann, another UK multinational, had blazed the literary trail with the African Writers Series (AWS), which had started in the late fifties, with classics like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. However, these were deemed to serious, too highbrow, to enjoy mass appeal.
That is how Macmillan came up with the Pacesetters Series. The books focused on contemporary African life—romance, urban struggles, crime, politics, and moral dilemmas—written in an accessible, fast-paced style.
The series played a key role in cultivating a reading culture and offering relatable African storytelling outside the more “literary” canon (such as the African Writers Series).
From the iconic Pacesetters logo at the top of the book to the catchy illustrations – in full colour – the books became a collector’s items, amongst young people who went to school in late seventies, the bulk of the eighties and up to the mid-nineties. Readers would routinely brag about the number of books they had devoured in the series.
The books were hot commodities to be exchanged, Pacesetter for Pacesetter, among the enthusiastic readers.
The very first Pacesetter to be published was Director, written by Nigerian Agbo Areo, in 1977.
The beauty of the Pacesetters Series, was such that, once published, the books enjoyed excellent marketing and distribution across English speaking African countries.
That is how David Maillu’s For Mbatha and Rabeka, his earliest and best known book in the series, became a household name in Africa. Maillu, in an earlier interview, spoke of how his three books in the series earned him substantial royalties, to the tune of millions of shillings!
The other two are The Equatorial Assignment and Thorns of Life.
By the time Macmillan was exiting Africa, around 2010, the production of Pacesetters had substantially dwindled. Here in Kenya, Macmillan became Moran Publishers, a fully locally owned publishing house ran by David Muita as chairman.
Sitting in his expansive office at Juddah Complex, along Wangari Maathai Road (formerly Forest Road), Muita, who rose through the ranks to become managing director at Macmillan East Africa, explained that when he bought off Macmillan, he wanted to continue producing the Pacesetters Series.
It was not easy.
“I wanted to purchase rights for the series, for distribution here in East Africa, but the guys in the UK turned me down,” recalled Muita. This became all the more frustrating for him, considering that Macmillan had no plans to continue distributing the books in the continent.
To salvage the situation, he had to think and act fast. He got in touch with the few Kenyan authors, who had books in the series and convinced them to recall the rights for the books, since Macmillan did not plan on retaining them in the market.
Faced with the damning prospect of their books getting out of print, the authors chose to cast their lot with Muita and Moran. The Kenyan authors included Maillu, James Ngumi, James Irungu and James Shimanyula (the latter two co-authored two books: The Border Runners and Operation Rhino. Irungu also had a number of titles he had written on his own.)
Another writer Muita was especially keen on recruiting, was Barbara Kimenye, she of the popular Moses adventure. “I had personally recruited Barbara to write for the original Pacesetters, when she was living in Kenya,” he explains. “So, when we acquired Moran, I got in touch and suggested that she recalls the rights to her books. Sadly, she passed on before the process was complete.”
Her books in the series include Mating Game and The Runaway Bride.
Once the authors got hold of their rights, Moran published them under the old titles, but under a different series: The Moran Pearls.
For the Western African titles, Moran got in touch with a Ghanaian publisher, who did the same with Ghanaian authors, the most prominent being Kwasi Koranteng, whose popular titles include The President’s Son, Bitter Enemies, The Money Mongers, The Legacy, among others.
The Moran Pearls series is steadily growing, with new titles being added to the list.
If you think you can write with the pace and style of the Pacesetters/Moran Pearls, Muita has a message for you: “Try us; you won’t regret.”