News: DoJ vs Apple, And The Myracle Of Challenged Books

The earth shifted a little last week. So did the publishing landscape, when the United States' Department of Justice filed a suit against Apple and several publishers for allegedly fixing prices of e-books.

Many see these publisher's acceptance of the agency model suggested by Apple as a response to what is seen as Amazon's growing dominance over the publishing industry. Some believe that Amazon will emerge as the big winner in the clash, as fears of authors and smaller independent publishers getting trampled in the middle grow. This view appears to be more prevalent in this debate on The Huffington Post.

Online publisher Smashwords, however, will keep its agency pricing model, despite the DoJ's looming showdown with Apple. Helps when some of its books are less than US$3 and almost 15,000 of them are free....

Too much has been written about this over the week since the news broke, so I won't elaborate further. I'll say this though: E-book retailers should make it much easier for Malaysians to buy e-books, if they're concerned about piracy and stuff. And e-readers need to be cheaper. Then, perhaps, they can start talking about e-book prices.


Other news

• What is solidarity? A pamphleteer's Occupation.
• A book lover's challenge: spring cleaning.
• Barnes & Noble announces Nook Simple Touch, with a backlit screen. Get a move on, Kindle.
• Police fingerprinters save blind woman's invisible writing.
• Google ends e-book agreement with indies; booksellers disappointed.
• OMG, baboons can recognise 'real words'. Soon they'll learn to drive and occupy Wall Street.
• Marshall Cavendish kids' books returning to Barnes & Noble stores. Wait, Amazon bought those?
• Image gallery: The Hunger Games and more top ten "most challenged" books. One book in this list is my Lauren Myracle, said to be "the US' most hated author".
• Why you can't find independently published books in bookstores.
• Book publicist dips its toes into publishing with the launch of February Books.
• Self-publishing company Blurb reportedly helped its clients earn over US$1 million in 2011.

Flash Fiction

An author once said that an "utterly succinct and masterful" short story can be compared to caviar or fine dark chocolate. "Chocolate" best describes the very mixed box that is Without Anchovies,published by Silverfish Books in 2010. Though the simple cover helps it blend into the bookshelf, after your second pass along the aisle you can't help but be curious.

Chua Kok Yee's debut short story collection starts off normally, then takes a turn into darker, more bizarre territory at the end of the second tale, where a nightclub singer apparently answers a song request from beyond the grave.

What follows is a smorgasbord of day-to-day, action, crime, thrillers, more ghostly tales and strange happenings and a bit of comedy. The superbly scary "My Number One" and "Perfect Prefect" benefited from sharp, 90-degree turns from mundane to macabre, complete with hair-raising endings, so his budding reputation as our Edgar Allen Poe is more or less assured.

Among the new and strange are also shades of the familiar. The "last message from beyond" plot ("Dead Cougar"), and devices such as character continuity between stories ("Dinner" and "Cruel Mother") reminded me of Shih-Li Kow's Ripples – could it be because she and Chua took the same creative writing programme?

"Sambal Without Anchovies", which evokes the very Malaysian (or rather, Yasmin Ahmad's Malaysian) warmth, comfort and sweetness of freshly made nasi lemak, is the first, best and most well-crafted story in the collection. It's a brief, brilliant look at love, family and the generation gap that tugs the heartstrings.

However, many of the following stories couldn't match the mastery of the first. It's Hanif, his wife and the dad, Pak Samad who will be remembered long after the book is put down.

An author's first book is rarely his best. While it's not necessary for one story to segue into another with velvety smoothness in a collection, this one has the feel of a hurriedly compiled volume of exercises for creative writing or storytelling techniques. Why did Silverfish Books published it "as is"? Tight deadlines, maybe?

Chua has heaps of imagination (look at "You Are What You Eat"), a warped sense of humour, and he writes pretty well. At the conclusion of this rather short collection of short stories, one is left to ponder what more he could have done, had he been given more time.

---

Without Anchovies

Chua Kok Yee
Silverfish Books (2010)
172 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-983-3221-27-1

The Perfect Gentleman

Dear Americans, watch out for this man ... and his book.

Imran Ahmad (left) and The Perfect Gentleman, also published
as Unimagined in some countries

He's dapper, delightful and when he's allowed to speak his humour will bring down the house.

Imran Ahmad's book, Unimagined has been published on 3 April by Hachette as The Perfect Gentleman: A Muslim Boy Meets the West. He's hitting the road on a speaking tour in the US, travelling approximately 15,000 miles by car until this June.

At the moment, it looks like he needs help with confirming some of the venues in his itinerary. So... can anybody stateside give him a hand? Many thanks.

Wish I could be there.

