New Silverfish Facebook page

NEWS: Silverfish Books -- new facebook page

Silverfish Books has a new Facebook page dedicated to news about books, writing and publishing. Friends of Silverfish Books (including suppliers) may post items about their own book projects or news about their industry. The posts, however, will be moderated for, while we encourage you to share everything pertaining to books, we will not be so interested in what anyone had for breakfast, or how a date went, or other such things. Hope you'd understand. The other thing is that we will be biased towards books from Malaysia and Singapore, whether they are self-published, small runs, POD, or e-book; that is we'd love to hear from you about books from or about these two countries, preferably by writers from these two countries, but we are more flexible about that. We prefer book events too (reading, book launches and any other such event) from these two countries, but for news, it could be anything interesting (pertaining to this subject) from around the world.

The Ikan Perak page will continue as it is for the time being, for stories of the more personal nature. I set up Ikan Perak in 2009, and though I am hardly a ludite (I can write code in PHP and know enough to design, launch and maintain the Silverfish website, online store and marketplace), I froze when confronted with the Facebook page, or maybe I was simply too darn lazy to work on it, or even invite friends. Fortunately, Jamilah has no such problems, and has designed the entire new page for us. In fact, she has agreed to continue managing the Silverfish Books Facebook page when she returns to college.

Asia publishing and Childrens' writing prizes

1. There is now a new website dedicated to publishing news from the publishing industry in Asia: www.asianpublishing.net. So here's a chance to get your news out. The Asian Publishing Network aims to build a network of people in the publishing industry, those related to it, and readers.  Send your news to editor@asianpublishing.net. You may also submit articles and book reviews. Published submissions will not be paid (at least not now) but all submissions will be duly attributed and linked to relevant sites.

2. Children's book writers and illustrators, please note the following three ongoing competitions.The Calistro Prize is organised by the Society of Children's Book Writer & Illustrator (Malaysia) with the sponsorship of Calistro Consultants, a UK-based Consultancy firm. The winner will get RM10,000.00 and publication. Two runner-ups will be guided towards publication. For further information, visit www.thecalistroprize.com.

3.  The Eye Level Children's Literature Award is a global award organised by Daekyo, World Youth & Culture Foudation, South Korea. Now in its thirtieth year, the award is being held in Malaysia for the first time. The two categories in the award are 1) children's story and 2)illustrated story book. The prize money is USD2,000 for the first prize winner, and USD1,000 for the second prize winner for each category, at the national level. Winning entries will be submitted for the international round and will compete with entries from USA, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. The winning prize at the international level is USD10,000 for each category, together with free tickets for two to Korea.  The deadline for submission is 30th September.