Book Marks: Age-Appropriateness, New Leaf Crumples

Young adult titles have become a target for book bans but the genre has another problem, according to Rachel Ulatowski at Book Riot. As more adults read YA, publishers start marketing YA titles to grown-ups, leading to the ageing-up of books in the genre to appeal to the adult market. Books written specifically for young adults may not necessarily appeal to grown-ups, and isn't aged-up YA just, well, adult fiction?

Publishers may have their eye on the bottom line, but the blurring of lines between YA and adult genres would be bad news for the former. "YA literature was created specifically to help young readers to transition from children’s to adult books, and to give them resources that tackle topics that they may be dealing with in real life," Ulatowski wrote. "Making YA literature more appealing to adults undermines the very reason why this group became its own market in the first place."

Speaking of YA and age-appropriate genres...

Writer Kaia Alexander reported to The Daily Beast with incredulity that a teacher in her son's school objected to a book the kid brought to class: a copy of Stephen King's Cujo. The teacher cited a Goodreads write-up of the book that stated it was "intended for adults" and recommended The Hunger Games instead. "How is this more appropriate?" Alexander said. "This is a book about children murdering children.”

Nevertheless, they gave the book a try. The verdict: “He’s looking at me like, ‘This is a very dark book.'" And: "He says he likes Stephen King’s writing style better.” Owch.

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New Leaf Literary Agency has dropped a bunch of authors from representation, some of whome were in the middle of contract negotiations with publishers. "Reports indicate that this was a result of New Leaf letting one of its agents go, and rather than finding new representation for this agent’s clients, the agency dropped all the clients entirely," The Mary Sue reported, adding that this wasn't first time the agency had done this.

I've been seeing authors and others take to Twitter to speak about this in the past few days. What's more, all the dropped authors are not big names. Leaving authors without representation during contract negotiations is bad enough, but new ones need that representation, and this move is irresponsible, to say the least.

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I don't believe in review-bombing, but some books are itching to become targets. Like Josh Hawley's Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. Hawley, a Republican senator, was notorious for raising his fist in support of the January 6 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol – and filmed running away from them afterwards.

Considering his conduct of late, many aren't sure if he's the right spokesman for the values the book espouses, nor are they sure of the wisdom behind the book's title. Headline writers critical of Hawley and his book, like this one, seem to be having a ball.

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Malaysians are now reading more, according to initial data from a government survey. The Star reports that we are now reading an average of 20 books a year, compared with 15 in 2014, with fiction being the most popular genre.

If you think that's not much of an improvement, the report adds that "...similar studies on reading habits were carried out in 1996 and 2005; each study showed that Malaysians aged 10 and above only read an average of two books a year."

The survey, however, seems to only focus on borrowings from the National Library of Malaysia, and the 2014 study being referred to may be outdated. Still, good news, right?

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While the debate over the use of AI and large-language models in literature is vigourous in the West, it's all quiet over here in Malaysia. This article on the Penang Art District portal features thoughts from some local authors, publishers, and professionals on AI, and how the authors and publishers are incorporating its output in their works.

Perhaps this piece will encourage take-up of AI among Malaysian creatives and spur debate on its entry into our work and our lives. AI is here to stay and we have to learn how to deal with it.

(Oh, yes, I was among those interviewed for the article.)

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An interview with Mia Tsai, author of Bitter Medicine, a xianxia-inspired fantasy novel about a French elf and a Chinese immortal. The rest of the blog is worth exploring for more reviews and interviews, mainly revolving around titles by authors of Asian descent.

Taking Offence

Actor and author Tom Hanks has weighed in on the recent trend of editing classics and other long-published works for newer, more sensitive audiences.

"Well, I'm of the opinion that we're all grown-ups here," Hanks was quoted as saying. "And we understand the time and the place and when these things were written. And it's not very hard at all to say: that doesn't quite fly right now, does it?

Many, I'm sure. share Hanks' opinion. As adults we should know how to control ourselves whenever we encounter something that offends our sensibilities. Sexist portrayals of women, racist depictions of minorities and such in art and literature should be read within the context of their eras. Content that might be triggering to readers ... that should be discussed separately.

"Let's have faith in our own sensibilities here, instead of having somebody decide what we may or may not be offended by," he added. "Let me decide what I am offended by and not offended by."

Trouble comes when someone decides they are offended by something in a book and are upset when others don't feel the same, so they set out to change that. This is partly behind the movement to ban books – that's what it is – in the US and the horsepower on that bandwagon has been so impressive, others have hitched their carriages to it.

Even with all the details emerging from reports on the issue, the findings of The Washington Post still astounds. The Post analysed a set of challenges to books filed in "the 2021-2022 school year with the 153 school districts that Tasslyn Magnusson, a researcher employed by free expression advocacy group PEN America, tracked as receiving formal requests to remove books last school year." They found that...

Nearly half of filings — 43 percent — targeted titles with LGBTQ characters or themes, while 36 percent targeted titles featuring characters of color or dealing with issues of race and racism. The top reason people challenged books was “sexual” content; 61 percent of challenges referenced this concern.

The paper also revealed that "The majority of the 1,000-plus book challenges analyzed by The Post were filed by just 11 people."

Each of these people brought 10 or more challenges against books in their school district; one man filed 92 challenges. Together, these serial filers constituted 6 percent of all book challengers — but were responsible for 60 percent of all filings.

Ye g*ds. Ninety-two challenges by one person?

The rationale for many of the objections are the usual: they don't want young people reading about sex or LGBTQ lives and issues, these books normalise LGBTQ, and so on. Better to learn about all that from the likes of Fox and Moms for Liberty, right?

Also mind-blowing is the objection filed by a parent over The Hill We Climb, an edition of the poem by American National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, which was read aloud at the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Why? "Cause confusion and indoctrinate students," the complainant wrote. On two pages of the book: "Is not educational and have indirectly [sic] hate messages."

C'mon now, a poem from a National Youth Poet Laureate is "not educational" and has "hate messages"? Also, the complainant seemed to have mistakenly attributed authorship of the opem to Oprah Winfrey. That the complainant has links to groups like the Proud Boys and Moms for Liberty (HA!) and is a Ron DeSantis supporter is probably no coincidence.

Taking offence has become a pastime of sorts with certain people. Armed with the outsized influence and reach granted by social media, they set chatrooms and threads on fire, infecting the susceptible with their outrage and indignation, dampening voices trying to cool things down. So many fall for this incendiary rhetoric and BS.

It feels like more and more are giving up the ability to question, research and think critically and leaving all that to certain authority figures who would turn out to be less than authoritative than they'd like to think.

Book Marks: War On Books Continues, Aye To Sensitivity Readers

The book-banning brigade marches on. Laws are being passed in the United States that targets publishers deemed to have provided "sexually explicit" material to schools or educational agencies.

Summer Lopez, Chief Program Officer, Free Expression at PEN America, writes about this new tactic to ban books in TIME and that it's not about shielding young people from "obscene" material...

Let's be clear. These bills are not about protecting children. They are about using the power of the state to intimidate private companies and ban ideas and stories that some people find offensive or uncomfortable. By going after private publishing houses, these bills represent an appalling and undemocratic attempt at government overreach, and yet another escalation in the war against the freedom to read.

In Tunisia, authorities seized two books at the Tunis International Book Fair and temporarily shut down a publisher's pavilion. Perhaps what's egregious about this is that it happened after Tunisian president Kais Saied said at the event's opening: "It is important to liberate thinking because we cannot accomplish anything with rigid thoughts.” And it's no surprise that the seized books appear to be critical of the president.

And in Hong Kong, a "war on libraries" is being waged, leading to books being pulled off shelves. The public are encouraged to snitch on anyone whose words "threaten national security" in Hong Kong and this has taken the wind out of the sails of anyone who wishes to publish or write books. "Much as mainland Chinese writers used to get their banned books published in Hong Kong, authors who write about Hong Kong issues are now choosing to publish in Taiwan, where the publishing industry is much freer," states Radio Free Asia.

On World Press Freedom Day, Kuwaiti author Mai Al-Nakib explained why writing means so much to her, in the context of censorship in Kuwait. Her situation sounds familiar, particularly where she says that books written in English but not translated to Arabic would "fly under the radar" of censors, and how draconian laws that restrict freedom of expression intimidate authors and booksellers to self-censor, just to be safe. Echoes of growing sentiments by writers and publishers everywhere.

