Holding Onto Hope For Books And Bookselling

I didn't set out to follow the development of AI in publishing, but I seemed to have fallen into a rabbit hole while researching for a couple of AI-related pieces. And it seems the debate is still raging and developments in the field keep coming in.

This article highlights the changes AI will cause to parts of the publishing sector. Expect AI to take over a lot of human involvement in marketing, promotions and publicity; translation; and audiobook narration in particular. More and more writers are using large-language models to draft books, with some employing AI to conceptualise and create book covers.

And check this blast from the past about a guy who used tech to harvest bits from the web to write tons of books and publish them on Amazon. This reminded me of "blogs" made with content reaped from other websites by bots; at least one of my posts was harvested this way. Was this the precursor of the large-language models behind the likes of ChatGPT? Who'd have thought.

Will AI eventually replace humans entirely? A lot of doomsaying is clouding the fact that the technology isn't perfect, and that it is only as good as the material it is being trained with. Visual artists have more to fear than writers, perhaps, but the article offers some hope...

Ebooks did not kill print. Audiobooks are not destroying print, either. Amazon may have forever changed the industry, but the format that makes publishing truly publishing is not going away anytime soon. Perhaps the industry will weather the AI storm as well.

What might not "weather the storm" is the physical bookselling industry. Borders Malaysia is shutting down operations and will fully exit on, of all days, this Merdeka Day. Once considered MPH's rival, apart from Popular, Borders Malaysia was an offshoot of the now-defunct Borders Group Inc. in the United States, which shuttered in 2011. Prices of books have shot up along with costs within the book supply chain, and print appears to be increasingly unsustainable.

In the US, bookstores are still around, though they're apparently not the place to work if you want a living wage. The piece about independent bookstores goes on to disabuse readers of the long-held romantic notions about working at such places: "Much as the fringe benefit of access to review copies might be nice, it does not pay the bills, whether you’re in New York City, Seattle, or a smaller community in the Midwest."

Numbers are tossed, figures are bandied about. Sobering numbers that underscore a fact that having a bookstore or library, or being able to run or work in either, is a privilege...

These jobs, so often seen as dreamy or as a calling, are coded in language that undermines their reality: you need to have another job, several other jobs, no debt, no bills, and no other obligations to survive in any place in the country to take one.

Indeed, in times of peace and plenty, such institutions can exist and even thrive as long as all the basics are taken care of and the boat is sailing smoothly. However, economic wobbles wrought by climate change, COVID-19, and conflicts in several fronts worldwide have shorn our spending power, forcing us to prioritise other things. Some TBR piles have started growing slowly or not at all.

Books have always been luxuries in the past, democratised by the printing press and later, digital technology. Good books take a lot of resources to make, especially limited-edition hardcopies with fancy covers and special paper. For those simply looking for a read or a dozen, going digital would be the way.

Like books, timepieces too were a luxury, only affordable by the rich and powerful, because of their intricate engineering. At some point the wristwatch industry re-embraced its gilded past after it was almost wiped out by the proliferation of digital watches, touting a return to tradition and craftsmanship.

Books might take a similar path, though masterpieces like Dave Eggers' artsy edition of The Eyes & The Impossible may never leave the house with their masters for a long flight with nothing to read. That's one possible path, though one also has hopes that paper books will remain viable within one's lifetime. And diehard bookworms can find succour in that, among other benefits, one retains more reading from physical books rather than digital copies on screen.

I can't bring myself to bid adieu to physical books and bookstores within my lifetime. They've been part of my life for so long, even as I have and will say goodbye to other things and people. I feel somehow, like in the US, indie bookstores that are small, cosy and offer more personalised service, will become more the norm than emporium-sized mega bookstores that have diluted their brands by offering more non-book items. Air-fryers in a Popular outlet? Alamak! And not a recipe book to go with them.

The meditative experience of walking along and perusing shelf after shelf of books will probably overcome our attachment to digital media, likewise the lure of finding the unexpected among rows and rows of tomes. Each book is like a treasure chest of words, forming images, vistas, and lived experiences – and one is never sure whether it's a keeper until it is read, cover to cover. And one eventually has to venture beyond the four walls of one's room, cosy as it may be.

