News: E-Book Explosions and Indie Icons

No time to write extensively on some topics! Several books are being (re)published and I've had to read the softcopies. And I haven't been sleeping well, either.

As I'd previously reported, Tunku Halim's stories are being republished electronically. I'd just had a chunk of 44 Cemetary Road dropped into my mailbox, which I've had to psyche myself up to edit - that's how disturbing the stuff is.

Also, the travelogue of a cyclist who toured the "four corners" of Peninsular Malaysia as part of a duo is now in the final stages of design and checks.

I'm putting the page for manuscript solicitations up after the Chinese New Year holidays. I'm not expecting an inundated mailbox (or even a joke e-mail) within weeks of it going up, but I'd rather play it safe.

• Happening elsewhere: e-books and e-publishing. The Czech Republic has seen rising e-book sales. Catching on to the e-buzz, some have proffered tips and thoughts on how to catch the wave.
  
  Meanwhile, Chinese B2C e-commerce site Dangdang expects a 20% profit margin on e-books. The company's plan to grow its e-book business is kind of ambitious, and highlights China as a plum market. But only if more publishers sign up; concerns include copyright protection short-term effects on business, and piracy.
  
  Speaking of which: Recently, a bunch of Chinese writers announced their intent to sue Apple for allegedly hosting pirated e-books. And, asks this article, "who owns the e-book rights to books published years before there was such a thing?"
  
  Still, the e-book explosion is good news for Amazon, which looks more and more the e-publishing monopoly feared by the traditional publishing sector. It seems Kindle Direct Publishing authors and publishers LOVE Kindle Owners' Lending Library. Celebrities such as James Franco and celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl are choosing to collaborate with Jeff Bezos's behemoth firm.
• Mention e-publishing and indie comes to mind. Mention both and Amanda Hocking comes to mind. Just last week, it was the Guardian's turn to profile her. It should be noted that this member of the Kindle Million Club (authors who have sold one million or more e-books via Amazon's Kindle) had turned to traditional book publishers to relieve herself of the burden of marketing her books so she can write. With Amazon becoming a one-stop-shop for publishing, selling and lending books, one wonders if that will change.
  
  But Hocking hasn't dismissed traditional publishers as dinosaurs of the industry. Nor does she make her success sound like magic. "Self-publishing is great, but it's not easy," she blogged. "Most people who do it will not get rich, just like most authors signed up at Scholastic books aren't billionaires. Traditional publishers are not evil any more than Amazon or Barnes & Noble are evil. Things are changing, hopefully for the better, but it is still hard work being a writer."
  
  Sorry, but I think Amazon is getting evil. I'm also biased.
• But speaking of indie publishing: A blook is being turned into a Zhang Yimou movie. The nom de plume Ai Mi penned Under the Hawthorn Tree, a tragic love story set during the Cultural Revolution - which may or may not be autobiographical. Are e-books are all about MOBI, EPUB, etc? Not really. Blogs may not resemble a books but written right, they read like books. But it's still hard work. The reception to a teacher's blook, released by MPH, was a surprise.
  
  So indie publishing is slowly shedding the dreaded "vanity" label as e-publishing evolves; in a saturated market, quality and integrity will make you stand out. But pitfalls abound for the aspiring Hocking. Enter Indie Beware, a watchdog site styled after Writer Beware. It's still new, but will fill up in time.
• The Omnivore (UK) announces the Hatchet Job of the Year award for literary criticism. The Telegraph has the shortlist.
• Another new award: The inaugural Kidwell-e Festival, taking place this summer at the Welsh village of Kidwelly, will see the UK's first literary prize for e-books and digital publishing: The £10,000 Kidwell-e Ebook Awards. It's the latest among the few literary prizes in the world for electronic books, which includes the US's EPIC eBook Awards and the Global Ebook Award.
• Oxfam bookshops, the equivalent of Penang's Chowrasta book bazaar, are challenging the big chains in the UK. Sounds kind of sad that outlets selling new(ish) books are being challenged by what are effectively second-hand bookstores. The mentality is universal, though. Someone goes "cheap, cheap" and we all close in like predators.
• Beijing Book Fair highlights underground literature - and the plight of private bookstores.
• Public Enemies by Michel Houellebecq and Bernard Henri-Levy is "digested" in the Guardian. Shades of Stephen Clarke. Très bien. Also: Is Twitter the 21st-century literary salon? And are we seeing the death of literature?
• A compelling piece on Jodi Kantor's The Obamas. Doesn't it make you want to read the book?
• An end to "bad heir days": James Joyce's kin's "copyright dictatorship" and the posthumous power of literary estates.
• This guy stopped reading books. Horror ensued.

