Silverfish Writing Programme for spring 2014 now open for registration

Silverfish Writing Programme for 15 February, 2014 now open for registration


The next intake for the Silverfish Writing Programme will be on Saturday, Feb 15, 2014, and will run for 10 consecutive weeks (except for holidays) from 10.30am to 12.30pm. Registration will open on Dec 1, 2013. The past few programmes have been extremely popular and we have had to turn away many late inquiries, because the maximum number of participants we can accommodate is 10 (ten). We have, to date, received 30 inquiries already. So we encourage those who are interested to register early and avoid the last minute rush. (Please, tell your friends who are interested, too.) The registration fee will be RM1000.00 per participant for the full ten week programme, but an early bird discount of 10% will apply until (and including) January 1, 2014.

The world is full of stories. Humans are the only storytelling animals on the planet. We may miss meals (ask your teenager buried in a book or your aunt or mum hooked on a television soap) but not our stories. Even in famine-stricken zones, while people wait for the food trucks to arrive, they tell one another stories to keep alive. In war zones, where life is in danger every single minute, people cannot resist telling stories. All religions have tons of stories that are constantly repeated. Stories are part of our very being, our claim to be human.

We are surrounded by stories every waking minute of the day. When we turn on our radio or television to listen to the news, or to watch a drama or sitcom or even a cooking show, when we open our newspapers or surf the net for news, when we go to the movies, to a dance, listen to a song, or look at a painting, when we go to the office, pitch a proposal to our boss, our clients, meet our co-workers when we relax over tea and gossip, or tell them about our day, or listen to their stories. When we read books, we read stories. And stories will make us laugh or cry, or be angry, and invoke dozens of other emotions. We will love characters, or we hate them. Good stories never leave us indifferent. We have a desperate need to tell stories in whatever form. That’s why some of us want to become writers: to tell our stories. But what do publishers want?

That's what the Silverfish Writing Programme is all about: what publishers look for.

READ MORE ABOUT THE PROGRAMME and REGISTER

Year-end offers -- 50% off

We have changed our site layout (again). (Yes, we have itchy fingers). We have decided to make the online bookstore the home page. Why? Because it comes with a nifty little slideshow and we thought it would be great for advertising. And it's FREE!

We know what it's like to be a small publisher. We certainly don't have huge budgets, and mainstream media often ignore us. So we're offering the space on our website 'home' page for book related advertisements for free for one week (renewable on request, subject to availability). So if you have a new book, or an offer or an event; send us a visual (550px by 250px -- landscape -- in png or jpg format, about 50k) and we'll put it up for you at no charge. Call it our small contribution to the book industry in Malaysia. (And hence the caveat; the ad-space is offered for books, offers, services or events pertaining to Malaysian writers, authors or publishers. Eg. a new book or event by Tash or Twan Eng will be welcomed, but not Fifty Shades. Fair? Ah, yes, one more thing. The book or offer must be available at Silverfish Books.)

To celebrate the new website and year end, we are offering 50% off (yes, 50 % off) on all titles three Inspector Mislan titles by Rozlan Mohd Noor and the three books by Isa Kamari. You'll have to pay for the postage, of course, but if you are a resident of Malaysia that will come up to RM12.00 for up to 3 kilos! That is, it will cost you RM8.00 for one book, or up to 10 books if it's like Rawa (and fewer for others). Please check the postage online before you order. Since you can mix and match (and kongsi with friends) you can save yourself a bundle. Of course, if you want to pick it up from the shop then you save the whole lot on postage. There are no limits as to how many you can order (or who can order), but it will be subject to the availability of stock. So enjoy.

Publishers turned booksellers

I read this in Goodreads: "With the advent of digital reading and the popularity of social media interaction with bestselling authors, an interesting phenomenon is taking place. Reading consumers are developing not only a loyal following of their favorite authors, but also developing a measure of brand loyalty to certain publishers. For their part, publishers have responded with shopping websites where readers can purchase digital and print titles, as well as other potential perks like being selected to read content before it is officially released."

Well, well, well. Silverfish Books started this trend 12 years ago and have been advocating the creation of strong brand-recognition ever since. There was a time when book imprints meant something. In the seventies, one never went wrong choosing a Faber and Faber for good contemporary (literary) fiction and a Penguin for the classics. Later, big houses came out with premier imprints like Vintage and Picador. Then there were the Serpent's Tails and Harvills for the even more eclectic. Then everything disintegrated and became a boring soup, making book discovery a real pain. Fifty Shades was published under Vintage. Need I say more!

