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.

An obituary: Gore Vidal (1925-2012)

I was writing my op-ed piece on The Literary Fiction Debate when I heard on BBC 3 that Gore Vidal has died. He was my boyhood hero. I loved reading Gore Vidal when I was a teenager. Compared to him, Norman Mailer was a bore. (They didn't like one another either. He rubbed many people the wrong way, and he loved it.)

The story in the New York Times says, "Gore Vidal, the elegant, acerbic all-around man of letters who presided with a certain relish over what he declared to be the end of American civilization, died on Tuesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles, where he moved in 2003, after years of living in Ravello, Italy. He was 86."

His works were primarily non-fiction, but the book I remember him most by is the one called Kalki, a work of fiction, albeit not one of his most popular. But I loved his storytelling. When Kalki comes riding his white horse, says the Hindu mythology, the world will come to an end. In Gore Vidal's book, Kalki comes in the form of a Vietnam War veteran, who comes riding a white horse (in a Hollywood-style extravaganza) to end the world,which he intends to re-populate by himself, ala Adam and Eve. It is hugely tongue in cheek, but when he did end the world, I was left gob-smacked. I like this writer, I decided. He was audacious as hell. And, the twist at the end was hilarious.

“Gore is a man without an unconscious,” his friend the Italian writer Italo Calvino once said. Mr. Vidal said of himself: “I’m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.”

My first Gore Vidal book was Messiah (1954) about a reluctant religious 'teacher' who is forced to commit suicide by his followers to fulfil his destiny, and to become their messiah. Julian (1964), about the Roman philosopher emperor, Julian (also known as Julian the Apostate)(331-363AD), the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman empire, was my first non-fiction book by the author. Creation (1981) was a journey through the ancient lands of Persia, China and India that was part philosophy, part history and part fantasy (of the author). Lincoln was history like I had never read before until then. That warm fuzzy President of the United States who, we had been told in school, originated from the log cabins was no more; replaced by a ruthless political animal, a quasi tyrant with a mad wife to boot. In other words, a real person.

History never remained the same for me.

Gore Vidal was an important influence in my teenage and early years. While his are not exactly books I'm likely to revisit frequently, he did point out important directions; some of which I ended up taking.

Sleep well, you crochety old man.

Video: Future of print

"EPILOGUE is a lyrical student documentary about the future of books by Hannah Ryu Chung, featuring a number of interviews with independent bookstore owners, magazine art directors, printers, bookbinders, letterpress artists, and other champions of bibliophilia." This is  a beautiful video with some stunning images. Here are some quotes from it:

• a book is a sensory experience ...
• it's an incredible aesthetic intellectual experience to read a book ... to read through a book ...
• ... can you even buy floppy disks .. yet, you know, there are books from the fifth and sixth century (that can still be read)

Yes, it is that kind of video. It is for those who love the printed book, though it does not completely rule out the e-book. This 24 minute video is a must watch. Some of the visuals are quite a sight to behold.

Why are typos so hard to catch?

After reading this piece in Optical Illusions, I don't feel so stupid any more. According to Esther Inglis-Arkell, "It turns out, this is partly a matter of the way your brain processes text — and partly something that's specific to English and a few other languages."

Have you heard of the Stroop Effect? I hadn't either, but when I read the explanation I realised that I had read it somewhere before. "The Stroop Effect happens when the words for one color are printed in ink of another color ... If the word 'GREEN' is printed in blue ink, even though their eyes see blue, their brain thinks 'green'. It takes people a while to sort it out."

I am not a speed reader; I like language too much. Speed reading is good for those who like to know the ending. (Of course, you could peek at the last page.) I am one of those who hates a good book to end; its like parting after a long meaningful relationship with a good friend. One could revisit, certainly, but it will not be the same. There will no longer be the same serendipitous quality about it. So I read good books slowly, and bad ones quickly to get it over with.

But, coming back to proof reading, I am still dreadful at it. One problem is the familiarity of the text. Researchers at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit found that "... It's possible to scramble those letters around while keeping them near where they would be, if the word were in its correct order ..." without losing comprehension. Apparently, this is possible only with a few languages including German. (They failed when they tried it with Hebrew.)

Read the whole story here.

Are profits the only consideration for the (printed) newspaper?

We have been hearing about the impending death of the newspaper for almost a decade now. We have considered it as inevitable. With the e-book and the iPad, we are even more sure that conventional newspapers are doomed. I was too, until I read this article in the Fortune magazine, Profits are not the only consideration for newspapers. It starts:

"One of the challenges of discussing the besieged newspaper business is that it's not like just any business, or it shouldn't be. There is a public-service component to newspapering that is often at odds with the pursuit of maximum profits. That, in fact, is the industry's core problem as readership and revenue continue to dwindle: Many of the nation's newspapers are owned by corporations that are concerned primarily or solely with profits, which often isn't good for journalism. The only way to maintain profits in the short-term is to cut costs."

Recently, The New Orleans Times-Picayune, announced that it would cut production from daily to three days a week. The paper reportedly is profitable -- but not profitable enough for its owners, who want to squeeze out as much as they can in as short a time as possible. People can always read it online, one could say. Fact is, "... more than a third of New Orleans' population has no internet access."

If one third of a major city in the US has no internet access, what about Malaysia? I was asked recently, in a survey conducted on behalf of the Ministry of Culture, why I considered it important for local publishers and authors to have more support from the print media (namely, newspapers) in this country. Isn't social media good enough?

The latest audited reports for July to Dec 2011, by the Audit Bureau of Circulation, indicate that a little over 2.5 million print newspapers are sold in the peninsula in all languages every day (not including Sundays). If we assume a readership of 5 persons per newspaper, we are looking at 12.5 million eyeballs! Granted, local authors are not as glamorous as Lady Gaga, but to quote Harry Shearer of the Columbia Journalism Review: do the owners 'owe a little something back'? And '... at what point does the pursuit of profit begin to do serious harm to the communities served by newspapers?'

This is not to say that local newspapers are raking in the money, but they do get into an unwritten social contract the moment they decide to publish one, as opposed to, say, setting up a char kweh teow stall. Do print newspapers have a social responsibility more than any other industry? And which country's cultural landscape do local newspapers consider themselves to be part of?