Goodbye books, hello stories

According to The Asia Pacific Writers and Translators Association (APWTA), Asians spend twice as many hours reading as Westerners.  But Asians don’t just read traditional printed books. The story Deep Love was a hit in Japan in 2003, with each chapter delivered to mobile phones. The Ghost Blows Out The Candle attracted six million readers in China as computer-delivered text episodes in 2006. When it comes to graphic novels, agents in Asia report that they are more likely to strike deals for digital versions, than for printed.

What does this move to digital and mobile platforms mean for the future of the book?

“As digital delivery systems replace traditional ones, the old rules about standard lengths, structures, formats and categories make no sense,” says APWTA chairman, Nury Vittachi. 

Since the borders of the book can no longer be patrolled in the traditional way, APWTA is launching a new writing prize, The World Readers' Award.

The World Readers' Award is not intended for books, but for stories, defined by the organizers as “sustained acts of creative imagination”.

           

Entries will not be limited either to highbrow literature, or even to fiction. The new prize will be offered simply for “the best read of the year”, including narrative non-fiction.

While an author needs a US passport to be eligible for the Pulitzer, and a work must be published in the UK to be eligible for the Man Booker, judges of the new prize won’t consider an author’s nationality at all, and with this award's emphasis on stories and digital, not books and print, constraints on place of publication are irrelevant.

Instead of geographically-based entry requirements, a broad cultural theme, such as East meets West, or the Indian subcontinent, or the Chinese diaspora will be set for each contest. The idea is to nudge authors away from stock characters and locations, such as those found in political thrillers set in the US, or cosy crime novels set in the UK, to social and physical settings in Asia, where the majority of the world’s readers live. The exact theme for 2014 is currently under discussion and will be announced shortly.

For 2014, entries must be in English. But APWTA wants to grow the award to include Asian languages eventually.

Two prizes will be awarded each year, one for the best published work, and one for the best unpublished text. Penguin Random House has signed up as a publishing partner through its North Asian operation, and winning entrants will be offered a traditional publishing contract.

Judges are to be so-called ordinary readers - whoever they are - not academics, literary journalists, novelists or anybody else with a professional interest in story telling.  Judges for the award for published work will be recruited through the Internet. For the award for unpublished work, APWTA will appoint a diverse panel of judges, drawn from people who read at least 30 books per year.

The distinction between published and unpublished work begs the question: how do you distinguish them in the digital age?  Says Nury Vittachi: “We’re working with the Penguin North Asia office to see where that line will be. We’re trying to encourage fresh writing, rather than have people send in their old, self-published books which have not been successful. But on the other hand, if a text has been seen by only by a small number of people, it could count as unpublished, for practical reasons.”

Writers in Asia are enthusiastic. Mariko Nagai, in Tokyo, says: “This new award subverts the notion of the West, subverts how an award is chosen, and most importantly, it questions the idea of who a writer is, and what makes a book a book.”

           

Mumbai poet Menka Shivdasani says: “An award such as this one will act as a catalyst to give literature from Asia the attention it deserves.”

APWTA will be publishing details of how to enter before the end of the year.  Further information at: http://apwriters.org/home/world-readers-award/  Join APWTA at www.apwriters.org

Festival Book Launches

As discussed in the last two posts, both Hong Kong and Singapore hosted literary festivals running Nov 1- Nov 10.  In each city, local publishers took the chance to launch new books. Here's my selection of three interesting-looking titles from each festival.

Launched at The Singapore Writers Festival

Princess Play / Barbara Ismail / published by Monsoon:

New Yorker Barbara Imail spent several years in Kelantan, Malaysia in the 1970s and 1980s, living in Kg Dusun and Pengkalan Cepa, studying Wayang Siam (Malay shadow puppetry) in the Kelantan dialect. The first book in her Kain Songket Mysteries series, Shadow Play, follows the middle-aged sleuth Mak Cik Maryam as she investigates a murder in Kelantan. In this second mystery, Princess Play, Mak Cik Maryam unravels a knot of family secrets, madness, and familiar spirits to solve the murder of a market woman.

The Last Lesson Of Mrs De Souza / Cyril Wong / published by Epigram

Cyril Wong is the Singapore Literature Prize-winning author of several poetry collections. The Last Lesson Of Mrs De Souza is his first novel. After a long career of teaching secondary school boys, this is Mrs De Souza's final lesson before retiring - and one that turns into a confession about a former student who overturned the way she saw herself as a teacher, and changed her life forever. 

