This year’s George Town Literary Festival wrapped up on an optimistic note for the Englishlanguage publishing scene, writes Samantha Joseph.
THE writing and publishing scene these days is vastly different than even five years ago.
It’s pervasive enough that you would notice it even if you aren’t a big reader.
The advent of ebooks, digital publishing and indie publishers have made a splash not just across bookshelves but across news pages as well.
Social media platforms have changed the way writers, readers and publishersreactandinteractwitheach other, and the Internet has revealed worldsofwordstoexplorewithoutever turning a page.
Last weekend’s George Town Literary Festival 2014 discussed the array of benefits and tribulations that the altered scope of modern-day publishing has to offer through a series of lectures, classrooms and conversations, with titles like What Publishers Want, Inventing Characters, The Art Of Political Biography and Polish Your Writing.
A more intimate, writer-ly event compared to last year’s, which was geared towards readers with its array of big name authors, the festival was obviously aimed at writers — those who have published, are looking to be published, or have aspirations to one day be published.
AWAY THE GATEKEEPERS
According to a Nielsen Book’s and Consumers Review, 25 per cent of all books bought in the UK and 23 percent bought in the US were e-books.
In Publishing Today, panelists Bernadette Foley (until recently with Hachette), and Hans Kemp and Tom VaterofCrimeWavePresstalkedabout how digital publishing has moved the paradigm from big publishers as gatekeepers of authorial success to big publishers, indie publishers and selfpublishing, either ignoring or holding on tenuously to the concept of a gatekeeper.
“It’s good that the big six (now five, afterthemergingofPenguinandRandom House) publishers don’t have the hold that they once had,” said Vater, crediting technology for breaking that grasp.
The role of gatekeeper should not be the realm solely of publishers, as editors are often middle class white people with their own set of preconceptions and expectations resulting in a lot of writing that is just not given a chance, he added.
The racial aspect of publishing is inescapable — of the now-big-five, three are based in the US, MacMillan in the UK and Hachette in France.
The majority of the books they print catertothewhitemiddleclassmarket, excluding other audiences, and the appalling rate of writing translated into English (anywhere between two and three per cent) does seem unnecessarily xenophobic.
“Readers are starting to self-regulate,” said Foley, noting the explosion ofbookreviewblogsandwebsiteseven as the big five slowly lose their gatekeeper status.
This might optimistically be translated as demand being more reader-driven than ever before.
Although it doesn’t mean that we will immediately see a slew of longedfor diversity in books both print and electronic, it is a step that further strengthens the democratisation and inclusiveness of the writing world, a topic explored in last year’s GTLF.
CrimeWavePress,foundedbyVater and Kemp after frustrated attempts to publish the former’s book, is a fully online independent publishing house with a print-on-demand function.
Indie publishers face very real physical obstacles from bigger publishers, including having to vie for shelf space that, according to Vater, is often paid for.
“We need a platform where we can make books cheaply, quickly, and get it to consumers directly without a large marketing budge,” explained Vater.
“Onlye-bookscandothat.”
CHANGING OUR WRITING
But what does this mean for Malaysian readers? If you find that this socalled unlimited world of e-reading is, in fact, limited by your lack of American credit cards, there is always the tablet.
Although penetration of dedicated reading devices like theNookand Kindle is so shallow as to be almost non-existent here, the tablet is an acceptable device to download ebooks and read on.
According to publisher sweek ly.com, around 60 per cent of e-books were bought to be read on a multifunction device in the US anyway.
Amazon has always been a byword for digital reading but Smashwords and other independent platforms are beginning to eke out their own share of the market.
Even Amir Muhammad’s Fixi Novo imprint has a Smashwords account whereyoucanpurchase ebooks.
In Logging Off: Writing in the Age of the Internet, Foley was joined by comic book artist Sonny Liew and Projek Dialog curator Ahmad Fuad Rahmat; here,theydiscussedthe evolution of writing and reading.
“When my friend told me that he finished The Iliad on his phone, something in me died,” said Ahmad Fuad.
Many members of the audience clearly agree that this was some form of sacrilege.
He acknowledged that the written word must adapt to social media platforms because it doesn’t make sense to write the same way you would for a print publication.
We communicate increasingly in sound bites, he said, as platforms move from blogspot to the limitations of Twitter and Facebook.
Even writing news or fiction online requires different skills and presentation — shorter chapters, snappier headlines, more lists.
While this is more or less inevitable — and it also allows broader and faster access to news,ideas,opinionsandexperiences — it also has its drawbacks.
“Our empathy is very instant,” he said.
“For example, the news of the gang rape in Kelantan was everywhere on Facebook for about two weeks, and then news of Gaza broke and people forgot about it.
It’s a cycle.
Yes, the media leads us to awareness but it’s a very fleeting awareness.”
NO MORE ISOLATION
“I agree that everyone should know what happened to our grandmothers in World War II.
Over and over again.
In lucid prose,” said publisher Amir wryly, who was on the Malaysian Writing Today panel with poet Wong Phui Nam and horror writer Julya Oui.
“But I am looking at a younger audience.” Unabashedly proclaiming his dedication to publishing pulp, his imprint, Buku Fixi, recently won the The BooksellerInternational Adult Trade Publisher Award at the International London Book Festival.
With over 50 booksunderitsbelt,Fixi is a strong proponent of the democratisation of writing that is catching up here.
Prior to this, being a published author in Malaysiawasaprivilege reserved for a few and those few would probablyquestiontheideaof it even being a privilege.
“The sad situation when I was writing is that we all did it in our owncorner,”saidWong, who was once the editor of The New Cauldron, a literarypublicationthat gave young writers an opportunity to be published in 1950s Malaya.
Those who wrote in English then, the language of our colonisers, were given no encouragementfromeitherthe Western establishment or the later Malayan government.
“We were isolated and we still feel isolated.
It’s a symptom of writers in my generation.” Fixi and its imprints Fixi Novo and Fixi Verso, through the very quantity and nature of its output, speaks to the transientnatureofwritingratherthan the widely accepted idea that printed words equal immortality.
Maybe this lessburdenedexpectationofwritingis the right way to go for our developing publishing scene.
Lit List Silverfish Public Talk - Jose Saramago
Date: Dec 13, 5.30 pm
Venue: Silverfish Books, 28-1, Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur, Contact: +603-2284 4837
Speaker: Mark Sabine, University of Nottingham Admission is free (RSVP by email or telephone) Silverfish Writing Programme
Date: Will run from from 10.30 am to 12.30 pm every Saturday for 10 consecutive weeks.
Next intake on Jan 31.
Venue: Silverfish Books Contact: +603-2284 4837 Registration: Opens on Dec 1.
Fee is RM1,000 per participant for the full 10 weeks programme but an early bird discount of 10 per cent will apply until (and including) Jan 10.
Fixi Novo Call for Submissions - Cyberpunk: Malaysia
Deadline: Dec 31 Requirements: Short stories of creative fiction or non-fiction of the futuristic persuasion, 2,000 to 5,000 words.
Contact: Go to fixi.com.my