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An argument for sensitivity readers, and why seeking one during the editing process might be a good idea:

In the UK, if you are a writer from an underrepresented background, it is statistically very likely that your in-house editor won’t be. Given this low ethnic and class diversity (the industry does a bit better on gender, sexual orientation and disability) a sensitivity reader’s feedback can crucially round out that of an in-house editor’s.

Furthermore, the writer adds, is not censorship because a sensitivity reader is there to advise and that the publisher (and maybe the author) has the final say.


Other news:

• The belief that writing children's books is child's play is flawed. The job requires another set of skills and more thought because these materials are moulding malleable young minds. So it's sad to read of children's book authors not liking children's books. Some are discouraged by poor reception to their work, some are pigeonholed as children's authors even though they want to explore other genres. What would it take to forever bury the idea that literature for children is lesser than that of adults?
• As African countries gained independence from colonial rule, African women writers played a key role in the decolonisation of children's literature as they produced works with local themes. "They wrote for children of all ages, creating fiction, folk tales, and works used in school textbooks," writes Anna Adima, Post-Doctoral Research Associate in History at the University of Edinburgh. "With their words, the women imparted lessons they believed were important for the post-independence generation to learn in order to undo colonialism’s 'cultural bomb'."
• Author Lisa Harding revisits her debut novel a few years after publication and sees it in a new light. "To have the opportunity to revisit the same novel through the lens of distance and time was an extraordinary experience, a rare chance for me to address any lingering concerns. I remember at the time of its initial publication, some of my friends saying, but it is unrelentingly bleak, and my response was, well, of course it is. Now, I feel differently."
• Is ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, going into book publishing and distribution? A trademark application filed by a ByteDance subsidiary seems to signal that, and with #BookTok all the rage at the moment, this seems like a logical step. And, as TechCrunch notes, the company isn't new to e-book, citing dealings with e-book reader Yuewen, web novel app Tomato Novel, and a web fiction app called Mytopia.
• Sara Anjum Bari, editor of Daily Star Books, sits down with literary agent Kanishka Gupta for a chat about what agents do and what they look for, the people he's worked with, plagiarism in South Asia, and how his work with books changed him as a writer and a reader.
• "To keep three-dimensional book publishing alive, you do have to push the form a little bit and delight people and make something new," author Dave Eggers tells Fast Company. But will his new book, The Eyes & The Impossible, with its gilded edges, foiled-stamped spine, and bamboo hardcover, get more publishers to do that? The book is a work of art that calls to mind well-crafted tomes such as The Book of Kells, created when books were luxuries. They still are, but Eggers' project could inspire the creation of limited editions for certain bibliophiles.
• Here's a round-up of what was discussed during the annual general meeting of the Association of American Publishers (AAP). The topics included the Internet Archive case, AI in publishing, and the bills restricting access to books by several US states.
• Somebody has been thinking about copyright and fair use in the advent of AI in art and literature, and has penned their musings in Freethink. "The inevitable raft of copyright lawsuits raises one key legal question that threatens to stop these AI models in their tracks: Do the creators of these tools need permission from the copyright holders of the works they use to 'train' their AI models?"
• When talking about AI, people tend to think of online book recommendation features or services. These use a lot of data, much of it user-generated content. Book Riot explores why these services may not do the job right and not to rely on AI (as of now) for what to read next.

Book Marks: Author Debut Stress, Digital Lending Concerns

A survey by The Bookseller is causing a few ripples. For 54 per cent of debut authors, publishing their books negatively affected their mental health. This group reported "anxiety, stress, depression and lowered self-esteem, caused by lack of support, guidance or clear and professional communication from their publisher." Only 22 per cent had a positive experience as debut authors.

The Mary Sue picked up on this and tries to get to the bottom of it. Reality checks lurk at every step towards publishing and beyond, but they seem to have singled out the lack of communication from publishers as a major factor for authors who engaged them. However, they conclude that: "The issues facing debut authors, then, seem to be more systemic in nature than a problem with any one individual editor or publishing executive."

Authorship isn't a smooth, straight path for most. Stories like this one highlight just how much of a slog it can be. Even for those who penned what would become bestsellers or classics, hurdles along the way can be too much to handle. Perseverance, hard work, and luck continue to play a role long after a book hits the shelves, with or without a publisher. If the process is too much, perhaps some time out is needed, or one should just quit.

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The Internet Archive case may have been a victory for the publishers involved but someone at The Walrus believes that the implications...

... extend beyond the case to touch the digital rights of all libraries—and, by extension, those of authors and readers. It has a bearing on which books (and which writers) libraries deem worthy of the expense to stock in digital formats and, ultimately, how much digital information will be freely accessible.

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A Taiwan-based bookseller has been detained and placed under investigation in China. Li Yanhe, also known by his pen name Fucha, "is known for publishing books that are critical of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) or are politically sensitive, including about the Tiananmen Square massacre, human rights abuses of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and corruption within the CCP," the Guardian reported.

Previously, several Hong Kong booksellers were also detained by Beijing. One of them, Gui Minhai, was apparently taken while holidaying in Thailand, raising concerns that those wanted by Beijing weren't safe even when they're overseas. Li, however, was in China when he was detained.

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If "an anthology of gender-bent, queered, race-bent, and inclusive retellings from the enchanting and eternally popular world of Greek myth" does not feature Greek authors, is it truly inclusive? On Twitter, writer and historian Ioanna Papadopoulou lamented the lack of Greek voices in Tor's Fit for the Gods and, as it tends to go on Twitter, discussions got ugly.

Papadopoulou responded to a bad take on this issue but the gist of it is, "Greeks are just tired of seeing Anglo writers hog all the oxygen in the room". Someone on Twitter claimed that apparently, many Greek authors wanted in but, from the list of contributors, (diverse, yes, but I don't see any Greeks in there) didn't make it. East Asians and Southeast Asians, for instance, are retelling and adapting their folklore for modern audiences – surely Greeks can do the same.

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Writers! Can't resist reading reviews of your work, even if bad ones are lurking within the pile of feedback? Here are some tips on how to do it without ruining your life. One reason some don't spread new stuff they write like butter on warm toast is the anxiety over the reception. Often, no news is good news, but what if you need to know, especially when your work performance hinges on how engaged audiences are with your output?

When all else fails to lift you out of the hole a negative review puts you in, remember the Lit Reactor writer's advice: "Your book [or article] doesn't need to do everything. Stop torturing yourself when your book [or article] isn't all things to all people."


Also:

• Book bans aren't new in the United States; National Geographic traces the history of such bans from way back when parts of the country were British colonies. One can argue the current scale and ferocity of the campaign to ban certain books in the States is perhaps unprecedented.
• Changes to Indian school textbooks have sparked discussions on the teaching of history to schoolkids. A chapter on Mughal rulers has been removed, as were references to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and the 2002 Gujarat riots. The issue is contentious and not just because sectarian divides are being used by certain quarters to gain and retain power and influence.
• Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie ... now they've taken the scalpel to PG Wodehouse's books. Penguin Random House also placed disclaimers in the edited new releases of the novels notifying readers of the "unacceptable" language in them and that changes were made to fix that without affecting the stories.
• Somebody went through Moms for Liberty's guidelines for books and it's kind of bonkers. MFL is one of the biggest names in the drive to challenge books in the States and is tagged by some as another right-wing outrage factory. The MFL guidelines are supposed to help parents decide which books are right for their kids but it seems the guidelines talk more about why the books in the list are bad for young people.
• Mystery surrounds the TikTok poet Aliza Grace, who has been accused of multiple instances of plagiarism. But who is she? Is she even a real person or merely an online persona?

Musings On This World Book Day

For work, I dived into the origins of World Book Day and I was pretty surprised. The first Day of the Book in the Spanish region of Catalonia was the brainchild of a publisher and big fan of Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote what is considered to be the first modern novel.


Books, roses, and charities
What happened during the early World Book Days? Bookselling, I presume – specifically, outdoor bookselling, pasar pagi style, plus maybe some writer meet-and-greet sessions. The sources I searched don't say what happened during those early Book Days. But the original date was 7 October, to mark Cervantes's birthday.

