Book Marks: Books And Libraries Under Pressure

War in the Middle East has ramped up with Iran and Israel trading fire. One casualty of the crises in the region is the book and publishing industry, but it has been floundering for a long while before the recent conflagrations. Though more titles are being published in Iran of late, sales are dismal. This website cites several factors limiting the reach of books in the country, particularly poverty and censorship.

Conflict has also changed things in Yemen, which has seen the novel emerge as the dominant literary form...

Instead of poetry—which had long been Yemen's preeminent art form—the novel emerged as a suitable vehicle for confronting the social and psychological ruptures caused by war. This transformation was aided by the rise of digital platforms, which offered broader opportunities for self-publishing and connecting with new readers, as well as by individual initiatives and small cultural institutions striving to support Yemeni narrative despite scarce resources.

The Yemeni outlook is slightly rosier, but with all that's going on, any news coming out has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Is publishing really in dire straits as reported in these places? Nevertheless, one wishes the best for writers, publishers, and readers in the Middle East.

In Nepal, some seem to have cultivated the reading habit during the pandemic, and e-books are becoming popular among the youth. But this hasn't translated to growing sales. A publisher cites "political instability, the 2015 earthquake, the Indian blockade, tax on imported books, the COVID-19 pandemic, economic hardship, increasing foreign migration and frustration among the people" for Nepal's weak book market.

Things are no less challenging in the US as the tRump administration continues to wreak havoc. Much has been reported on the impact its regressive policies have had on the economy, healthcare, and the arts. Clare Mulroy of USA Today spells out some of the changes wrought, particularly book tours put on ICE, grant cuts affecting libraries and public reading spaces, and the book bans and sidelining of minority authors.

The National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency that funds and supports creative endeavours in the country, has announced a slew of cuts in its programmes, affecting many that depend on its funding to stay afloat. In The Orange Country Register several publishers that have been affected speak on the issue and what their plans are moving forward.


Meanwhile...

• "What's queer about food? Over the past decade, momentum has gathered around this conversation. By nature, the intersection resists fixed rules and embraces abstraction, but the benefits of asking seem clear: As two new books demonstrate, food can reveal a richness of queer culture, expression, possibility and survival." A brief piece in The New York Times introduced two books about queer restaurants. One is reminded of the hilarious short story "What Do Gay People Eat?" by Brian Gomez. With these books, that question may be answered.
• "'[Your first manga project is] meant to be a learning experience ... In five years, you'll look back on that project and say, "Oh god." Not because you won’t be proud of the work, but because you're constantly getting better. The first one is about learning the process rather than being perfect. It's about finishing something and using that experience to develop.'" The folks at Creative Bloq put together a Q&A of sorts about how to publish your manga with the help from experts they spoke to.
• Malaysian bookworms might have heard of Rabak-Lit but perhaps few know that it's not just a publisher any more. The Seremban-based indie outfit now organises mini concerts, hosts gigs, and produces T-shirts and shoes, among other things. The Star is covering a recent Rabak-Lit venture: a revival of the Fung Keong shoe brand that was discontinued in 1990.
• "Bookstores were once staples in Malaysian malls. ...Families would stop by after lunch, students lingered between shelves, and casual shoppers often left with unexpected new reads. This quiet, thoughtful space is vanishing. Why?" Good question and points from a Malaysiakini reader. "It may seem like a small thing, but we can't help but wonder if the absence of a book[s]tore says something deeper about us. Not just about shifting retail trends, but about the society we are becoming."
• "I wrote the book out of frustration because of what's been happening to these children – they aren't just nameless faces to me, they are children that I know. I also wanted a happy story for foundlings, where they get to have a family of their own and the same opportunities as everybody else." Hartini Zainudin, co-founder of Yayasan Chow Kit, talks about her children's book The Foundling and her goals for it.
• "I had often wondered what it must have been like for authors to have the Toni Morrison as their editor," writes Dana A. Williams in Slate. "When the writer John A. McCluskey Jr. first met Morrison in 1971, she had published only The Bluest Eye. McCluskey, not yet 30 years old, saw her not as the Pulitzer Prize–winning Nobel laureate she would become, but as a fellow Ohio writer looking to make her mark as an editor." I'm not an editor any more, but I still like to read about other editors – and imagine what it would be like.
• "Authors today are still advised to stay in their lane. You wrote a successful thriller? Great. Write another one. You want to write ‘con amore?’ Fine – pen a love letter. For obvious financial reasons, plenty of authors are happy to stick with what works. But there are others who jump genres simply because, like [A.A.] Milne, they want to." From this list of titles, writers venturing beyond their pond are dipping their toes into cosy mystery, which appears a soft, welcoming genre.
• "While doubles are largely defined as having a similar if not identical resemblance to another, doppelgängers have a more a supernatural or otherworldly quality and serve as a manifestation of a character's deepest fears." Naomi Klein's Doppelganger and novels such as Yellowface and Julie Chan Is Dead may be part of a literary trend of exploring the author's or protagonist's doubles and the mirror worlds of the latter. Kirthana Ramisetti dives into the doppelganger phenomenon in Electric Literature.
• "Ghostwriting as a profession is timely, growing and in high demand," writes journalist and editor Erin O'Dwyer in Artshub "But doing it well is an art form of its own." So, having ghostwritten herself, she shares some tips on how to be a ghostwriter. Not too detailed, but a good place to start for those planning to dive in.
• "After losing a friend and turning 50, [Native American author Andrea] Rogers decided to pursue writing full time while earning her doctorate in English at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. When she took the leap, family members worried about money and the stress another degree program would bring. 'I could tell they thought I was a little crazy,' she says, 'but I was like, "If I don't do it now, then when?" because you can't buy time.'" Rogers has since made good use of her time, penning a few children's titles and winning awards for them.
• "Criticism and warnings of Gen-AI authors snagging coveted deals are flooding both Threads and TikTok, with writers and readers sometimes flinging around accusations when they suspect someone is using AI as part of their creative process," writes Alana Yzola in Wired. "Now, [Victoria] Aveyard and other prolific authors are not only calling out people who use AI to write, they’re also posting livestreams and time-lapses of their writing processes to defend themselves against such complaints."
• "America's superpower that it uses over and over again is forgetting or pretending that something didn't happen. And this novel being about guilt and punishment and revenge, hopefully dramatizes that in a way that can leave the reader with the realization that just because you forget about it, doesn't mean it didn't happen." Stephen Graham Jones talks to the Daily Camera in Colorado about his book The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, his writing journey, and his craft.