News: Young Authors, Random House, And An Apple Settlement?

The Writer Games
A new trend appears to be emerging. Publishing parents, ushering an era of authors who are too young to drink, drive, frequent bars and buy prescription drugs.

It's heartening to see kids actually write books. They may be emulating favourite writers or striking out on their own. It might also bear hope for literacy, which is slumping like the economy these days.

Kids, however, also have a lot to bear while growing up and, often, don't have enough shoulders for the job. Soon, instead of just looks, clothes and choice of idols, a typical schoolyard dust-up can be sparked with a, "Your book stinks."

From what I've read so far, even adult authors don't always respond to bad reviews with grace. We can't expect kids to do any better, though one can hope. And some author spats can get really nasty. Will parents be filing lawsuits on behalf of their feuding literary proteges some day?

Also, how will editors handle kid authors? Or their parents? It'll be a new set of challenges, managing their expectations and going through the manuscripts. I've personally reviewed several 'scripts by writers below 18, and it's hard to be the bad guy.

By all means, let kids write and publish books. Just don't let things get ugly among them.


Canadian libraries staying out of Random House
Libraries in Nova Scotia, Canada are boycotting Random House over "unfair" e-book pricing.

Some weeks back, Random House bumped up prices of its books for libraries, believing, I assume, that people won't buy books if they can borrow them for free. But going by that logic, publishers might as well campaign to have libraries closed so people would have to buy books if they want to read them.

Tempus fugit, and now it's libraries that are threatened by the explosion of e-published books. At least publishers can revamp their business model to stay afloat. When anyone can tote around a virtual library in notebook-sized devices, who needs a real one?


Other news

• Apple and the publishers targeted for "collusion" by the US Department of Justice appears to be heading for a settlement with the feds. Some observers think this will mean lower e-book prices, but also the possible strengthening of Amazon's grip over book selling and publishing.
• A Q&A with Jodi Picoult. But why did you say "DO NOT SELF PUBLISH", ma'am? The Sydney Morning Herald, meanwhile, says "yes" to self-publishing.
• From The Maid and the Queen: Yolande of Aragon, Joan of Arc's secret backer? And the author of the book debunks seven Joan or Arc myths.
• The American Library Association's list of the ten most frequently challenged library books of 2011.
• Robert Silvers, founding editor of The New York Review of Books, takes us back in time to its early days.
• Amanda Hocking answers some questions on the varying degrees of success among self-published authors, and the responses to her input.
• Three costly cuppas: Greg Mortenson has to repay (at least) US$1 million to his former charity.
• Because you can't have too many writing tips: Here are some from CS Lewis.
• Cathy Clamp, one half of the writing duo known as Cat Adams, Guest blogs at Writer Beware on why (some) small publishers fail.
• 20 per cent of US is reading digital books, says Pew E-book Survey.
• Mightier than the sword: Shiva Rahbaran's Iranian Writers Uncensored.
• Anthony Bourdain's Ecco will be publishing the online restaurant reviewing phenom known as Marilyn Hagerty.
• New York City school tests will get more boring with a ban on 50 words being mulled.

Chasing Camels On The Karakoram Highway

This post had been sitting as a draft copy for about three weeks. Someone suggested giving this to The Malaysian Insider, so I did. Once again, TMI has been very kind.

Also, special thanks to an ex-colleague who introduced me to this band via a copy of their first album, Into... AkashA, back in... nuts, I can't remember when. ...I didn't do anything with that album back then, so I'm glad I could do something for this album now.

---

Chasing camels on the Karakoram Highway
first published in The Malaysian Insider, 06 April 2012


When I heard it, my jaw dropped. "Returned?"

"Cannot sell, so the boss said, 'Return them'," said the store assistant who looked overqualified for his position. With the beard, glasses and ponytail he might as well be the store's walking catalogue and go-to guy... he probably is.

"I put them everywhere," he added. "But cannot sell." His reply was no comfort.

In the end, it was at Rock Corner, The Gardens that I found a copy of AkashA's Karakoram Highway, going for RM38.90 each.

AkashA's Karakoram Highway, from Rock Corner, The Gardens.
Shop at Rock Corner for all your musical needs.

My appetite for things AkashA began from a borrowed CD, what I believe was their first commercial CD, Into... AkashA. The promise of more of such delights as "Bourbon Lassi", "Esperanto", "Brickfields Blues" and "Ants in My Turban" in the next then-rumoured second album were whetted further by a YouTube sampling of a lively number called "Ipoh Hor Fun".

Until my first slurp of "Bourbon Lassi", I didn't think a sitar could stand in for a sape or a gu zheng, or even fit into a blues band or an Irish ensemble a la Riverdance. It just works.