The Day of the Book was moved to 23 April because fall weather can be a bit nippy for outdoor book-browsing, and book lovers can browse. This date coincided with the long-running St George's Day, and since then, the Day of Books and Roses became an annual Catalonian affair. Besides book stalls and author signings, roses are also sold on the day, in honour of St George.

UNESCO adopted the date as World Book Day, using it to commemorate several other authors besides Cervantes but there's some debate as to what the date signifies for each author. Some say Cervantes and William Shakespeare died on 23 April but no, no, others say, because the countries adopted different calendars, so Shakespeare died on some other date.

Rather than split hairs over this detail, UNESCO stuck with 23 April. But unlike the UNESCO event, World Book Day in the UK and Ireland is more of a charity do that kicks off on the first Thursday in March. Starting from 1998 in the UK, children in full-time education are given book vouchers. There's even a World Book Night, run by a charity organisation.

Besides World Book Day, Spain also gave us the World Book Capital initiative. Madrid once held a string of book-related events throughout a year, and some thought this practice should go global. Madrid became the first WBC in 2001 and, in case anyone has forgotten, Kuala Lumpur was designated WBC in 2020.


A gloom descends
How inspirational. Some of us would perhaps feel wistful at the thought of sparking something similar. Did Vicente Clavel envision that his idea would become a world event? And isn't the story of Don Quixote about the power of a dream?

Looking around though, being sanguine about books and publishing right now is kind of, well, quixotic. And following dreams didn't quite work out for Don Quixote.

Just as Michelle Yeoh's Oscar win has gotten folks asking questions, many in the book industry probably wondered what would our reading and publishing landscape look like "if things were different". Having ideals is well and fine, but they tend to wither in the face of realities.

In Afghanistan, women and girls are being denied an education, and a private library was forced to close by the Taliban (women "have no right to read books"?). The authorities appear unmoved by the support Afghan women are getting from some of their menfolk. Back home, our Indigenous languages and local dialects are in danger of dying out; some have gone extinct. And the theme for this year's World Book Day is Indigenous languages.

Books and copyright, the two things World Book Day celebrates, are being contended in the case of the Internet Archive vs Hachette. The Internet Acrhive, an American digital library, scanned and distributed books via its National Emergency Library during the start COVID-19 pandemic. Several publishers led by Hachette filed a lawsuit against IA, crying copyright infringement. A judge sided with the publishers, but a final judgement is still pending.


Books on fire
But perhaps the biggest pall cast over this year's World Book Day, besides what's happening in Afghanistan, is the stepping up of book bans in parts of the world. In the US, more books have become targets of censorship, particularly those that deal with racism and prejudices against ethnic, religious and sexual minorities. Right-wing and Christian nationalist groups are involved, and some state officials have enacted laws that prohibit certain titles from being taught in schools or made available in school libraries. And they are thinking of going after publishers too.

Book-ban proponents say they want to shield children from "obscene" material but what's obscene is how minorities in America are (still) treated and how ingrained prejudices against them are. Another obscenity is the rampant fetishisation of LGBTQ+ individuals that reduces them to what they do in bed, when that is just a tiny part of their identity.

Literary advocacy group PEN America's report on the growing censorship in US schools and libraries paints a gloomy picture. Its Index of School Book Bans lists 2,532 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,648 titles by 1,261 authors, from July 2021 to June 2022. Authors of targeted books are fighting back, and libraries, institutions and other advocacy groups are joining in.

Filipino author and journalist Miguel Syjuco warned about creeping censorship in his opening keynote for the Cooler Lumpur Festival of ideas back in 2014, saying that "the house is on fire". Didn't take too long for the flames to grow fiercer and spread wider, and not just because of climate change.

I'm keeping an eye on this, as is Book Riot, though standing in solidarity with besieged writers, librarians, educators and students in affected places feels like a hollow gesture when considering our own censorship issues. Fighting a state can be financially and emotionally taxing if one is not prepared, so kudos to those taking a stand.


A quixotic undertaking?
World Book Day 2023 looks set to be dismal. But should it be? Books and other literary materials are a soft target for censorship hounds during shaky sociopolitical situations. That such materials are targeted this way can be a testament to the power of the written word, validating the Catalonian reverence for books that led to the creation of their own day.

Banning books to "arrest social change" is "irresistible to short-termist authorities" despite its tendency to fail, wrote book critic John Self last year for Banned Books Week, but he also noted that it is a miracle "that marks on a page or screen can enable communication from one brain to another on the far side of the globe, or the other end of the century."

And that miracle comprises works of all genres under the sky, from the lone nom de plume on Wattpad chiselling out chapter after chapter to blockbusters by marquee authors under publishing titans. All of whom deserve a place in the sun, in an e-reader, or on a bookshelf. It must be preserved, even as others try to erase it.

Also, everyone in the book industry plays a role in the development of minds and the progress of a people and a nation, so we must demonstrate that we can be entrusted with that role and carry it out responsibly. That would include fighting unwarranted censorship, even though it would mean working within the framework of a country's laws and norms.

The struggle doesn't have to be violent or law-breaking, nor should it. Someone at Tor.com spoke out against book bans and suggested ways to help the fight against them. And here are some stories about how some parents, teachers and librarians are pushing back against challenges to books.

We've all come a long way since language and writing were invented, and the road ahead is longer still. But I believe we're well on the way towards an ideal book-loving society that nurtures and defends the craft and industry of words.

Getting there will feel like tilting at windmills, but the day of the book will come.

Book Marks: Typewritten Tales, Obama's Reads

An independent bookseller in Ann Arbor, Michigan, left a typewriter – yes, the clack-clack variety – as a sort of social experiment where one person would type a few words that would be continued by another, and another, until a story developed. Instead, what came out of it were dozens of stories, and while not all the output was usable, there was enough that ended up in a book. In a way, the book wrote itself.

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Those curious about former US president Barack Obama's book picks are likely to wonder: does he pick them himself? Sceptics would say no, he has people do that for him. And while this article doesn't seem to be a clear yes/no to that question, perhaps it's not important because his lists of favourites are so eclectic, no one but himself could have made them...

Of the 13 titles included in Obama’s Favorite Books of 2022, there are nine works of fiction and four works of nonfiction, including books by eight women and eight BIPOC authors. There’s a novel about a dystopian school for mothers; a graphic novel about labor and survival in Canada; a journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South; and a beautifully crafted short-story collection.

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Zeenat Book Supply, perhaps one of the oldest bookstores in Dhaka, is closing down. Besides the COVID-19 pandemic changing habits in reading and studying, the owner cites piracy as one main reason for the decision to close; for some, the original prices are too high. Long-running, family-owned bookstores like Zeenat used to be a familiar sight in Malaysian neighbourhoods, and they also face the same pressures.

And piracy is a problem, especially for e-books, which can be hard to detect. One article sums up the issue with e-book piracy and its impact. Digital rights management technology is no barrier to determined pirates with the tools to "crack" DRM-protected books.

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Good news about self-published authors arrived in a survey commissioned by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), a UK-based professional association for self-published authors: Out of 2,200 respondents, nearly 60% said their income had gone up in 2022 over 2021. Is it a good time for aspiring authors to take the self-published route? With so much tech at one's disposal, why not? But one still needs to put in the work, and Ren Lowe, an author and self-publishing coach in Atlanta, shows us how she did it.