Finally: "Having studied literature for years, I will always be a defender of the trashy romance genre. These books do what they say on the tin ... They are light-hearted, fast-paced, easy to read, and most importantly, they allow you to flex your reading muscles again." Charlotte Renahan in Cherwell, Oxford's oldest independent student newspaper, touts trashy romance as the saviour of one's urge to read and suggests a few to try.

But I don't notice any historical romance titles in that short list – a sign of trouble for the subgenre? "Over the last five years, readers and authors alike have started to notice a steady decline in publishing deals for historical romance books," R. Nassor writes in Book Riot. "Author of the What To Read If newsletter, Elizabeth Held, recently pointed out on Threads that only seven of the eighty romances acquired by leading publishers in 2024 were historicals."

I wouldn't worry too much though. Trends swing like pendulums, and even if publishers are shying away from historical romances for the time being, all genres have their readers – and writers. It ain't going away.

Book Marks: Public Pages, More LibGen Shenanigans

Public figures tend to be fair game for writers and journalists, and if a book or an article turns out to be libellious, a lawsuit brews. But what if an author is charged for merely writing a book about someone, however well-researched? That's what happened to Webster Ochora Elijah in Kenya, who wrote a book about the Kenyan president's daughter.

This seems to have been prompted by a case where another daughter of the president was impersonated on Facebook, and by all means, this should be stomped out. But if there are no skeletons, why go after a little-known writer of a book with little publicity? Now the Streisand effect is likely to kick in, prompting a scramble for the book.

Perhaps a more straightforward instance of "misuse" was in the ruling by the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, which fined Penguin Random House for putting a photo of a socialite in a book about women with ties to Mexico's drug cartels. "...[Violeta] Vizcarra's photograph, sourced from her social media without consent, was featured on the book's cover and within its pages," the Latin Times reported.

Drug cartels are deeply enmeshed in Mexican society, so no surprise if anyone were involved with them. However, Vizcarra denies any ties to the cartels and says the use of her photo in the book could be defamatory. But what if the book's claims about her could be proven?