So yes, I believe that books and bookstores have a future, even as machines evolve – or are made to – become closer to us. Even if books eventually retreat into private spaces beyond public reach, as in days of old, at least they will be there, waiting for their day in the sun again.

Romantic, much? Perhaps. Some bookworms tend to be hopelessly so.

Fundamentally Frightening

What is the link between the docuseries Shiny Happy People and the book-banning movement in the United States?

The series is about the Duggar family, the star of a TLC channel reality-TV series 19 Kids and Counting (19 being the latest count before the show's cancellation; the number changed as a new child is born). They're devout Independent Baptists, and have links to the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) and the Advanced Training Institute (ATI), both founded by American Christian minister, speaker, and writer Bill Gothard.

Writing in Book Riot, Kelly Jensen describes the IBLP as "one of the most dangerous Christian fundamentalist movements" in the United States, and that the homeschool curriculum the IBLP developed via the ATI "showcases the talking points being spewed by right-wing bigots bent on banning books." Also...

[Bill] Gothard’s teachings note that women remain subservient to men, that children be subservient to their parents, and that physical punishment is not only acceptable but expected in order to train obedience. These are but the tip of the iceberg.

I was reminded of this article after reading about some politician reportedly stating that "Western understanding on human rights concepts should not be accepted in Malaysia as its proponents are believers in Darwin’s theory of evolution, which goes against Islamic theories on creationism."

Local religious fundamentalists share a fair bit with their counterparts in the West. Like the Duggars, not a few parents also eschew family planning and believe that G*d alone dictates how many children they'll have. So one shouldn't be surprised that they don't subscribe to Darwin's theory of evolution. The Malay edition of The Origin of Species is banned here.

Perhaps suspicious of the curriculum in US schools, some Christian fundamentalist parents homeschool their offspring, often using curricula fashioned by organisations such as Gothard's ATI. Jensen highlights an example of what it contains...

...Take for example the “Christian Mom” who decided that her kids could no longer watch Ms. Rachel, a YouTube star whose show for toddlers teaches music, colors, shapes, and more. Why did she have a problem with such a straightforward show?

She and her family do not believe in dinosaurs and they do not believe in pronouns (Ms. Rachel has a regularly appearing and deeply beloved guest on the show, Jules, who uses they/them pronouns).

Jensen goes on to state that "Homeschool programs like these promote isolation, promote dependence on white male authority figures, and create such a culture of fear that indoctrinates do not speak up for fear of retaliation and excommunication." Who the heck benefits from the creation of such a society?

Eventually, this sort of fundametalism will bleed into other aspects of people's lives. The US abortion fight is the result of this encroachment, as is the ban on alcohol sales in coffee shops, supermarkets and convenience stores here, plus the imposition of a "modest" dress code in some public places.

Not only are book bans here "archaic", as reportedly described by the Penang Institute, but ineffective and seemingly arbitrary. Ban something and everyone rushes out to get a copy to see what the fuss is about. There is no deep, honest, mature and meaningful engagement with or discussion of the material.

We're losing the ability to think for ourselves because people in power cannot trust us to come to proper conclusions – or conclusions they want us to reach? – about what we see, hear, or encounter, so they're deciding that for us. Could there be something else other than an authoritarian bent behind this impulse?

Are some of the ways we react to things also to blame, especially with how we consume media like fast food and junk food: obsessively, with little pause and little heed for our health? Or how we argue the talking points about certain topics?

Regardless, trust is a two-way street, and there can be no way to move forward if bad-faith actors dictate what or who we should and should not read, listen to, watch, consume, or be offended by.

Book Marks: Hold That Ban, Cancelling Cancel Culture

As the book-banning movement marches on in the United States, the state of Illinois is putting a stop to such efforts. In a press release, Governor J.B. Pritzker said, "Young people shouldn’t be kept from learning about the realities of our world; I want them to become critical thinkers, exposed to ideas that they disagree with, proud of what our nation has overcome, and thoughtful about what comes next. Everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in the books they read, the art they see, the history they learn."