In other news:

• Anybody who still remembers right-wing commentator Glenn Beck's tirades describing the Obama years as if it's the Third Reich would probably look back with some incredulity when seeing what's happening in the US right now. However, even with book bans all the rage, driven by right-wing populism, it's still jarring to hear or read about Americans saying things like, “It looks like there needs to be some book burning.”
• A discussion at a Bologna Book Plus event mulled the concept of translators as scouts for publishers, sourcing work that publishers might want. As works go global and networks expand and ignore borders, publishers would naturally want to explore farther. In this frontier, translators are more than interpreter of works; they are bridges connecting local authors and publishers looking for the next big thing.
• Publisher Scholastic was going to license author Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s latest work, Love in the Library, but with one condition: the removal of a paragraph in the author's note and elsewhere in the book that mentions racism. The illustrated book is based on the story of the author's grandparents and is set in a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War, and the censorship looks like another instance of a publisher cowed by the growing movement in the US to whitewash unpalatable truths about US history.
• The Kathmandu Post provides a snapshot of the state of academic publishing in Nepal, the ecosystem of which comprises "state-supported, commercial and non-profit academic publishing". While there are encouraging signs, more can be – and needs to be – done. Main issues include money and transparency in the editing and peer review process.
• “For the foreseeable future, Russia will be associated not with Russian music and literature, but with bombs dropping on children.” The English edition of Mikhail Shishkin's new book, My Russia: War or Peace?, is featured in The Japan Times. As the war in Ukraine rages on more than a year later, perhaps one should look at how Russia ended up here. Shishkin delves into Russia's history to answer that question, plus many more.
• "I love talking about books," Laura Sackton writes in BookRiot. "I’m guessing you do, too. But there are some words we’ve been using that we should not be using. There are some phrases ingrained in our book vocabularies that it is time to excise." She then makes the case for why some book terms need to be kicked out of the lexicon. As a reviewer, using certain terms is a hard habit to kick when one is groping for words, but it's worth thinking about.

Book Marks: Book Bans, Women In US Publishing

As they say these days, "how the turn tables". Months after taking effect, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's signature law to censor books in Florida schools, Florida House Bill 1467, might be used against DeSantis's own book.

In a clever bit of trolling, Florida Democrats are subjecting DeSantis’ new tome—“The Courage To Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival”—to the rules that he and GOP lawmakers established to weed out books with allegedly inappropriate content on race, sexuality, and gender from school libraries.

The Democrats highlighted 17 instances in the book that might violate the state's law, including uses of the terms "woke" and "gender ideology", outdated claims of countergenocide from a proposed ethnic studies curriculum, and several depictions of violence.

DeSantis, who seems to be aiming for the top job in the US in 2024, has been running Florida like his little kingdom, shaking things up with gestures in line with the GOP's war on "wokeness" and such. This blueprint for banning books is but a ripple in the current wave of censorship fever gripping the country.

On the subject: Claudia Johnson, author and free speech advocate, talks to Publishers Weekly about the newest book-banning wave and the need to speak up.

...80% of Americans are opposed to book banning, according to a 2022 CNN poll. But there’s a disheartening gap between the 80% of us wanting book banning to stop and the stark reality that it’s raging across our country, worse than it’s ever been. We 80 percenters clearly have the conviction that book banning should end ... but we need to convert our conviction into effective action.

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A study by Joel Waldfogel, an economist at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, suggest that in the US, women are dominating the book industry but lag behind men in other creative sectors. The report highlighting this research offers some insight as to why female authorship of books "began to explode" around 1970, citing factors such as the use of time-saving technologies and birth control among women, giving them more time and freedom to pursue careers beyond homemaking.

Another factor is the nature of book-writing, which Waldfogel typifies as a "solo endeavor" where the author has more control. "Maybe the fact that book writing is done mostly alone means there is less discrimination and fewer female-disadvantaging biases and social dynamics in the industry," the report, written by Greg Rosalsky for NPR News, adds.

It also mentions surveys where "about 78 percent of staffers at all levels and 59 percent of executives in the publishing industry identified as women" and that "American women are more likely to read books than American men, especially when it comes to fiction".

Even some of the more famous channels that popularise books are run by women, such as Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon. Speaking to Rosalsky, Jessie Gaynor, senior editor at online lit portal Literary Hub and debut novelist, bring up BookTok, also a driver of sales and a channel that tends to be populated by, yes, women.

This bit of heartening information is probably not new for those who have always known. However, given the ferocity of calls for books being banned or contested in places like the US, with some resorting to threats, harassment and even violence, the safety of women in the industry must be looked into – as if they haven't endured enough already outside their jobs.

Juno Dawson, author of This Book Is Gay, sat down with Rolling Stone for a chat. Her book "went under a formal review as part of investigations into bomb threats sent to several public schools. And much of the fervor against the book in recent months has been stoked by popular right-wing accounts on Twitter and Reddit."

And hurdles keep getting in the way of women authors, particularly those of colour. Nigerian-Swedish author and award-winning travel photographer Lola Akinmade Åkerström, for one, had trouble translating her novel, In Every Mirror She’s Black, "about Black women and Swedes set in Sweden", into Swedish because of concerns over how Swedes would handle its subject matter.

Progress doesn't happen overnight, but the most important thing is to make small steps incrementally towards it. Ultimately, all sectors must become places where women can compete and thrive based on merit and not merely a refuge from sectors hostile or outright detrimental to them. We need to keep pushing for this.


In other news:

• Singapore’s Asian Festival of Children’s Content is expected to be an all-physical event, running from 25 to 28 May at the National Library. Among the confirmed speakers is Xiran Jay Zhao and our own Hanna Alkaf. Events running throughout the festival include include workshops, lectures, masterclasses, and panel discussions.
• Empty chairs at author signings? Janet Manley at the Literary Hub explores the phenomenon, citing factors such as "a flagging economy, the death of local media, Amazon controlling market share, and the arms race of the attention economy", plus the drop in the number of bookstores in the US.
  
  Will in-person events no longer be a thing in the age of Zoom, Meet, and BookTok? I think as long as some readers feel invested in a author and their works, author appearances will remain a thing for some time, especially when the urge to peel one's eyes off the screen to go out and touch grass becomes overwhelming.
• The fallout from the recent Nashville school shooting continues: a children's book illustrator was dropped by his publisher and faces legal charges after he spread notes with anti-trans messages across Juneau, Alaska. Sadly he's not the only one using this incident to hate on the trans community after it came out that the Nashville shooter was trans.

The Salt In A Publishing Star

If you're a bestselling author who has sold tens of millions of copies of more than 260 titles, and whose titles often feature in the New York Times bestsellers lists, would you be salty if your latest title ends up at a lower ranking on an NYT list than you thought?

If you're James Patterson, you probably would be.

At Slate, Laura Miller drops her two cents about this, pointing out that the NYT bestsellers lists are not reliable yardsticks for a book's popularity because they "are the product of a lot of math, but also a good deal of art." And there are ways of getting onto those lists that can be considered unethical.

However, Miller suggests that the "disdain" heaped upon Patterson's oeuvre has made him thin-skinned. She also notes that...

Publishers Weekly magazine has declared Patterson the best-selling author of the preceding 17 years. Yet in the same magazine’s list of the 150 bestselling books since 2004, not a single title out of Patterson’s hundreds of books appears. Patterson sells boatloads of books; he just hasn’t sold boatloads of any particular book. He makes up for the difference in volume.

So she suspects that "Patterson can’t help but be nettled by the fact that for all his dozens of bestsellers, no single one of them has had the iconic staying power of, say, The Stand or The Hunger Games."

I get that some authors want to be remembered for certain things, and a pile of negative reviews on the likes of Goodreads is not one of them. By now I would think someone like Patterson has outgrown the need for bestsellers lists. At least he's still in the news, and doing better than Dan Brown, John Grisham and, uh ... EL James?

As a publishing titan, he can contribute by nurturing more writers. Doesn't he have an online masterclass in writing? He could also provide something of a boost to other writers, particularly the lesser-known co-authors of some of his works. "I wrote this with James Patterson" might elicit a raised eyebrow or a snooty snort, but at least it gets one's attention. That is a vital first step in the publishing world.

And considering how competitive the book industry is, being able to strike gold as an author is a huge deal. I think Patterson should come to terms with the fact that he's making big bank churning out "boilerplate thrillers that snoots love to look down on" and he's doing well out of that, compared to many others.

The guy's pushing eighty. He should just roll with it and ignore the snobs. Too much sodium is bad for one's health.

Book Marks: No Jail For 'Script Thief, Plus Annoying Things About Books

Either someone was listening to the Literary Hub or perhaps the crime wasn't severe enough: Infamous manuscript thief Filippo Bernardini won't be jailed for his little scam where he tricked people into sending him unpublished 'scripts so that he could read them before anyone else. According to the Guardian:

The former publishing employee, who worked for Simon & Schuster in the UK – the company has not been implicated in any of Bernardini’s crimes – had said in court documents that he had a “burning desire” to feel like he was a publishing professional. He added that he had no desire to leak the manuscripts he acquired.

Instead, Bernardini has been sentenced to three years of supervised release, after which he will be deported.