Island of Silence / Su Wei-chen, translated by Jeremy Tiang / published by Ethos Books

Taiwanese Su Wei-chen is a professor of Chinese literature at National Cheng Kung University. This is the first English translation of her modern classic, originally published as 沈默之島 in 1994. In Island of Silence Chen-mian, a young woman with a troubled background, can’t bear the reality of her life, and creates an idealised fantasy existence: "the other Chen-mian" is a happily-married woman with a stable family. Chen-mian is obsessed with islands. She travels to Hong Kong, Bali and Singapore, trying to find a secure hiding place. The lives of the two Chen-mians become more surreal and intertwined, and it becomes difficult to tell where reality ends and fantasy begins. 


Launched at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival


Hong Kong’s Back Yard: A Guide to the Pearl River Delta / Tom Bird / published by Make Do Publishing

Despite the integration of Hong Kong and the cities of the Pearl River Delta (PRD), the PRD remains mysterious to many, even in Hong Kong. The new travel guide Hong Kong’s Back Yard: A Guide to the Pearl River Delta introduces some of the hidden gems of the PRD: from surfer beaches, to artists’ villages, Ming dynasty fortresses to ancestral temples, hiking trails to archipelagos of hidden islands, and much more. It is suitable both for locals and for visitors to Hong Kong with a day or two to spare for exploration.

Vivid Hong Kong / Palani Mohan / Asia One Books

Vivid Hong Kong is a colourful look at daily life in Hong Kong, as captured on an iPhone camera. Photographer Palani Mohan roamed the streets in all weathers and seasons to compile his personal take on the city. By forgoing traditional photographic equipment, Mohan was able to make his way through the crowds unobtrusively, capturing the everyday, fleeting moments that define the soul of Hong Kong in their purest state and their most evocative and dream-like form.

In The Shadow Of The Noonday Gun / Mike Smith / Self-published

In his first book, former policeman Mike Smith unveils Hong Kong's seedy past under colonial rule, by recounting true tales of corruption and sex, including some gathered from the gambling syndicates typical of the less than salubrious side of Hong Kong. This is Hong Kong noir at its noir-est!

Hong Kong International Literary Festival

As noted in the last post, the Singapore Writers Festival is currently running at venues across Singapore, and, in an embarrassment of riches, the Hong Kong International Literary Festival is happening over the exact same dates, Nov 1 - Nov 10.  If you're in Hong Kong see the website for venues and ticketing information.  

It seems wilfully aggressive of the two cities to organise their Festivals to compete, but Paul Tam, general manager of Hong Kong International Literary Festival, told me the clash was purely coincidental and that more coordination will take place between Hong Kong and Singapore before dates are set for the Festivals next year.

As you'd expect authors with a connection to China have a big presence in Hong Kong. Inevitably, I suppose, Jung Chang, who is also appearing in Singapore, is attending to promote her latest offering Empress Dowager Cixi.  

Guo Xiaolu, a controversial cultural figure, has found success as both a novelist and as a film-maker. She has published seven novels, including A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, and she is known for blending her heritage of ancient Chinese folk legends with a fresh take on contemporary living. Guo will discuss her forthcoming novel, I am China, a love story for modern times, and a vibrantly funny portrayal of multicultural society - it has already received considerable attention in the UK. I am China moves between an immigrants' detention centre in England, where exiled Chinese musician Jian is awaiting an unknown fate, to the seedy bars of small-town America, where Jian's girlfriend Mu has fetched up. Meanwhile, in the lively streets of East London, translator Iona Kirkpatrick is feeling adrift in her life. As Iona deciphers Jian's and Mu’s ink-smudged letters and diary entries she unravels their poignant story to a tragic and powerful end. 

If you prefer comfort reading, food writer and Beijing cookery school owner, Jen Lin-Liu will discuss her love letter to noodles, On the Noodle Road: from Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta. From China to Kyrgyzstan, and from Iran to Turkey to Rome, Jen Lin-Liu trots around the globe to immerse herself in the rich and disparate cultures of the noodle - along the way she discovers truths about commitment, independence and love.  

Of other events, the panel discussion Asia in Focus looks particularly interesting. Those setting up shop as professional writers in Asia often have to grapple with problems about how to build a rewarding - and rewarded - career in this part of the world. How can you make a decent living?  Where are the agents and publishers? What amount of effort will it take to reach an international readership? Should you stay at home or seek better writing fortunes elsewhere?