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Canadian cookbook author Greta Podleski should be glad her latest, Every Salad Ever has launched and is doing well. Then she received news about an impersonator "releasing" another cookbook with the same title, apparently cashing in on the original's popularity. Chumps like this have been trying to make a killing on Amazon, hoping they won't be found out too quickly before getting enough coin. Sucks that what's arguably the largest online marketplace is infested with such parasites. Speaking of which...

Author Harriet Evans is fuming that her books, including one that is not published yet, were found in the notorious LibGen data set and have been mined by Facebook's parent company Meta to train its AI models. "This is the Treasures, out 12th June from Viking," Evans wrote on Substack. "So they've stolen the text from - where? I don't know. Netgalley? My own Word document? The cloud? This sounds vague, but that's how big tech works." Vague, and hella scary.


Elsewhere:

• A Bulgarian translation of Tan Twan Eng's novel, The House of Doors, discovered by the Bulgarian ambassador to Finland, led to the inaugural Malaysia-Bulgaria Literary Diplomacy Dialogue in Helsinki. "The event, hosted by the Embassy of Malaysia in Helsinki and moderated by Chargé d'Affaires Ariff Ali, brought together Malaysian, Bulgarian, and Finnish readers from fields such as literature, creative writing, art, and international relations," The Star reported. A happy chain of events, but not everyone will feel the same.
• A woodcut artist's masterpiece inspired by the Sabahan harvest festival has been turned into a children's book. According to The Star, "The book was released to coincide with this year’s Kaamatan, the annual Kadazandusun harvest festival, and is available at the Arcane Literature and Kinderstories Hub booth at the 2025 Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair, held at World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur."
• The Guardian and the BBC highlighted the toxic books of yore, covers of which were made green using arsenic, mercury, copper and others. The striking green colour on the covers of many old books pose a health hazard, so a tool to determine whether a tome is a health risk was developed. Reader, beware!
• "Women in Nepal face entrenched systemic and cultural barriers, and publishing is no exception. Their works are undervalued, dismissed as less 'serious', and their leadership questioned. Also, gendered expectations limit time, mobility, and access to networks — making it harder to write, publish, or participate in literary life." A Q&A in Global Voices with Archana Thapa, an author, editor, and publisher based in Kathmandu, Nepal.
• "I wrote [Hunchback] thinking that it is a problem that there were few authors with disabilities. Why did the first [disabled] winner [of Japan's Akutagawa Prize] not appear until 2023?" Saou Ichikawa struggled to be read in a country where the disabled are virtually invisible, but her winning one of Japan's oldest and most prestigious literary awards seems to have alerted some to the existence of ableism there. The English translation of Hunchback, longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, can be found in many local bookstores.
• Still no love in China for boys love, it seems. Writers of stories in that genre were targeted in a recent crackdown and, if found guilty, are subjected to heavy penalties. Since Beijing cracked the whip on this, many such authors have been detained or are laying low, including the creator of the wildly popular Heaven's Official Blessing and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.
• "...going forward, I think because my allegiance is to the source material, my goal is always to find the best team for the adaptation, not to say that what makes the best book and what makes the best show and what makes the best movie are the same, but they're in conversation." Variety speaks to V.E. Schwab, author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, the Vicious series, and Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, about her writing, film adaptation of Addie LaRue, and more.
• Writing a book? You're not alone, and chances are what you're writing has already been written by dozens, if not hundreds of others. Kate McKean over at Electric Literature shares the 10 types of novels swamping the inboxes of literary agents of late and what you can do to make yours stand out. All the best.
• "I know that summer reading has always been popular, so June is an excellent time to publish books. And I also know that the first week of each month is usually the most jam packed with new releases. I know too that on the first Tuesday in June of 2024 there were 15 new books that I was excited about ... so June has not always been this overflowing." Seems there are too many books for Maris Kreizman and this June appears to be a bumper month. Why is that?

Finally, it seems Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim thinks Malaysians don't read enough and spend too much time on social media. Anwar was speaking during the closing ceremony of this year's Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair.

I can't verify the prime minister's claims but from the crowds at KLIBF surely Malaysians do read? Perhaps, just not the books the PM had in mind? And what sort of reading culture is being fostered in the country when, as author and indie musician Brian Gomez helpfully pointed out, the authorities actively ban books they don't like?

Oh, apologies for ranting. Guess I'll go read a book.