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The Internet Archive has been operating on an open library concept where people can sign up and borrow digital copies of books. I was pointed to this place when I asked about books I can read for reviews or at least cross-check details such as ISBNs. Publishers aren't happy about this, citing copyright infringement, and recently a US court ruled in their favour:

“The publishers have established a prima facie case of copyright infringement,” writes Judge John G. Koeltl of the United States district court in the Southern District of New York in his 47-page decision, which includes a firm rebuke to the controversial concept of “controlled digital lending.”

IA isn't shutting down yet and of course I'll be tracking this.

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Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, and now Agatha Christie? Yes, sensitivity readers are taking their scalpels to the works of the doyenne of crime fiction "in new editions of Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries published by HarperCollins."

I'm not a fan of this move and I might talk about this in more detail later. This risks putting new generations of readers in the dark of what these works read like originally and the kind of environment that shaped the minds of the authors involved. Whitewashing the past, that's what this is.

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Claire Handscombe at Book Riot talks about things readers find annoying about books. And she has quite a bit to say, having been...

...a writer, a bookish podcaster, a blogger, a Book Riot contributor, a bookstagrammer, a bookseller, and a marketing exec in publishing. So this is my world, and I love it.

But I love it the way we love our families. We know they’re not perfect. Sometimes we fondly or exasperatedly laugh at how not perfect they are. There are things that drive me round the bend about this whole word and its absurdities.

In other news:

• Here's a story of a widower's quest to keep his late wife's book alive, captured in his son's documentary, The Book Keepers. This looks like something many of us should watch: a dad's labour of love, told through his son's – at least, I hope so regarding the latter.
• This year's shortlist for the Stella prize, which celebrates “original, excellent, and engaging” writing by Australian women and non-binary writers, is dominated by books from small and independent publishers.
• For writers and authors at various stages and of all stripes, Electric Literature introduces seven newsletters that "offer the best insights and advice from abstract aspects of publishing to the smallest details, including market analysis, writing query emails and proposals, navigating contracts, marketing your work—and don’t forget much-needed emotional support and a laugh or two."
• Not one mention of chatGPT or AI in an op-ed titled, "Take That, ChatGPT!". Genius? I'm not sure. But how it just goes on.

Book Marks: BookTokers, Marketing, Stories Out of Time

BookTokers have been a hit for a while, especially those with ton of followers. Vox speaks with several BookTokers and dives into the trend to see why it's so popular.

One BookToker, Satoria Ray, says one main reason for BookTok's apparent persuasiveness is that "the average person on BookTok isn’t getting paid to give their reviews...

"There aren’t these big influencers with huge followings and all these brand deals and sponsorships flying all over the place. It’s usually a person in their car who just got out of work and is like, ‘I was reading this audiobook and I really enjoyed it.’ It’s moms who are cleaning the kitchen and just put the kids to bed and are like, ‘Hey, I just read this really cool book.’

That’s unique to BookTok.”

Even if some BookTokers could be paid to promote books on the platform? I guess that segment probably graduated to another level after making videos for some time, and who am I to say it's not "authentic" enough, as long as viewers are buying the pitches and the books being pitched? Well, let's hope for the best for these content creators, especially those in the United States as the spectre of a TikTok ban looms.

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Developmental editor Laura Portwood-Stacer, author of a guide to crafting a compelling scholarly book proposal, speaks with Princeton University Press's Assistant Promotions Director Maria Whelan about aspects of book promotion and how authors can collaborate with publishers on marketing and PR. Books don't sell themselves, and many authors are either oblivious to the need to market their books and themselves, or can't afford to put much into marketing.

Speaking of which, here are some tips on self-publishing and marketing your children's book, courtesy of author Karen Inglis. Or, if one prefers, given the advent of technology, an AI-powered book marketing tool – say hello to Ida, folks.

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Samira Azzam was a Palestinian writer, broadcaster and translator whose collections of short stories were acclaimed during her lifetime, only to fall into obscurity after her unexpected passing in 1967. A selection of her stories, translated from Arabic, has been published in a new collection titled Out of Time.

“When I first started reading her work, I found them strong and compelling,” translator Ranya Abdelrahman tells The National. “They are on the surface about people's everyday lives but her characters are so vivid. They make you think. These are stories that were written more than 50 years ago, and yet, I found them so relatable and relevant. That's the mark of really good literature. It stands the test of time.”

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Sarawak-born Nadia Mikail's debut novel The Cats We Meet Along the Way, about a teen's road trip through Malaysia set against the backdrop of a looming apocalypse, won this year's Waterstones Children's Book Prize in the older readers category and was named the overall winner. Nadia's anxieties over her family during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to the book: "In the midst of trying to kind of work out those anxieties through writing, I realised the only thing we can do is care for the people we love every day and hope for a better future for them even when things seem hopeless.”

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In a candid video, Xiran Jay Zhao answers why the sequel to her bestselling Iron Widow, a sci-fi/alternate history mash-up of Pacific Rim and The Great Wall with miscellaneous hitsorical Chinese figures, is delayed. She claims the way and how much royalties are paid in the publishing industry left her with months of no money, forcing her to take gigs that paid sooner and thus delaying the release of Heavenly Tyrant. Considering the glacial agility of traditional publishers, Zhao's situation won't change soon, but one can hope.

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One sees notices on the copyright page of a book, but a prohibition to share the book and "if you want a copy, buy it"? Such a notice was found within the Zodiac Academy fantasy series, which has predictably drawn public ire and ridicule because, well, libraries? BookXcess-type stores? And friends share books with friends, too. It would be no surprise if this case was in the United States, arguably the most litigious country on the planet where even grapes have an end user licence agreement. Almost everyone involved with the book washed their hands off that "Do Not Share" notice, which is still inside one volume of the series on Amazon.

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Beijing-based OpenBook, an industry-data research firm, released charts of bestselling titles for February 2023, which I presume is for the Chinese market. Looking at lists from outside the West can be illuminating, but some common threads remain in reading trends, like the sellability of movie tie-ins. Headlining the article is how such a novel, based on a most-watched crime drama series, pushed Liu Cixin's title from the number one spot.

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Discussions over the use of AI in writing point include loosening one's writing gears but one author who doesn't appear to need such help is Amy Daws, whose book, Wait with Me, is about to be made into a movie. The inspiration for that book came to her while she was waiting to get her car serviced. If only more of us were visited by the muse in such convenient times...

Ghostwriter In The Machine: Much Closer Than We Think

Just days after my piece on ChatGPT's use in writing books went live, more developments in that field emerged. The AI interface is now cited as an author of more than 200 books on Amazon, and that number is set to grow. But over at Inside Hook, they aren't too concerned about AI overtaking humans in writing books:

As long as these books are properly labeled and part of Amazon’s self-publishing milieu, this might be more of a novelty at the moment. And we still approve of ChatGPT as a tool, even in publishing — but given that the program is still riddled with mistakes and odd errors, skilled human writers and editors are still 100% necessary, even for the most mundane of guides (or bad space erotica).

I'd have agreed with this a couple of weeks ago, except that OpenAI has announced the arrival of GPT4, said to be the advanced version of the AI model behind ChatGPT. Now some, like Kenneth Whyte at The Whig, are predicting the impending end of the human author in several sectors, including journalism where pithy, punchy machine-made copy will do for readers struggling against a tsunami of automated output...

...all of it optimized to outperform human product in algorithmic searches. The machine story will be good enough for most people and for most purposes. The content churned out by today’s media companies will be somewhere between worth less and worthless, making it difficult for those companies to afford original, high-value human journalism.

This avalanche will extend to book publishing, according to Whyte's projections, as the internet facilitates the (self-)publishing of AI-assisted books in genres where literary flair isn't a prerequisite, such as "guidebooks, basic biographies, basic histories, basic personal finance, basic personal advice, basic diet and health books, puzzle collections, and how-to series." There's even an AI-powered book-marketing service now.

Similar bells are also tolling for audiobook narrators as firms offer libraries of AI voices for various uses beyond Waze direction prompts, smart appliances and virtual assistants.

Against this wave of intelligent automation, The Writers Guild of America, a labour union of writers in numerous media sectors, seeks to ban AI work from being used as source material and introduce measures to protect their writers from being made redundant by AI. The guild also claimed that "AI software does not create anything. It generates a regurgitation of what it’s fed" and that "plagiarism is a feature of the AI process".

