Publishing, Bootlegging, Piracy and the Public in Nigeria

Abstract

The publishing of educative materials, fictional and non-fictional books, bulletins, magazines, and newspapers is all for disseminating information to targeted readers. The importance of books and other types of publications to individuals and a nation cannot be overemphasised. Thus, due to how important publishing is, bootlegging, which is the synonym of piracy, was examined in this study. The study examined how bootlegging affects publishing, and if the public is aware of public relations as a body that can curb piracy. However, the Excellence Theory, propounded by James Grunig, was adopted with a random sampling method using survey design. More so, a total of 200 questionnaires were retrieved from the respondents out of 250. The study used Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to code the respondents' data. According to the findings, both teachers and students are unaware of Public Relations’ function in the publishing industry while the respondents mostly mentioned the government as the body responsible for curbing bootlegging, and that was because the public has limited knowledge on how Public Relations can effectively curb bootlegging in the publishing industry. Thus, this study recommends that the public should be made aware of the functions of Public Relations. Likewise, the publishing industries should not rely only on the government to curb piracy, but they should seek Public Relations agencies' services to curb piracy effectively.