...I compiled that list of stuff over a week. I tweeted most of them. Just added more text to some of the items. That ain't writing.

News: Bookstore Buzz and Tolkien's Nobel Miss

Lots of stuff last week from Publishers Weekly.

• Some interesting news bites include the closing of feminist US bookstore True Colors in Minnesota next month. Said to be the oldest independent feminist bookstore in North America, it was opened 40 years ago elsewhere as Amazon Bookstore - and later got into a trademark tussle with Bezos's behemoth.
• Decade-old indie bookstore The Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore, Maryland has changed hands, while Kansas City almost lost a mystery-genre bookshop - and got another.
• In a bit of a reverse situation, three-year-old online bookstore La Casa Azul to open as a brick-and-mortar shop. It "will sell new and used books, e-books, coffee, and locally-made art and gifts", and "offer literacy programs, writing classes, and author readings.
• Finally: Be one of the 5,000 "who keep book culture alive," exhorts Dan Simon of Seven Stories Press. "Read books, talk about them. Give them as gifts."

News elsewhere: The next chapter in Spanish author Lucia Etxebarria's quit threat sparks a digital publishing debate on the future of writers - and by extension, artists - in the digital publishing era. Some writers don't think quitting is the answer to problems such as strong-arm tactics by publishers and pirates. Author and publisher Harry Freedman, for one, is not worried about e-book piracy. Why?

Meanwhile, publishers are clashing with libraries over free lending of e-books. And so, the debates continue. Also:

• As more good times ahead are predicted for e-books, some cases are made for vanity publishing. For instance, what if the books are good? One thing about e-books, though: easy to update may also mean easy to doctor. Another area to explore, innovate and make money out of.
  
  But the year Borders closed - last year - was a good one for small bookshops in St Louis, USA. So no, maybe bookshops still have a little life to them. And just look at all these books coming out of Oz and around the world.
  
  And indie bookshops aren't entirely helpless: some are fighting back against the likes of Amazon by creating their own unique titles. Just like Silverfish Books, as they'd love to remind us.
  
  And somewhere in Tokyo is Dokusho no Susume, a bookstore where a real human - the owner, Katsuyoshi Shimizu - recommends books based on one's moods and interests. Who needs algorithms?
  
  But will Amazon's Price Check app ruin bookstore browsing for everybody? Let's hope not.
• The emergence of local e-book portal e-Sentral is good news for local authors. Though the name sounds a little... generic.
  
  Elsewhere, there's fledgling web site and digital publishing company Byliner, which is publishing short pieces by some well-known names. You might have heard about Jon Krakauer's Three Cups of Deceit.
• Revenge of the paperback? A new book series attempts to revitalise the printed word.
• JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings didn't get the Nobel (I'm assuming) literature prize because of... poor storytelling? Those who have read the book(s) will probably... agree.
• Wow. The AP StyleGuard plug-in. Will it spell the death of editing? Not really, the piece argues.
• Other victims of Thailand's floods: books. It's Germany's Centre for Book Preservation to the rescue in Ayutthaya.
• Here's a hilarious excerpt from Love InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women. Pity we might not get the book in the bookstores here.

Tight Civet, Fighting Mongoose

We all had a good laugh at the Defence Ministry's "tight Malay civets", "mongoose fights", eye-poking clothes and "skirts with exquisite" - not to mention (George W) "Bush's jacket".

But it's more than just the standard of English.