Questions such as these will be discussed by an international panel of authors who have all grappled with decisions impacted by cultural, economic, and geographical considerations. Panellists are: Andrew Lam (US/Vietnam), Jason Ng (Hong Kong), Alice Pung (Australia), Ma Jian (UK/China), Sharmistha Mohanty (India),and Glen Duncan (UK)

The Hong Kong Festival has not forgotten its local authors.  Asia in Focus is moderated by Xu Xi, a Chinese-Indonesian native of the city and the author of nine books of fiction and essays - in 2007 her novel Habit of a Foreign Sky was a finalist for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize. She is also editor or co-editor of three anthologies of Hong Kong writing in English; a fourth anthology of new Hong Kong short stories, The Queen of Statue Square & Other Stories, co-edited with Marshall Moore, is forthcoming from CCC Press, Nottingham, UK. She is currently Writer-in-Residence at City University of Hong Kong’s Department of English, where she established and directs Asia’s first international low-residency MFA in creative writing. 

  

Singapore Writers Festival

The 2013 Singapore Writers Festival, SWF, is running from now until November 10 at venues across central Singapore - if you're in the City see the website for venues and ticketing information. 

SWF includes Mandarin, Tamil and Malay programmes, as well as programmes in English. Alliance Francais and Institut Francais have even supported a session in French with Chinese readings, in which Nobel prize-winning holder of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Gao Xingjian, a naturalised French citizen, will read from his seminal works, and demonstrate how different cultures, languages and art forms have influenced his life.

Of the English language events the In Conversation With and Meet The Author sessions are sure to be popular.

In Conversation With sees authors pairing up for informal debate. Two highlights with strong Asian interest are Romesh Gunesekera in conversation with Fatima Bhutto, and Carol Ann Duffy in conversation with Edwin Thumboo.

Booker Prize finalist Romesh Gunesekera and Fatima Bhutto, who was born in Kabul, grew up in Damascus, and lives in Karachi, will share their views on the fraught notion of home:  its re-imagining through fiction, and ways of negotiating its idealised vision in the fractured, complex reality that is today's mobile world of immigrants, emigrants, refugees, and exiles - I assume even the lucky emigrants, expats? Meanwhile, the UK’s Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, and Singapore’s literary pioneer and Cultural Medallion recipient, poet Edwin Thumboo, will read and discuss their poems.

Fatima Bhutto and Carol Ann Duffy will also participate in Meet The Author sessions.  Fatima Bhutto will read from her debut novel The Shadow of the Crescent Moon, which chronicles the lives of five young people trying to live and love in a world on fire. The novel begins and ends one Friday morning in Mir Ali, a small town in Pakistan's Tribal Areas close to the Afghan border. Three brothers meet for breakfast. Soon after, the eldest, recently returned from America, hails a taxi to the local mosque. The second, a doctor, goes to check in at his hospital. His troubled wife does not join the family that morning. No one knows where Mina goes these days. And the youngest, the idealist, leaves for town on a motorbike. Seated behind him is a beautiful, fragile girl whose life and thoughts are overwhelmed by the war that has enveloped the place of her birth. Three hours later their day will end in devastating circumstances…

More established Asian authors attending include Jung Chang, who will discuss her new book Empress Dowager Cixi: The concubine who launched modern China, a revisionist take on the dramatic, epic biography of the unusual woman who ruled China for 50 years, from concubine to Empress, overturning centuries of traditions and formalities to bring China into the modern world. Jung Chang will discuss such questions as What is the difference between the vision of an emperor, a dictator and a popularly elected leader? And Do all men and women in power have the same idea of Utopia?  

As well as the author events, SWF also includes a host of book launches, especially from local publishers such as Epigram and Monsoon, and a  variety of workshops for as yet unpublished writers, across a variety of genres from comics and manga, to poetry, to memoir, to novels.

500 Words From Judy Chapman

500 Words From...is a series of guest posts from authors.  Here, Judy Chapman talks about her newly published first novel, My Singapore Lover - a compelling story of love and infidelity between a Western woman and her Chinese lover, set in contemporary Singapore.   

Australian-born Judy Chapman is the former editor of Spa Asia magazine, an established journalist writing for Australian and Asian publications, and the author of four best-selling books on spas and aromatherapy. She has lived and worked all over Asia, in Bali, Malaysia, India, and Singapore.  In My Singapore Lover she writes about finding soul and spirituality in unexpected places, and having the courage to follow the truth wherever that may lead.

So: 500 words from Judy Chapman...