The book industry (the Anglo-American version at least) became a fast-food outlet selling burgers and oily fries to the masses. That market will not go away; there will be enough children to keep it profitable. But adults, after showing some initial interest, will crave for something more in their lives. New restaurants will open for them to enjoy good meals, instead of a pizza takeaway everyday; an occasional haute cuisine, even.

The book industry will evolve likewise."... UK-based publisher Five Leaves Publications is opening an actual brick-and-mortar bookstore in response to the need for more independent book shops, as well as a way to further the discovery of its client list. This will be the first independent bookstore to open in the store’s area of Nottingham since 2000."

Three cheers to Five Leaves Publicatons. Hip hip hooray! x3

Ban lifted on Irshad Manji's book

This is old news by now; it was reported in The Malaysian Insider on the 5th of September. More importantly, is this the end of the story? TMSI reported, "In her decision, Zaleha questioned that if the book (Allah, Kebebasan dan Cinta) was prejudicial to public order, why was there no action taken to ban the English version of the book?" The book was in circulation for about two weeks before it was banned, while its original version in English has been in the market since June 2011.

All this is not new any more. But another point made by the Justice Zaleha is. "Every legal power must have limits, otherwise we will have a dictatorship." Wow! Is anyone listening?

However, we know what the reality is. Allah, Kebebasan dan Cinta will never be available to the public in this country because there are other ways of restricting the circulation of books without following the legal route. Harassment is one; walk into a bookshop when it is full of customers in the pretext of looking for contraband and disrupt business. Harass book importers at customs checkpoints, delay clearance, make them open every container in front of the enforcement officers. Harass transporters. In other words, make life hell for anyone trying to sell it.

Would that be akin to a dictatorship? Look out for interesting arguments here, possibly involving Jews and Zionist! Everything is their fault!

Jorge Luis Borges on Writing

Jorge Luis Borges' influence on modern writing is immeasurable. It is so ubiquitous that many authors don't even realise that what they are writing is Borgesian. (From Brain Pickings: 'Jorge Luis Borges was the most celebrated and influential Latin-American author of the twentieth century ... In 1972, when Borges was in his seventies and completely blind, a bright and earnest young Argentinian man of letters by the name of Fernando Sorrentino, only thirty at the time, sat down with the beloved author for seven afternoons ... Published in 1974 as Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (public library) ... (it) couldn’t be commercially distributed until the overthrow of Isabel Perón in 1976 ...')
Here are some extracts, but you should really read all of it. (I found some parts really funny.)

• Writing as amusement: A writer’s work is the product of laziness, you see. A writer’s work essentially consists of taking his mind off things, of thinking about something else, of daydreaming, of not being in any hurry to go to sleep but to imagine something . . . And then comes the actual writing, and that’s his trade. That is, I don’t think the two things are incompatible. Besides, I think that when one is writing something that’s more or less good, one doesn’t feel it to be a chore; one feels it to be a form of amusement.
  
• Literary schools; I no longer believe in literary schools now; I believe in the individual.
  
• Psychological literature: I believe in psychological literature, and I think that all literature is fundamentally psychological.
  
• Anecdotes and jokes: Each year a person hears four or five anecdotes that are very good, precisely because they’ve been worked on. Because it’s wrong to suppose that the fact that they’re anonymous means they haven’t been worked on. On the contrary, I think fairy tales, legends, even the off color jokes one hears, are usually good because having been passed from mouth to mouth, they’ve been stripped of everything that might be useless or bothersome. So we could say that a folk tale is a much more refined product than a poem by Donne or by Góngora or by Lugones, for example, since in the second case the piece has been refined by a single person, and in the first case by hundreds.
  
• Shakespeare: I think of Shakespeare above all as a craftsman of words. For example, I see him closer to Joyce than to the great novelists, where character is the most important thing.
  
• Publishing: Alfonso Reyes said that one published what he had written in order to avoid spending his life correcting it: one publishes a book in order to leave it behind, one publishes a book in order to forget it.
  
• Ageing: To reach the point of writing in a more or less uncluttered manner, a more or less decorous manner, I’ve had to reach the age of seventy.
  
• Judging a writer: A writer should always be judged by his or her best pages.
  

Read more here: http://goo.gl/91lvPA