A mongoose (left) and a civet. Try wearing these two. Photos not mine.

For one, I would think that the employee dress code for a ministry or firm is not meant for the public. Unlike, maybe, the dress code for visitors to a ministry or firm.

The list doesn't appear properly structured, and its items don't appear organised. And word-for-word translation isn't always possible - or recommended in some cases.

The original dress code section for men, based on the copy in Scribd.com, looks like:

Dress code
How to dress symbolizes the personality of the officers and staff as well as the values and moral work ethics. Therefore, how to dressclean, tidy and appropriate to be standard practice is emphasized to the officers and staff. Following rules of dress while on duty in to be observed:

Dress code FOR MEN

Men's Clothing:

1. For officers in the management and professional, "Lounge Suite" or "Bush's jacket
2. long pants with long sleeved shirt and tie
3. complete with Malay dress clothes and bersongkok bersamping dark.
4. Officers in the management and professional to wear a neck strap / cap / corporate scarves every Wednesday and the officithe Ministry.
5. long-sleeved shirts and T-shirt:
1. collared shirts and tight Malay civet berbutang three
2. collared shirts and tight Malay civet berbutang five
3. hidden berbutang Nehru collar,
4. three berbutang mandarin collar.
5. long pants. Do not fold your sleeves. Shirts must be included in (tuck in).
6. Nehru suits made of fabrics and colors to suit:
1. forward berbutang
2. hidden berbutang

Would the following be more suitable?

Dress Code
The way an officer or staff member dresses indicates his/her character, values and work ethics. Therefore, the habit of being dressed in clean and neat clothes must be inculcated among the staff. The following dress codes must be observed when on duty:

For men:
Attire for officers classified under management and professional categories:

• Lounge suites or bush jackets with a
  
  • Nehru collar with concealed buttons or
  • mandarin collar with three buttons
• Trousers with long-sleeved shirt and tie; sleeves must not be rolled up, and shirt must be tucked in
• Baju Melayu, complete with samping, dark-coloured songkok and cekak musang collar with three (or five) buttons
• Nehru suit of a suitable fabric and colour with exposed (or concealed) buttons

Ties/Caps/Corporate scarves must be worn on Wednesdays and during official Ministry functions or events.

The above is based on my understanding of the original text in Malay, in which I'm not fluent. It's an itch I had to scratch.

Some have suggested that this snafu is why the teaching of maths and science in English or PPSMI should not be abolished. Would teaching maths and science in English help with one's sartorial terminology?

"Ethical clothing", by the way, describes clothes that have, say, not been made in sweatshops or by screwing cotton farmers over and stuff like that.

Since then, more examples of eye-gouging English in the web sites of other ministries have been found. Perhaps not "found", but "noticed". Who knows how long those errors have been there?

No one should claim that a ministry or firm "has better things to do" than correct the grammar on their web sites. Somebody did some research and found that, apparently, sales through online portals can be negatively affected by poor spelling.

Government and corporate bodies these days are represented by their online portals as well as their front-line staff. Typos and grammatical errors are as off-putting as rude or uncaring behaviour. That's something for government bodies to consider as they move towards digitising their services.

Who's Coffee And Why Is (S)he In Love?

On Jalan Sri Hartamas 1, en route to Publika at Solaris Dutamas, you may have noticed a sign outside Eastern Nursery just after an overpass. It sounds like and odd declaration of love.

Who the hell's Coffee and why is (s)he in love?

Actually, it's just an odd name for a coffee bar tucked away in the nursery. Experience tells me good brews are to be had in places like this. Unfortunately, on the first two occasions I had a look, the place was closed.

A signpost marks the start of a path leading to a sheltered extension of a potter's barn. The signpost sports a wooden "Open/Close" sign that doesn't always mean what it says. If you can't open the café's Facebook page, open your ears. If the barista is in, there'll be music drifting out of the shelter - which I heard when I dropped by on New Year's Day.

One is also advised to show up a little after 2pm during weekends, when the café is most likely to be open.