So far, it's only one state, but I hope more will follow suit. The movement to control what gets read in schools, libraries and everywhere else is dangerous overreaching by elements out to impose a "cruel, rigid, unforgiving and smugly self-righteous" (David Eddings was on the money about religious demagogues) doctrine everywhere, not just the US. If people stopped thinking for themselves, some smart alecks will step in and do our thinking for us, and that's the last thing we need.

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Has cancel culture gone too far?

Elizabeth Gilbert was forced to shelve her new novel, set in Russia, after it was review-bombed by people protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There has been some pushback to this, in favour of Gilbert; her book does not appear to be pro-Russian propaganda, and I personally deplore the tactic employed against it because most review-bombers never read the book they attack.

Some may feel the urge to strike back at an oppressor, but projecting all that is bad about a rogue nation onto a piece of literature and then smashing it is pointless. Have review-bombs ever stopped a war, ended oppression? The power and reach seemingly granted by social media has made us lose all sense of proportion. And equating writing about Russia to tacit support for its policies is a bit of a stretch.

Bestselling author Richard North Patterson, meanwhile, can't get New York publishers to take on Trial, a legal thriller focusing on racism, Black voter suppression, and an interracial love affair in America set in 2022. If I read correctly, he was told that as a white male author, the story was probably not his to write.

While there has been debate over whether white authors should even attempt writing the stuff Patterson did in Trial when BIPOC voices are being suppressed, is it fair to excessively gatekeep or pigeonhole authors by race and what they should and should not write about? And even if there have been white authors who fumbled when writing about other cultures and lives, surely some of them do get it (mostly) right.

If an author is found to have not treated their subjects well in their book, then let the piling-on begin. Otherwise, why kill a book before it even has a chance to be read and judged?

Knowing Myself (Again)

Though things have started changing career-wise, I seem to be stuck in the same existential rut I descended into when I started having sleeping troubles about six years ago. I can't muster the same energy and vibe for work. I've had to rely on dictionaries and thesauruses more. I look at my old work and it looks like someone else wrote it.

Nor do I feel the security and comfort of belonging to a certain tribe. I've ghosted almost all of the connections I made during my forays into writing and publishing while I sorted myself out, and I don't miss the vibe any more. I didn't feel a thing when people recounted their time at a recent literary festival I used to attend.

Divorcing the alienation from the world of letters and the lingering resentment from a failed relationship is hard. Perhaps it's because they're linked. Did I want to write because I wanted to or because I was dragged into it? Instead of a slow, gradual surgical removal, I abruptly ripped out that part of my life in rage. It hurt bad, healed ugly, and evoked phantom pains when I encountered certain triggers. Even now, those pains still lurk beneath the surface.

Whenever these feelings emerge, I remind myself that joy and despair take their turns in life and nothing is constant, so there's no point resenting others for having what I don't have. The things they have come with other things, which I am not yet prepared to shoulder or accommodate. I may not know what I want to be now, but I can distract myself with tiny side projects. Until then, I'll grit my teeth, bear it out and work on those projects, whatever they may be. Seen that way, my world shrinking may not be such a bad thing after all.

An epiphany while watching Accented Cinema's take on why China cared "so much" about Kung Fu Panda slapped me like the thrashing tail of a trout: "Kung Fu Panda loves China more than China loves itself." AC believes that the first KFP film is essentially an American love letter to Chinese culture; though some parts are not culturally accurate, it's an homage so heartfelt that Chinese started asking themselves why they couldn't make something similar.

Perhaps it's that outside-looking-in thing. We seldom recognise our own strengths and unique selling points because we internalise so much of ourselves that it's become second nature, only standing out when seen by others, under certain circumstances. That might be why many creators seek validation from others on social media. Over time, some eventually get addicted to the feedback and adulation – and are devastated when it all comes crashing down.

