Reading the story by Vinutha Mallya in Publishing
Perspectives,
As KL Book Fair
Opens, Publishers Eye Booming Southeast Asia, it is easy to
get intoxicated in the euphorias of self congratulations. Publishing
in Malaysia (and South-East Asia) is, certainly, not what it was 10
years ago, but much remains to be done. The Trade and Copyright
Centre (TCC) is an interesting move, but what is it? What is its USP? Soon, every
country in ASEAN will organises? Some are already planning. How
many are we going to attend? How many are
visitors going to attend? Will it
all simply die off like the Merdeka Cup?
Since Frankfurt, Trade and Copyright Centres have become the new
buzzword; the new me-too fix for all that ails publishing. Everybody
now wants to sell rights. But the operative word in TCC is 'trade',
and that involves both buying and selling. And, now we have one
tacked to the KLIBF as well.
I am not against KLIBF's TCCs, but I have a strong aversion to
failure and history is not on our side. Is there no hope, then?
Actually, there is, and it is called ASEAN; unfortunately, it is also
an organisation that falls into the category of '
satu sen tada guna' in the
minds of most. After 45 years of ASEAN, Malaysians don't know
anything about literature from Singapore, nor are we interested, and
vice versa (except when books are banned on one side of the causeway
or the other). Don't even think of looking for books from Burma or
Vietnam or Cambodia or The Philippines .... you get the drift ... in
any country outside the home nation. Why? Are Malaysians worried of
being flooded by books from Indonesia? That's strange, considering
how our markets are already flooded with books from the US and the
UK, and with some absolutely dreadful ones at that. Language
difficulty has been cited as one problem against creating a regional
market, but one suspects there is some other more fundamental
factors at work here; sibling rivalry and petty jealousy. (Seldom
does the intellectual level of our intra-regional debate rise above
recipes for chili-crab.)
I was one of the invited speakers at a forum in Singapore four years
ago (as part of the Singapore Writers Festival), and one of the main
laments of all the panellists (and audience) was the lack of access
to book markets within ASEAN. It was almost unanimously agreed by
participants (who were writers, publishers, agents, and others) that
something had to be done about this bizarre situation. The idea we
came up with was a unique ASEAN marketplace for books; where books
from every country in the region, in every language and translation
is available either in traditional or virtual form; where publishing
professionals from the region can regularly meet, talk and trade;
where publishing professionals from other parts of the world come
for any publishing information from the region. An ASEAN book
clearing house, so to speak. I was talking to a suited senior
Singaporean bureaucratic type from the National Art Council at the
farewell cocktail after the forum, and I mentioned this to him. His
immediate reaction was, "We must not just think about ASEAN, we must
think of the whole world." Enough said.
Get real. The Anglo-American publishing industry is not interested
in anything not invented there, so we can forget about them. Besides
they only want to sell, not buy. Ask Frankfurt. (When
asked about the London Book Fair, a local publishing professional
quipped, "It's like Hall 8 in Frankfurt,
lah.) The Europeans might be more adventurous, but
how do we can get them interested enough to come here to KL (as
opposed to other cities in ASEAN)?
Karipap and luke warm
teh tarik, or
air
bandung, is not going to
cut it, even with halfway talented dancing girls thrown in. Bali has
got its beaches and boys, Bangkok has Patpong, Singapore has
shops and Sharjah paid business class airfares and provided full
five-star board and lodging for over a hundred publishing
professionals from around the world in November last year, besides
providing translation grants.
Anyway, why are we even thinking about world markets, when we have
half a billion people living right here in our neighbourhood? Make
that, almost two billion if we include China, Japan and Korea? If we
(the
countries of SEA) work together, we can do it. Otherwise, we can
watch others do it. This is a G-to-G job. Now, if only we can
persuade ASEAN bureaucrats to roll up the sleeves of their pretty
shirts and do some real work.
When
Silverfish New Writing was released in 12 years, there was
euphoria on the streets like we had just invented sliced bread. (Some are still dancing.) I
could only watch in amusement. Since
then we have scaled many more heights, but we are not going to
get carried away. There's much work still to be done.
Mr
Ramachandran, Executive Director of the National Book Development
Council of Singapore, announced on Monday, 28 May 2012 that Malaysia
will be the 'Country of Focus' at next year's Asian Festival of
Children's Content (AFCC). Now in its fourth year, the AFCC is held
annually in Singapore to promote Asian content for children. More than
80 sessions were organised during the Festival covering topics on
writing, illustrating, editing, translating, apps for children and
critique sessions. Book launches and author signings added to the buzz
and there was also an inaugural rights fair. An estimate of more than
700 people attended over 80 sessions held over the four days while total
attendance from the public at various events were estimated at 3000.
Sixteen countries from Asia, South Africa, UK and US were represented at
the AFCC. This year's country of focus was the Philippines which made a
strong showing with 10 speakers, a stand showcasing books from the
Philippines accompanied by musical performances. Norhayati Razali,
officer at the Kota Buku, a body set up to promote the Malaysian book
industry, said the Kota Buku is pleased to play a leading role for
Malaysia's participation at AFCC 2013 which will be held from 25-28 May
2013.
The latest news is that Apple has offered to settle
its e-book price fixing charge in Europe, but vows to fight a a
similar battle in America because the charges against it by the
Department of Justice are "simply not true". Forbes.com reports, 