All these aside, the AI tsunami is all but inevitable as technology becomes even more essential to our lives. Over time, as the trend takes off, more will use AI to create content under shrinking time constraints. As quantity grows, quality will matter less and less, up to a point where writing is no longer art or "artsy" but a mass-consumed commodity. "In a nutshell," Whyte states, "generative AI has the potential to destroy a lot of value in the literary world without producing a single great work of literature."

But just as one out of a million monkeys at typewriters will somehow create a masterpiece, trained AI models can make art if given enough chances. An acquaintance playing around with ChatGPT Plus is startled (as am I) but pleased with the results, albeit with a little tweaking, and is planning a volume (or several) of AI-aided short fiction and poetry.

Yes, writers can finally write more and write often with AI and some seem fine with that, like romance authors. As more embrace AI as a writing tool, more books will be produced and, presumably, more gems and new voices will emerge and get read, and publishers will have to take notice as genres that were once considered niche enter the mainstream through sheer volume of work and readership. Though I don't think AI can crank out a romance novel because the writing for that genre is "formulaic".

Perhaps what fogeys like me will miss about publishing once AI assistance becomes the norm are the variety in our editing-room war tales, the joy of discovering the elusive sparkle in the mire, and the cataloguing of writer snafus for memoirs that may never see the light of day. Where's the allure in sifting through the slush pile when everything looks immaculately machine-manufactured? And AIs don't make hilarious typos, do they? Nor are they likely to engage in witty repartee. Y'know, human things.

Well, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

When the Gutenberg press was invented, it was a matter of time before books no longer belonged solely to the privileged. Then the internet happened and everyone can now be a writer, publisher, journalist, and opinion-shaper, for better or worse.

As treasure hunters of the literary kind, editors, publishers and agents now have a burgeoning galaxy of stars to search for the next supernova hit. The vastness of the infinite is daunting but I believe we're up to the challenge.

And it's not as if AI is infallible. There are cases where AI made mistakes and even amplified misinformation. Gatekeepers will not be out of a job, far from it. If the post-truth situation is projected to be as dire as this post says, we have our work cut out for us. Hiccups in these early AI assistants only mean we have more time to adapt.

Book Marks: The 'Script Thief, Awards, Regrets, Etc.

I used to do these "book marks" a lot when I was more active in monitoring goings-on in the industry that interest me, but seeing potentially multiple-figure counts of such posts tagged in the sidebar made me reconsider a few times. Then I hit a slump and stopped writing here for a while.

However, this habit helped to keep my toes in book- and publishing-related waters, so i'm getting back to it. And I have a lot to catch up on.

Let's start with the strange case of Filippo Bernardini, who stole hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, made ripples in the publishing sphere sometime back. Why would anyone want to pilfer 'scripts that would be kind of hard to monetise?

Recently, in a letter to a US federal judge, Bernardini claimed he stole the 'scripts because he wanted to read them. After failing to get hired at a literary agency where he had interned, he schemed to get people to send him manuscripts and it snowballed into a scam of sorts. But apparently his aim was not for profit:

“I wanted to keep [the manuscripts] closely to my chest and be one of the fewest to cherish them before anyone else, before they ended up in bookshops. There were times where I read the manuscripts and I felt a special and unique connection with the author, almost like I was the editor of that book.”

Kind of puts things in perspective for a certain segment of the publishing industry, doesn't it? And I speak as an editor of many books for a little over a decade. I've seen my share of 'scripts, some of it bad, and on certain days I wished I was doing something other than reading or editing them.

While some undoubtedly are calling for harsh penalties – theft of any kind in the book world is heavily frowned upon – someone at the Literary Hub thinks otherwise, because:

There are crimes and there are crimes, and this ... isn’t really a crime. Right? A lonely fantasist tricking a handful of agents into leaking manuscripts so that he can feel the illicit thrill of reading them a few months early is as close to a victimless offense as I can imagine. We didn’t send any bankers to jail after the financial collapse. No Sacklers will serve time for their part in the American opioid epidemic. Surely we can’t condemn this meek Italian bookworm to the depravity of the US prison system?

Not sure how much of this is tongue-in-cheek, but I think quite a few will get in line to vehemently disagree.

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Author Viji Krishnamoorthy's debut novel, 912 Batu Road, published by Clarity Publishing, has been longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. The novel is about two Malayan families' ordeal through World War II and the early 2000s when their descendants' forbidden love affair threatens to tear both families apart. Yes, the longlist was apparently announced on 30 January this year so I'm late to the party.

Speaking of awards, Tom Benn has won the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer Award for his novel, Oxblood, about an intergenerational family in a council house in the 1980s. The Jersey Evening Post adds that "Previous winners of the award – which comes with a £10,000 prize – include Normal People author Sally Rooney, Surge poet Jay Bernard and White Teeth novelist Zadie Smith."

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Writing in Book Riot, Alice Nuttall notes that...

Sometimes, authors deeply regret the books that they have published, even if – and sometimes because – those books made their names or brought them wild success. Arthur Conan Doyle famously hated Sherlock Holmes so much that he tried to kill the character off permanently, only to be forced to bring him back after public outcry. Agatha Christie resented the public demand for more Poirot novels; she found her creation irritating and hated all the idiosyncrasies she had given him, something she wryly references when writing crime author Ariadne Oliver’s hatred of her own fictional detective character.

But Nuttall adds that "nearly all of the authors who went on to regret their books are white and most are men", probably because "it’s likely that there are simply not enough books being published by authors of colour for those authors to have those same feelings of regret about the work they have struggled to get out there in the first place."

What stands out for me on the list is Peter Benchley, who of course wrote Jaws. The witch hunt against sharks that the novel and the film adaptation allegedly triggered appalled Benchley, who would spend the rest of his life championing sharks and their right to live unmolested in the oceans. I found his participation in a National Geographic special on sharks, with photographer David Doubilet and notable shark attack survivor Rodney Fox, quite exceptional.

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An unlikely path to publication for a Middle Eastern author spotlights "some of the setbacks facing regional authors in getting their work read globally." Simply put: the lack of bookshops and slow adoption of e-commerce in the Middle East and North Africa means publishers struggle to just stay afloat, missing opportunities that could be had if they networked with international firms interested in their output. Can networking at international book fairs be the answer?

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More bites from the Literary Hub: despite being labelled the most wired demographic, Gen-Z still prefer print to e-books, apparently. In the same tone as the plea to spare the manuscript thief Bernardini, the writer goes on: "Citing reasons like eye-strain, digital detoxification, BookTok, and new book smell (seriously, right?), an overwhelming percentage of readers born between 1997 and 2015 prefer old fashioned paper books."

And it seems the FBI made notes about Pilsen Community Books, a Chicago-based bookstore, which is said to be "a meeting place for 'anarchist violent extremists, or ‘AVEs,’ environmental violent extremists, or ‘EVEs’ and pro-abortion extremists.” Bookstores through the ages have cultivated certain reputations based on what they sell, who they platform, and who runs them but wow. And this news surfacing around this period in American history...

Pressed Over Bookshop Presence

Self-published author Grace G. Pacie can't seem to get her book into bookshops, a problem she shares with "other successful self-published authors". She reckons it's because...

...retail book buyers are hiding from us. Retail book buyers have concealed themselves behind such a curtain of secrecy, that we just can’t reach them to tell them about our success. ... I’ve met all their criteria, distributed my paperback through a non-Amazon channel and made it available through Gardners Books. Every attempt to reach the big retail decision-makers in this highly centralised market has ended in failure.

Even though the fruits of Pacie's research on managing time "has attracted such amazing media attention that my title hit number three in the Amazon Bestseller lists for Business Time Management Skills, and number four in Self Help Time Management this month"?

Some retailers tend to prefer names that sell by the score (each day, preferably), so that might not be a surprise. Other considerations might be due to retail agreements that favour big names and big presses even more, further relegating self-published titles to the wayside.

Which might not be wise, according to our self-published author who can't get into bookshops. Because: "While the global publishing market is predicted to grow at 1%, the self-publishing market is expected to grow at 17% per year, and with a self-published book market worth $1.25 billion a year, change is inevitable."