Just when you think it's already tucked-away... it's just
like Aladdin's Adobo Shack

Established in June 2011, the Coffee In Love Café is reminiscent of those vendors' shacks in the Caribbean you might have read about. Assorted bric-a-brac here and there gives the whole décor a rundown yet quirky feel. Fake chillies, a gas lamp, old statuettes, wooden figurines and potted plants accent an interior festooned with salvaged furniture: chairs of all makes and sizes, old cabinets and kitchen cupboards, and wooden classroom desks.

The interior of Coffee in Love Café - an American Picker's
kinda place. Don't think all the items are for sale.

A water feature (in the background) are also made from recyclables: PVC pipes and paint buckets, and also serves to funnel run-off from a rain gutter. A blackboard for miscellaneous announcements was singing the owner's praises.

"Have you seen the owner?" Yes. "Is she cute?" No comment.

On a cabinet near the bar is the speaker where the music comes from. Depending on the barista and the help, you can have Latino/Spanish pop hits to jazz - good coffee house music. The whole décor adheres pretty much to the re-use and recycle principle espoused by the founders.

One of them, the supposed owner Helen, worked in the F&B business for a while. She calls herself an artist now, but opened the café to serve good coffee. "In KL it's easy to find crap coffee," she told me when I'd dropped by days ago.

Where did she learn how to make coffee? "Self-taught," she replied.

"100% Colombian Coffee" - that's what goes into every cup. They grind only as much as they need for each order. Only a few stray beans remain in the grinder's bin. This is good because coffee beans should be kept in the tin when not in use. They degrade when exposed to air.

You "like it STRONG and HARD?" Colombian beans'll do it for ya.
Ask for the Piccolo Latte (RM5). If you ask nicely, the barista may
even make you a a triple espresso - if your heart can handle it.

Like most of their hot beverages, my latte (RM7) comes with a square biscuit that tastes like a Marie's Biscuit - good for taking the bitter edge from the coffee. After a few sips, however, you won't mind a bit.

Cold water is served in re-purposed wine and spirits bottles and
glass jars that provide good photo opportunities for shutterbugs.
Brown sugar is provided but not necessary.

The brew? Kicks like a mule, their Piccolo Latte in particular. With less milk than the latte, you can better feel the strength and, perhaps, the quality of the brew. I wasn't doing too well on the taste department then because I'd scalded my tongue.

I got out my writing materials and tried to fill a few pages. Though it looked like a good place to get creative, the warm, humid weather saps much of that impulse in no time - not that it's a bad thing. Coffee in Love is more of a place where people can chill and get caffeinated after lunch.

The atmosphere will lull aspiring Hemingways and W Somerset
Maughams into a tropical torpor no amount of caffeine can jolt.

Few things beat sipping a steamy brew of Colombian Supremo beans in a warm, humid shack, surrounded by earthy sights and smells and with music to match. And a barista who says he likes coffee and half-jokingly greets you "Good morning!" when you arrive because, I guess, the day doesn't really start without a good cuppa.

Slanty art shot of the counter. You'll most probably find these two
at the Café on weekends, when it opens from 2pm-ish to 6pm.

So you'll forgive a lot of things about this weird little corner. Electric fans provide air conditioning when there's no breeze. There may be mosquitoes about. Rain will make it nice and cool, albeit quite damp. Damp air's no good for my lungs, but a great excuse for another warm beverage. Good coffee itself is already hard to come by, so don't complain about the latte art.

Though they had some in the beginning, food is very occasionally served here. The tiny place looks like it can only accommodate about twenty patrons at a time. And they only open during lunch on weekdays and after lunch on weekends and close at around six in the evening.

But with prices from RM3++ to RM10, it's damn good value for several good beverages (you're probably begging for a thrashing if you want them iced). And there's wi-fi.

It's been open seven months, but quite a few people have found it already (Facebook is fantastic that way). The Coffee In Love Café Facebook page has all the updates, and they announce their café openings there, too.