How many of you who've seen Amir Muhammad's Malaysian Gods were stunned by the Indian fellow playing local rock group Search's "Isabella" on an er hu? That's what AkashA does. Nowadays some of my better writings were done under the influence of this group's piquant and sometimes playful compositions.

Named for the highest paved cross-border road in the world, the album's contents represent fine examples of cross-culture interaction facilitated by its namesake, which traces part of the ancient Silk Road.

Come in - a cross-cultural musical adventure awaits

The CD starts with the fast-paced, jaunty "Chasing the Camel" which sends the listener on such a pursuit from 00:01. The composition switches fluidly between Middle Eastern and Indian, punctuated with violin solos by musical wunderkind Wang Lee-Hom. Just as animated is the title track, which sends one careening across a dusty highway that snakes along mountain ridges on a packed, rickety bus ... are those deftly plucked notes coming from the roof?

Similar out-of-body experiences may happen with the beguilingly mystical "Qawali Dhun" or the soulful Sarawak-inspired "Santubong". The festive "Bafana Bafana", with the shrill of what sounds like a vuvuzela at the beginning and the end of the track, conjures a carnival-like celebration of football's thrills and spills; the track is named after the Zulu epithet for the South African football team. "Zapin Untuk Mariam" and "Bison Blues", meanwhile, are the guys' trademark nods to the respective musical genres. "Rondo Kirwani" didn't quite work for me, though.

I was also a bit disappointed that the unmistakably Chinese "Ipoh Hor Fun" wasn't carried by a whole sitar solo like in the YouTube video, but the feeling disappears quickly and by the third repeat, who cares? Every time I play it, it's Chinese New Year, Chap Goh Meh and the Mooncake Festival all over again. ...Is anybody hungry?

No sophomore slump here. AkashA still delivers the goods - better than FedEx even. And you come away thinking, maybe, you can make an Ipoh hor fun with an Indian accent, or a real bourbon lassi.

"...cannot sell..."

The words of the assistant at the store which shall never be named still rings in my head. It stings. Like the pain a dedicated, OCD single origin coffee grower feels as he watches customers add sugar (gasp!) and milk/cream/soy (hrrk!) to his product ... and puts it on ice (Medic!).

It's a paradox isn't it? The money we throw at foreign acts who are already famous, making millions or both could be used to further the dreams of our own home acts who really, really need our help.

But perhaps it's only after wandering in the wilderness for a while that we develop an appreciation for what we have back home.

...Now, if you'll excuse me, gotta go. The "Karakoram Highway" beckons.

Regular Programming Interrupted

For this late announcement:

Musician Alda Evan Tan reportedly suffered a brain aneurysm and is now in a coma. He and his family need help with medical expenses. More info on the Facebook page and his sister's blog, including ways you can help.

News: April Fool's Day, Publishing Landscapes And Books

April Fool's Day is an exceptionally dangerous time to believe everything you read on the web.

I avoided the pitfall that was Twitter shrinking its character limit, only to fall flat for the alleged John Scalzi manga project. Who wouldn't want that to be real? And The Shadow War of the Night Dragon sounds like something Scalzi would write.

And I bet some of us were thinking as we stared, enthralled, by the cover images, "WHEN CAN WE HAZ ANDROIDZ DREEM TREELOGEE MANGA?"

Other news

• Chinese book publishing becoming more global as revenues of US$9.5 billion are expected this year. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, book sales are likely to remain poor. And here's a bit about the publishing landscape in Russia expected for this year.
• A look at one year at publisher House of Anansi. And a bit about a quirky Canadian indie known as Invisible Publishing. Also, meet Concord Free Press, a new non-profit publishing model that gets "buyers" to donate to their favourite charities.
• Quick fingers filch stuff at Bologna Children's Book Fair, Italy.
• In The Star, a writer and avid reader ponders the "50 Shades" phenomenon and a publishing world where popularity appears to eclipse quality. I just needed to use the word "eclipse".
• I'm a little bewildered by the apparent racism in the tweets that can be collectively summed up as, "ZOMG HUNGER GAMEZ HAZ BLACK PPLZ?! WHY??!!" If that sounds absurd, it's because I think it is. Do I need to explain why?
• On Cuba's Book Day, a publishing house plays a leading role.
• James Patterson on his books and stuff.
• Vook, a "digital publishing house in a box".
• Enid Blyton classics to be brought into the 21st century?
• Even with the bad news about the US' education system, this is surprising: US highschoolers are reading books beneath their average reading level.
• About that missing post: due to uncontrollable circumstances, I had to remove it. Lessons learnt: Never blog when your sick or sleepy, and never blog, post or tweet anything on April 1st.