(Also, China takes itself way too seriously and has too much pride to ever do stuff like KFP, which also pokes fun at itself. They should really lighten up.)

Maybe I stopped writing because I (also) got tired of wondering whether my writing is worth this much or that price. And constantly asking "is it good enough" or "did I get this right" after hitting "Send" can be nerve-wracking. I don't think that will ever change.

I understand better now how self-love requires learning to accept your limits and recognising your strengths, then build upon the latter to mitigate your shortcomings. The process feels arduous because it is. Introspection involves scouring the familiar for the rare, like trying to spot the gem among rows of shops in the neighbourhood you barely glance at usually. Fine-tune your senses and what you'd notice afterwards might surprise you.

Once this becomes natural, you (probably) don't need anyone to boost your morale, but let your inner circle kick you in the butt should you start becoming an asshole. As AC pointed out, China's current animation boom is proof that the nation is learning to love itself Dreamworks-style, so you can, too. "There's no secret ingredient. It's just you."

So I'm starting to write again, and though listicles almost every week with an occasional post in between isn't what some call progress, it's a whole lot better than leaving massive, yawning gaps in the blog publishing schedule. What's important is to "show up", as dictated by the author of the book, Atomic Habits.

And showing up every week has borne fruit. Writing these days is much easier than it was for the past three to four years, even if there was no pandemic. For a long time, I wondered whether anything was worth writing about any more. No longer. So I'm keeping my listicles; reading up for them has helped me find things to write about, and several bullet points eventually became full-fledged posts.

To think, the answer to my writing block was the thing I used to do without too much thought, to keep the blog from stagnating.

Returning to reviews, albeit on a personal level, might take a little longer. But thanks to a few new books, I can start reading without being (too) critical again. It'll be an expensive hobby now that books cost more, and I can't cover the additional costs, but I'd like to think I'm investing in myself.

Man, I'd like things to stay this way for a while longer.

Book Marks: More Book Ban Absurdity, Etc.

In the rush to codify laws to win the culture wars, some lawmakers seemed to have overlooked how those laws could be turned on books they probably don't want to ban. CBS News reports that...

A suburban school district in Utah has banned the Bible in elementary and middle schools after a parent frustrated by efforts to ban materials from schools argued that some Bible verses were too vulgar or violent for younger children. And the Book of Mormon could be next.

Online, some have argued that the Bible would be ensnared by the book-blocking rules because of the "vulgar or violent" content. After all, according to CBS, "The Bible has long found itself on the American Library Association's list of most challenged books and was temporarily pulled off shelves last year in school districts in Texas and Missouri."

What's funny about this is laid out in the CBS report, which adds that "...the district doesn't differentiate between requests to review books and doesn't consider whether complaints may be submitted as satire."

It's probably safe to say that many of the rationales for banning the targeted titles rest on shaky ground. And what happens when stories about minorities, by minorities, are hushed up by book bans and possibly racist gatekeeping? Awful things written and said about them – by people from a newly anointed anti-government extremist organisation, for instance – invariably ooze into the gaps left behind.

"Books are windows into the ordinary," writes Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman in TIME. "We read them to see ourselves, to comprehend our lived reality, and sometimes to envision something better. But, as has always been the case, imagination is a privilege, popular narratives often only reflect the few, and any increase in representation is, more often than not, met with backlash."

Citing the targeting of The Hill We Climb by the book-ban horde and the backlash against this year's The Little Mermaid, Opoku-Agyeman's article is a rallying cry for those championing for more minority representation in publishing.

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Never thought I'd read about books being classified as an "affordable diversion". Of course, this is happening in Britain, where Brexit continues to reap its toll on the economy, and only cites annual sales data from only one publisher, Bloomsbury. But "affordable" as compared to what? Streaming services, apparently. From Yahoo! Finance...

“A paperback is much cheaper than even a one-month subscription to many services,” Bloomsbury CEO Nigel Newton said, the Financial Times reported Wednesday, comparing the price of a book to a Netflix Premium subscription worth $19.99 a month.