Now, among collections of self-published books one would find some with unappealing covers, back cover copy that goes over the top, and less-than-ideal editing. Some authors who "go it alone" because they feel shut out of traditional publishing ecosystems by what they see as excessive gatekeeping often do so without subjecting their work to rigorous refinement, eager to see their babies on the shelf. The growing use of AI in producing books, some of which still qualify as books even with low page counts, might also explain this growth. So kudos to self-published authors who take the time to improve their work before putting it out there.

Just as not all self-published work is unpresentable, not all bookshops are prejudiced against the self-published. Perhaps smaller neighbourhood bookstores might offer a spot on their shelves for independently published authors? They tend to because, for one, they're more amenable to small-scale, more personalised selling agreements. Also, stocking self-published works burnishes the image of the neighbourhood store as an indie outfit where hidden gems lurk.

In a similar vein, supporting small presses outside the publishing sphere dominated by the Big Five – or Big Four? – may pay off for the reader looking for something different as they contribute to the industry via their wallets.

Because, as Kendra Winchester writes in Book Riot, "big publishing isn’t the only place where excellent books are made."

Smaller presses provide a place for a lot of books big publishing doesn’t want to take a risk on, like books in translation, experimental works, and books by authors from marginalized identities. Smaller presses know their communities and invest in the literature that they specialize in, making a way for a wider range of books to be published.

Winchester goes on to build her case for indie presses, which also include university presses, as publishers of works from the communities they serve and are, thus, platforms for the voices of these communities, as opposed to big-name presses that mainly push marquee names and blockbusting titles.

Not getting a space at brick-and-mortar bookshops shouldn't be a downer, considering that a lot of commerce happens online these days. Surely the fact that Pacie's book was well-received despite its apparent absence in bookstores means it's worth checking out. Perhaps it's because bookstores have an edge, according to a Forbes Advisor analysis, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Google Trends: they are looking like the most recession-proof type of U.S. business in 2023.

Forbes Advisor ... calculated that the number of bookstores in the U.S. increased by 43% during the latter part of the pandemic and they also “enjoyed steady wage growth” during this time (+16%) as well as during the Great Recession (+13%). These stats, plus their “moderate startup cost” (around $75k, apparently), earned bookstores the top spot in the recession-proof rankings.

Regardless, books don't write themselves and bookstores, digital or terrestrial, need books to sell. And if people want to read something, they will look for it. So, authors, get your work out and put it where it can be found. But please, get it proofed and edited.

Growing Job Scope, Plus More Writing

More than half a year passed since I wrote a journalistic piece, let alone anything substantial and book-related. But among some additional responsibilities at work include blogging for the company's online retail portal, and in between the prerequisite promotions was this piece about how ChatGPT is helping people write their books.

When diving deep into the subject, I've had to revise my viewpoints and phrasing of some passages in the drfat a few times. Doubts over whether I did a good job – not great but merely good – still linger, mixed up with their counterparts from previous projects, and are unlikely to remain and feed new doubts raised while writing the next post.

Nevertheless, I'm pleased with the results, not just because it's been a while since I've done something like this and it seems to have jolted my writing gears loose after such a long while. Hence, I'd like to furnish the full text of the post here but given the nature of the new arrangements and to be on the safe side, I settled for a partial copy-paste with a link to the actual post.

Wish I could say "it's good to be back" but I think it's still too soon. I'll be fretting over what to write about next but until then, let me savour the relief of being able to write again.

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ChatGPT – the ghostwriter in the machine

In a book titled The Wise Little Squirrel: A Tale of Saving and Investing, a squirrel named Sammy finds a gold coin while picking up acorns. Sammy's friends Benny the Bear and Lily the Chipmunk then help the squirrel learn about the importance and benefits of saving and investing.

Sounds normal, except that the author, Brett Schickler, had help writing it: the software sensation ChatGPT, an AI interface developed by artificial intelligence research lab OpenAI that produces replies based on user queries. Schickler "wrote" The Wise Little Squirrel by prompting ChatGPT with queries like "write a story about a dad teaching his son about financial literacy". He also employed AI to design the cover...


Read in full here.

Love (Of A Language) Shouldn't Be Forced

The Malaysian Institute of Language and Literature (DBP) has proposed amendments to the DBP Act 1959 to give it more bite in policing usage of the Malay language.

News reports about the matter stated that "Individuals who do not respect the national language can be fined up to RM50,000 or sentenced to imprisonment."

“This is not about grammar or spelling errors, but disrespect for the national language. The proposed fine is not to punish but to evoke love and patriotism to the country,” said the chairman of the Institute's board of governors.

The proposed amendments will reportedly be tabled at the next Parliament session and likely to be passed, but I doubt the aims will be achieved without some collateral damage.

The news reports reveal little about the nature or details of the offences worthy of the ehnanced penaltiess. Even if grammar and spelling errors will not penalised, given the way Malaysian authorities work, one gets an idea of what "offences" might be targeted and who would be most affected: the poor, migrants, older people, and those not sufficiently schooled in BM.

Instead of evoking evoke "love and patriotism to the country", offenders are more likely to end up hating the laws and the Institute. Instead of uniting people, sections of society are pigeonholed based on their proficiency in Malay.

In many ways, how DBP polices language is the same as how the religious authorities police religion in this country, steadfast in the belief that the heavier the mallet, the easier their job. But mangling words or grammar in a language shouldn't be a crime, especially if done unintentionally. As a Finance Minister put it, "why use a sledgehammer to crack a nut?"

More egregious uses of BM can be found on social media. For one, the proliferation of bahasa WeChat needs to be checked.

Language is a living thing, and as in all living things, evolution and growth needs to be organic, and that involves making and learning from mistakes. How will anyone grow if they're made to fear making mistakes?

As much as the authorities like to think harsh punishments will lead to better things, it's not often the case. A conducive learning environment needs to be nurtured, not enforced. Unfortunately, the authorities penchant for the latter seems to suggest they don't have the aptitude for the former.

Love for something needs to be nurtured with knowledge, compassion and forgiveness. Teach and guide people through the basics, be patient with their progress (or initial lack thereof), and be kind when they stumble. Only then will people be more encouraged to learn and participate.

One example is how Indonesian VTubers from the Indonesian branch of the Hololive VTuber agency got their Japanese counterparts to use Indonesian. Never mind that most of what they picked up were swear words, at least they're learning.

A better instance is the collab streams by Hololive Indonesia's Pavolia Reine, where she teaches Indonesian to other Hololivers. Reine's a pretty good tutor, and watching her students pick up choice Indonesian phrases - and throw them back at her - is fun.

Yes, fun. Learning and using languages should be fun. Not an obstacle course at a boot camp for the US Marines. For an example of fun, DBP's official Twitter taps into the pulse of the local daily news cycle by serving up related word or phrase lessons, and poetry - enriching and entertaining.

I felt pangs of grief and a little pride as the Japanese VTubers threw choice phrases at each other and no one in general. Indonesian VTubers are building bridges to Japan, thrilling Indonesian audiences, while DBP fantasises about being a language sheriff.

Relentlessly controlling language - or any form of art, for that matter - will only stifle its growth and lead to fear of its adoption due to such unnecessary pitfalls as fines and jail time for any "disrespect".

And it's not as if the learning will stop with swear words. When the gates and penalties are gone, curiosity will take over and a new world will beckon. What kind of world that would be, depends on those who champion the language.

I think one way to get people curious about language is to tell stories. Well-told stories can be compelling especially if the tales being told share the same culture as the language used to tell it. The writing and production of recent mainland Chinese animated series such as Fairy Album and White Cat Legend got me picking up and rehearsing Chinese off and on. But that's just me.

Malay does have a use beyond urusan kerajaan, beyond an instrument of jingoistic nationalism. We just have to work out what that is.

Kitchen Hijinks And WFH

Not long after returning from my Chinese New Year break, the old fridge gave up the ghost. Every perishable inside had gone bad or was on the way there.

I've had a new fridge since then but getting back to cooking or making simple meals took a while. Even after the new fridge came in, I had waited for about 36 hours before switching it on instead of the six to eight hours for the refrigerant in the unit to settle down after transit.

Part of me feels like the fridge isn't merely a thing that keeps food fresh, but a kitchen helper. Was I trying to get acquainted with it before trying out things in the kitchen like I used to with the old fridge?