I had no reason to stay until they close, so I got up to leave and ask for the bill. They got P1 wi-fi and update their clientèle on a social network, but Coffee in Love's cash register is a Milo can on a pulley - so old-school, it's Jurassic - so you don't get a printed receipt. This is by far the greenest and coolest (style, not temperature) café I've been to.

---

Coffee in Love Café

c/o Eastern Nursery
132KV, SGBT - TNB 8-10
Jalan 1/70A, Taman Sri Hartamas
50480 Kuala Lumpur

CLOSED FOR GOOD

News: Publishers, Privacy and Memoirs

This list is a bit late, but my thought processes are borked and I can't think straight enough to write coherently.

• Print On Demand: A collaborative and real-time history of Occupy Wall Street, written by those who were there. Now, history is written by its characters, not historians.
• Community appeal saves a second-hand book shop in the UK. Maybe there's hope out there.
• An all-women comic book team kicks back against sexism in comics with their Bayou Arcana anthology.
• Komputing koach Kim Komando asks, "Got a dream for 2012? Why not publish a book?" The last time I saw her, she was on TV, demonstrating WordPerfect, Compuserve Prodigy and Lotus 1-2-3 on an Amazing Discoveries infomercial. Yes, it was that long ago.
• Will the UK's Leveson inquiry give rise to a privacy law that impacts memoirs? Particularly those with details that friends, colleagues and relatives may object to?
• Michael Korda says most Hollywood memoirs are dull, overrated and probably ghostwritten.
• Ooh, publisher Melville House has come up with their HybridBook™. Instead of CDs, I think, you get a URL. Do some things stay the same the more they change?
• What's coming in 2012 for the book publishing sector. Hopefully, not a variant of the so-called Mayan apocalypse.
• The story of Sixty-Eight Publishers, set up by and mainly for Czechs in exile.
• And for laughs: the diary of failed Doomsday prophet Harold Camping.

Also: Paul Callan (The Dulang Washer, 2011) is working on a new novel, and we're converting an e-book collection of Tunku Halim's scary stories. The second book in Tuttu Dutta-Yean's The Jugra Chronicles is scheduled for this year.

I'm also putting together a page for manuscript submissions. The company appears to have no official online portal for submissions, save a phone number and an e-mail address. So, I'm making one.

Some Pieces Fall In Place

Coming down from a long Christmas weekend of doing mostly nothing, I realise that it has come to a point where I can go for a month-long holiday and, upon returning to work, find myself not feeling refreshed. Bad sleeping habits might be a factor.

I wasn't sure how to respond to this post that filled the gaps in my pro-indie bookstore article. And I couldn't put a finger on what I'd felt as I typed it out.

One can say my piece was "biased". I was too tired or blasé to craft a more balanced take on the subject. Besides, some stories on small bookshops were recently published. Responses to Manjoo's Slate article, maybe?

I am aware that in Malaysia, there is no apparent reading culture. Rarely does the average reader's connection to books go beyond the product and the shelf it came from. How are books published? How does one write a book? What does it take to print one? Do readers know or care? Do they even need special places for buying or reading books?

Before he'd personally watched a pig get slaughtered or kill one himself, Anthony Bourdain claimed his understanding of where meat came from was not ...complete. Perhaps Manjoo's understanding of small independent bookstores would similarly benefit by an extended stay in Malaysia where he can witness the slow death of at least one indie bookshop.

I loved bookstores as a kid, but lamented my limited time in them as the folks had to leave for home. Though I have the freedom and money to spend in bookstores, I don't seem to be doing that a lot. Perhaps the force behind my piece was desperation. The urge to do something, however ineffectual, to delay the inevitable.

Brick-and-mortar bookstores may eventually be a thing of its past, but should its passing be brushed off with a toss of a pen, like Manjoo did, without a care for the people who work at and frequent those places? To be replaced with the likes of Amazon? Please. The thought of letting such a shapeless, faceless behemoth dictate what I can or should buy or download - and at what price - makes my blood run cold.

Maybe it's just me, writing about how I'm missing something that's about to disappear. Not like it's going to change anything, but it's better than doing nothing.

Maybe.