Sounds like good news for book publishing, but over here, thanks to a weak ringgit and hikes in prices all along the book supply chain, books are becoming less affordable. The price range for some new trade paperbacks are now in the RM80s and RM90s. And prices might still go up. In other news:

• After reading this article on award-winning Bangladeshi-Irish YA author Adiba Jaigirdar, I'm a) at a loss for words for a preamble, and b) very curious about her books. To think, her writing career apparently started with a henna tube.
• What's bad? Plagiarising an award-winning cookbook. Even worse? When the author is a lawyer. "Rachael Issy", or whoever they really are, had better buckle up for a bumpy ride.
• Another day, another example of why it's a bad idea for authors to go after book reviewers. I mean, grief over a four-star review because they said the ending was "kind of predictable"? Maybe the word rubbed them a bit raw because the book was based on their life story, but still.
• The war in Ukraine is arguably affecting shipping, food prices, etc., but demand for "escapist literature"? English-language authors of crime, romance and fantasy novels are getting offers from Russia to translate and distribute their works there, but the issue is a bit more complicated than simply not making Russian money. Not all Russians support the war and they need to make a living. But in Russia, apart from "foreign-authored escapism", the Guardian also reports "there was also a big appetite for self-help books and for historical works about fascist Germany." Hmm.
• "We all know the feeling of reading a book that touches us at our core. A book that somehow knows us intimately and takes us on a journey to understand ourselves more deeply. Especially for queer people, books can not only show us what’s possible, but they can also lead to revelations." At Literary Hub, Samantha Paige Rosen asks ten queer debut authors "to highlight a book that enhanced their understanding of their queerness, writing craft, or both."
• The Edge Media Group chairman, Tan Sri Tong Kooi Ong, defamed by the author of Daim Zainuddin: Malaysia’s Revolutionary and Troubleshooter? No mention of what the defamatory statements were, but the High Court has ordered the author, Michael Backman, to pay a total of RM1.2 million in damages.
• "Publishing a book is often a cathartic experience for writers. It allows them to share their deepest and most heartfelt thoughts with the world. It's a chance to prove their critics wrong and create something meaningful too. ... However, for some writers, that initial euphoria can sour." Here are ten books that were written and later renounced by their authors.
• A profile of Richard Scarry, children’s book author and illustrator. Reminded of my old, old copy of his Busy, Busy World, which I defaced in my childish ignorance and is now lost to time.

Kindness At Work

In difficult times, recordings of Ajahn Brahm's talks have been a source of comfort. As he tends to repeat his stories, the trick is to not listen to too many a week, and block off other major distractions while tuning in. He was my drive-home listening for a spell.

One of his tales was about a monk(?) who was "kind" to an automated teller machine, wishing it "good day", and such. Apparently, the ATM "repaid" the kindness by spitting out a twenty-euro bill when the monk passed by.

Of course machines can't reciprocate human gestures. The monk's daily exercises in kindness were more of a reminder to himself to be kind, that even if one's day had been heck, there are things to be grateful for and be kind about.

But stories like this feed into the myth of Buddhism being more than just a philosophy about suffering and the end of suffering, fodder for adherents of the law of attraction and all that.

Nevertheless, I started practising that form of kindness with the car. Nothing special, just a few pats on a headlight when arriving at work or arriving home. On occasion, I do talk to it when nobody's looking, so don't call a shrink on me. I'm already seeing one.

I've been "kind" to the car for a few months and didn't expect anything to happen. But something did, yesterday evening, when I stopped to pump petrol and inflate my tyres. One of them had been repeatedly punctured over a few months and the others weren't looking well either, even though the treads seemed okay.

The problem tyre, located on the driver side up front, sported a cavity that wouldn't look out of place in a bad tooth. Something seemed to have punctured it (again) and a crack had expanded from the entry point.

Going to sleep that night was a little harder than usual. Imagine the catastrophe if that cavity had widened, weakening the tyre till breaking point. I've seen a tyre blow out of a lorry and it was terrifying.