Anthropomorphising household objects might sound strange but it's how I feel about stuff I use and depend on regularly to make my life easier, especially things that have been around for a long time.

Like the old backpack I had to abandon when I found holes at the bottom. I tend to carry stuff in it - medicines, groceries and other things, and waiting for the bottom to give way while hauling stuff wouldn't do. The backpack was almost as old as the fridge, almost two decades, so having to get rid of two things that had been part of the household for so long felt poignant.

The deliverymen took care of the old fridge after bringing in the new one, while I disposed of the old backpack, my frequent travelling companion of almost twenty years. I wouldn't allow it the final indignity of going out as a trash bag, so I emptied it and laid it on the contents of a dumpster.

...No, I don't talk to the fridge or the backpack. That's silly.

At least I've started getting back to messing about in the kitchen like it was before the pandemic. With the arrival of a new powerful blender, a Phillips ProBlend 6 3D, the banana-oat-nut-and-seed smoothie made a return. This yummy meal replacement used to be a regular thing until my immersion blender blew out.

Though the new machine produces a smoother concoction, cleaning and drying it is bothersome, so I won't be using it more than once a day. I might need another immersion blender - maybe one with a food processor attachment - as the ProBlend 6 is too much of a monster for stuff like sauces, soups and pesto.

I miss the latter though, to the point where I pulled a jar of ready-made pesto off a shelf for home-made pasta. Crowds are still keeping me out of malls and store-bought is convenient. I get my bourgeois goods from a nearby corner shop, like a mini Hock Choon, though it hasn't stocked basil leaves for a long time since it first opened.

I also whipped up a prototype mun fan (Chinese braised rice) with roast pork and mixed frozen vegetables. Few things are comforting as a dish of rice drenched in the sauce from braising miscellaneous ingredients.

Some frying was involved to reduce a bit of onion to almost nothing. The post-meal clean-up was quite the chore as I had also neglected having a cooker hood installed while renovating the place. Will be quite a while before the next attempt.

Wraps have also arrived in the kitchen. Assorted fresh greens, some protein and a sauce rolled up in what is essentially a flatbread makes a satisfying meal. So simple, I wondered why I took so long to try it out. Roast pork, tuna mayo, garlic sausage, scrambled eggs, even tinned beef curry...

Ah, the possibilities. What's next? Coleslaw? Burger ingredients? A chicken rice burrito? The mind is still boggling. Unless I'm lazy or in a hurry, I won't be getting another tuna wrap from Subway.

A shame that I came to realise this a bit late. With restrictions easing all over, I expect my days of working from home to end, along with the cooking. Prepping for a home-cooked meal and cleaning up afterwards take up a fair chunk of time and switching gear back to work after that can be a pain.

Being a creature of habit, I confine certain routines to their places and hate it when things change halfway. Work is work, home is home. So when restrictions were lifted for the first MCO, going back to work felt liberating. Taking out food meant not having to prep ingredients and clean up the kitchen.

But working from home beats having to deal with the time- and soul-consuming commute to and from work, no thanks in part to the antics of Malaysian road users. Didn't miss that at all.

Nor shall I miss having to scramble for limited parking bays at work, or having my parked car blocked by trucks as they are being loaded or unloaded when I want to drive out for lunchtime takeaways.

One is often in a calmer state of mind without striving to beat the clock daily. When there's no work, chores can be done. A home always has something that needs tending to.

Looking Back At A Long-Gone Life

Lately, like many in my current pandemic-addled state of mind, I've been tuning to VTubers at the end of each day to wind down. Some of them have other talents than being entertaining on screen while streaming, and quite a few can sing well enough to put out singles and even whole albums.

One of these talents is the "rapping reaper", Calliope Mori. She's produced quite a few songs, some of which feature a mix of English and Japanese lyrics, and the apparent ease with which she comes up with them speak of many, many hours, if not years, of practice.

A recent original, "End of a Life", took me down an emotional memory lane. Something about the soothing yet melancholic number makes you want to listen to it again and again.

While I lack the vocabulary to analyse songs, I could tell from the lyrics that on the surface, "End of a Life" seems to be about someone - perhaps Calli or anyone in the music business - who feels nostalgic about their starving artist days.

Life is a series of stages, and when people are dissatisfied with what they have to deal with now, they tend to look back towards simpler times, no matter how rough and far removed from where they are now.

There's a certain romance to the journeyman's struggle: despite the bad bosses, bad co-workers, bad environment and other occupational hazards on a road seemingly going nowhere, something comes along that makes things a little better: that one good colleague, the kind waitress at the diner, or unexpected things such as a helping hand from a stranger, an epiphany that descends while savouring a dinner or a drink, or some serendipitous event. And the occasional trip to a rooftop with a view, with or without friends, and the cathartic ranting, singing or hollering away of the day's troubles.

Times may have been tough when you were up and coming, but these things kept you going, one day at a time. Eventually, you developed a camaraderie with the community and the place where all this happened. Each day fraught with hardship that's survived is an accomplishment.

But then you catch a break, you move up and life gets cushier. A sort of torpor sets in, not the stuck-at-the-bottom type but the lonely-at-the-top or the now-what type often encountered at loftier heights. The grind is different, not as real like when you sweated buckets for what you can now do with a flick of the wrist, forgetting that it's also due to all the experience earned along the way.

That's when you look back and feel like an impostor, seeing the past with rose-tinted lens. That's when you feel guilty for leaving the old hood and all your old friends behind, the ones who came up with you but didn't get the break you did. All this messes with you and makes you feel you don't deserve what you have now.

But wasn't all this what you dreamed of when you stared into the stars from that roof, holding on to the ghost of that beer or cigarette in your mouth as you wished that horrible boss would drop dead?

Near the bottom, the struggle was real, but so were the connections you made, the gems you found. Those seem to get fewer and farther between as you get near the top, don't they?

Each stage of life has its good and bad. Before long you'd notice it too. The grind, the lulls in between, and the end-of-the-day ritual for tomorrow. The environment may be better, but it's still the same. Less real, perhaps, because you aren't suffering as much.

That's the longing for simple days that creep in when you're down, that some people attribute to Stockholm syndrome. If only they knew, huh?

It's a privilege to be able to look back at a shitty life with such fondness for the occasional bright spots, and you know it. Not everybody is as fortunate. Maybe these trips back in time are a distraction from the anxieties of the future.

Maybe what you miss is being young, being tough enough to survive whatever life throws at you. The high from making it through a tough day that makes you feel like you will life forever.

Alas, all lives must end. Just as the shitty life ended for you, so will these best years eventually join that shitty life in the recesses of your memory, only to surface at the lower points when you're older and less resilient to the emotional battering from mourning the sweet spots in your past.

Until then, from time to time, you'll revisit the old hood, old friends, and that rooftop with the view, where you held on to the taste of that beer or cigarette, laughed at your bullshit dreams of the big time, and hurled curses or sang songs alone or with your friends.

And you'll keep wondering how they're doing and if any of them made it out like you did, or disappear into the lights of the old hood, as you mentally compose thank-yous you might never get to send to them and others who in their little ways, took you through life day by day until you caught a break - and dreading what would've become of you if they hadn't shown up. Will they even be there when you drop by? Do you even want to and risk opening old wounds?

We all have such thoughts occasionally. All these and more surface each time I replay the song. To what extent Calli drew from experience when she wrote this, or whether she made it all up, I don't know. But I feel they echo strongly within content creators, like the ones we're watching. Many of them languished in similar dead ends until they became online stars.

I didn't quite set out to write an open letter of sorts to the protagonist or anyone who find themselves in the protagonist's shoes in the song, but here I am. So let me finish.

Well, you toughed it out too. All the good fortune one can receive means nothing if you didn't put in the work. You are here, and the "you" who didn't get lucky is a hypothetical, erased by the paths you did take.

Some people didn't believe in you, put you down, didn't stick around. That's fine. Do what you're doing now for those who did. If they're real homies they'd be cheering and singing along with you, proud that you're taking on the world.

Even if the old hood is gone, it'll live on in the heart, still doing what it's always been doing to get you through life one day at a time. And now, you also have new people who support you. As long as one is alive, might as well cherish the good things, tough out the bad, and make the most of every opportunity.

So don't stop dreaming. We'll be here when you wake up.