Another Red Future, Imagined

Probably my last book review for 2011. I not sure if I can call The Fat Years a "thriller", though. And so ends another year.

---

Red future

Hegemony and hope in an ascendant China

first published in The Star, 30 December 2011


With a tagline like "The notorious thriller they banned in China", a critique of China's ruling Communist Party is what you'd expect in these pages. But it's not exactly what you think.

Originally published as Shengshi: Zhongguo 2013 (loosely, "A Golden Age: China In 2013"), Chan Koonchung's work of speculative fiction was translated into English as The Fat Years. It starts "two years from now", ie after this novel's publication earlier this year. China has emerged ascendant from the aftermath of a global financial crisis. Some famous brands have fallen into Chinese hands, including Starbucks.

In one of the now Chinese-owned Wantwant Starbucks outlets, Old Chen, a former journalist, current author and resident of Happiness Village Number Two, is moved to tears by China's prosperity; some of those tears end up in his "great-tasting" Lychee Black Dragon Latté.

Earlier, his friend Fang Caodi pestered him for the umpteenth time about a missing February (yes, he means the month, the entire month). Big deal. Politically inconvenient timelines tend to disappear in China. That doesn't bother Old Chen – much. He's divorced, getting old and has writer's block.

Hope for his second spring in the country's golden age comes in the form of an old flame, Wei Xihong aka Little Xi. A former judge disillusioned by the system, she quit her job and eventually took the Raja Petra route (ie, she became a dissident blogger, for those who don't get the reference). Chen's search for her would put him on a course to unearth the truth behind the missing month, the details of which are only remembered very vaguely by several characters.

Born Fang Lijun, Fang Caodi is an asthmatic and jack-of-all-trades who returned to mainland China after years of wandering and renamed himself after an elementary school. Fellow asthmatic Zhang Dou, who was once a child slave, is now a wannabe guitarist. These two guys come to believe in the hand of the Chinese government behind this collective national amnesia.

Things come to a head one day when Zhang, Fang and Little Xi surprise Old Chen by pulling up to him in a black SUV with an unconscious government official bundled up at the back. Will he talk? And if he does, what will they learn?

The Fat Years describes so many things that are so close to home in modern China. Polemics for and against a totalitarian regime, its ideology and ruling elite are conveyed through the book's characters. However, it could do without the lengthy preface, which sort of gave the ending away. That and the translator's introduction pretty much summed up the novel for the casual book browser, who'd probably leave it on the shelf. Which would be a pity.

With its folksy narrative and dialogue and occasional bits of humour, The Fat Years is not stridently didactic about – nor a full-blown parody of – China's situation.

It's more about folks like Old Chen, Little Xi, Fang Caodi and Zhang Dou. Particularly Little Xi and Fang, whom the author considers among the many "incorrigible idealists" in China: "... the people languishing in prison or under government surveillance – human rights lawyers, political dissidents, ... public intellectuals, whistle-blowers...".

Despite the bad news in China (factory worker suicides, dodgy food manufacturers and callous drivers in horrifying hit-and-runs and so on), the presence of people like Little Xi and Fang gives others hope. That things aren't really all that bad, and that they will get better. That there are still people out there trying to make things better.

For me, the romance between Old Chen and Little Xi gives the book a bit of much-needed heart and gives us a glimpse of that hope. After Little Xi had gone into hiding, Old Chen tracks her down, but she refuses to see him, so they communicate through e-mails and comments in a forum thread.

Briefly, Old Chen's entreaties to Little Xi made netizens on both sides of the Taiwan Strait forget about politics to split hairs over the duo's online exchanges. Opinions differ, but they seem to agree about one thing: "Stop faffing around Little Xi, make up with Old Chen and everything will be okay!"

As the author puts it: "No society can afford to be without idealists – especially not contemporary China." After all, it can be argued that a bunch of idealists put China on the path it's treading today – and their job is far from done.

---

The Fat Years

Chan Koonchung
translated by Michael S Duke
preface by Julia Lovell
Doubleday (2011)
307 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-385-61918-9