So I have a lot to be grateful for today, even though it kind of sucked: more work poured in, and I already have a near-full plate. For one, the errant tyre, plus its friends, held out until I reached a nearby tyre shop this morning.

"Ye g*ds, how long has it been since you changed your tyres?" the tyre shop foreman exclaimed. "These guys are way past their expiry dates."

So it seems the date of expiry or manufacture was stamped on each tyre, though I couldn't read where. The foreman said something about "2014", so I assumed it was the manufacture date. Going by that, my last tyre change should have been in 2019, yet here I was.

I had been driving up and down highways with potentially explosive tyres for about four years.

I had all the tyres replaced, as the foreman recommended. I went for the cheaper ones they had but if they were substandard the shop wouldn't stock them – not when lives and property are on the line, right? They offered to do the tyre alignment next time, as I was in a bit of a hurry. The bill felt hot and heavy in my wallet but they were nice, so I agreed.

Tyre problems can remain hidden, especially parts that touch the ground where you can't see. What were the chances of that errant tyre showing off that cavity on that day, at that time, when I wanted to pump air into it?

So, yes, for the law-of-attraction crowd and Ajahn Brahm listeners, maybe the car was trying to warn me. PROBLEM. FIX. NOW.

What it's really about is not stressing (too much) about things that have already happened and work on the issue at hand when you can. Worrying about the hole in my tyre wasn't going to help, so I chilled and waited till morning when the tyre shops opened. Be grateful things got fixed.

I've heard many stories from the British-born Buddhist abbot, some of which were told to him, but never have I imagined I'd be living an episode of his tales.

Ugly

Reading about book vandalism at Tsutaya Books at Pavilion Bukit Jalil is saddening – and enraging. Since opening, the outlet has had to set aside "mountains of books have been damaged, intentionally - with pages ripped out, covers torn, children’s pop-up books that no longer 'pop-up'." This is beyond the occasional paper cup, plastic bottle or, worse, left on bookshelves.

As a result, the outlet has begun shrink-wrapping its books, and rightly so. Books displayed on the shelves belong to the store and they have the right to protect them for the sake of its customers who'd prefer getting their hands on pristine goods.

When in bookstores and libraries, we should strive to ensure unwrapped copies we browse or flip through are returned to their original places on a shelf in good condition. We don't do as we please in other people's homes, even if invited to do so, so why this callous treatment of a shop's merchandise?

What compels a right-minded person to damage covers and rip out pages from books, especially new ones? In Kuala Lumpur, a World Book Capital some more. Where does this impunity come from? And why do such behaviours persist?

One is tempted to link this behaviour to the example shown by certain figures in recent years, that it's fine to flout a few rules if you have connections, or if you don't get caught. If the higher-ups can get away with it, some might argue, why can't they? "Ah-lah, it's JUST a BOOK. They have insurance wat."

Were errant children involved? Because I can't wrap my head around the thought of an adult knowingly vandalising new books in this manner, then putting the item back on the shelf and pretend nothing ever happened. If parents are covering for their kids, congrats, they've just taught their children to hush up misdemeanours instead of owning up to them.

And insurance claims, if any, for damaged merchandise is a net loss to the outlet and customers who want it. I doubt any insurance company would accommodate a business plagued by vandals for too long.

A reading culture goes beyond buying and reading lots of books. It's also about being aware of what goes into the production of one, knowledge of the publishing ecosystem, attitudes towards book publishing and bookselling institutions, and how each printed tome is treated.

Such acts have further tarnished our reputation. When did we start becoming such asses? It's not the first time a bookstore was subjected to average Malaysian whims. And we're also known for other examples of awful behaviour.

Tsutaya is Japan's largest bookstore chain, and its opening at Pavilion Bukit Jalil was so hyped. People were lining up to get in on opening day. And yet, this happened. Will other overseas firms have to consider "the ugly Malaysian" a risk of doing business in Malaysia?

If a business's trust in its customers is betrayed, then the business has the right to limit what patrons can do within its premises until that trust is earned again. Tsutaya Bukit Jalil expressed hope that the cling film will come off their books someday. That day might be a long way off.