My motivation for writing this story was to show a young woman’s experience working within a corporate hierarchy and her struggle between  external pleasures and temptations and listening to her inner voice. It can be challenging to have the courage to say no and walk away from situations – work, relationships - and this story is essentially about a girl's growth and journey - and how even though following your truth can often look like a less exciting path in life on the outside, ultimately it is the path that brings us so much fulfilment and inner richness.

I wanted to explore what drives us to make decisions against our inner truth (and we all know what this is but so often we go against that feeling inside of ourselves). In the case of Sara, the young woman at the centre of my novel, it was obviously growing up without a father figure that motivated her to seek success in life and surround herself with strong masculine characters when that was not what she truly desired.

The love affair Sara has with a married man may be a challenging subject for many readers. Even though the characters do in their own ways redeem themselves, I wanted to present the infidelity in a different light - to show that sometimes what is traditionally considered to be wrong can be sacred and what is expected of us such as career and success can feel corrupt. 

My own experience of living and working in South East Asia for the last decade provided me with a fantastic backdrop and Singapore is a major character in this story. I felt passionate about showing the beauty, culture, festivities, heat and weather of this diverse city. 

As my day job involves setting up spas in luxury hotels I was inspired about telling the story mostly from inside a hotel suite as I have personally spent a lot of time living and working out of hotel suites around the world so it was an easy backdrop for me to write about.

The journey of actually writing this novel has been incredible. I wrote the first draft in three weeks (in a hotel, of course) and then spent a year refining, culling, editing, drafting. The publishing deal with Monsoon Books was definitely a dream come true, as I had been wanting to write a novel since I was eight years old when I experienced a moment and knew in my heart that writing was what I wanted to do with my life. Whilst I have published four non-fiction books and written for magazines for many years, it has taken me a long time to realise a novel. Like most of us I have been on many detours, but of course they have provided excellent material for my writing.

My goal is for readers to feel and connect with the theme of having the courage to follow your own intuition and if readers do connect with this then I will be so proud as for me this is the most important theme in My Singapore Lover. 

Book Club: Golden Parasol, and November's pick

Since this a book club, I assume you've read October's pick, Golden Parasol: a Daughter's Memoir of Burma, by Wendy Law-Yone, so I'm not going to give a plot summary. If you need one see here for details from the publisher, Chatto & Windus. 

Nobody likes pigeon holes or labels, and I thought this book was pleasingly hard to categorise.  Yes, as the sub-title suggests, it's a daughter's memoir of Burma, but it's many other memoirs as well: a woman's memoir of her childhood; a daughter's memoir of her parents; a descendant's memoir of her ancestors; a sibling's memoir of her siblings; a writer's memoir of a newspaper; a meditation on exile; a travelogue; a primer on the history of Burma - which in this book always is called Burma, except in the prologue, where the name Myanmar is acknowledged.  

Burma is not the only nation in this book, the other is The Nation, the English-language newspaper edited by Wendy Law-Yone's brave, swashbuckling father - when he died, prior to the recent changes in Burma / Myanmar, his obituary in the New York Times hailed him as: "the first independent editor of free, post-war Burma, and also, to date, the last."

The Nation loomed large in Wendy Law-Yone's childhood: "The Nation was my nursery primer. It taught me to read, and probably to write. My first sentences were modelled on headlines...years later, when our family was scattered, it struck me as a great shame that nowhere in any of our combined mementoes of Burma was there a single issue of The Nation. I was missing, I felt, some essential proof of identity, as basic as a birth certificate. It would take many more years to recover it."

Is it far fetched to think that Golden Parasol is Wendy Law-Yone's sustained search for proof of her own identity? Or, on the other hand, is the author's search for his or her own identity so obviously the aim of any memoir it's barely worth mentioning it - the equivalent of remarking in a tone suggesting you think you're about to share a great insight, that the point of an advert for tins of beans is to sell tins of beans?   

I don't know.  What do you think?  

Most people who've got in touch seem to have enjoyed the personal aspects of Golden Parasol: "I liked the portrait of the author's mother." Said Claire, from Singapore, "She seems to have been a very strong character, and I thought the final chapter, Mum, was very moving."

I too was moved by the final chapter, where Law-Yone talks of her mother's origins, and also of her mother's death: "The predominant fear of my childhood and much of my adulthood had been a fear of my mother's death. What a relief to see beyond that dread at long last; to imagine, now it had come to pass, the compensations her actual death might bring. Increasingly in her decline she had turned into a fake: imperturbable, unreachable, absent. Surely the death of that impostor would return the mother I knew. Yes, I thought, with a sudden joyless surge of relief, now that she's dead she can come alive again."

I think that passage gives a fair flavour of Law-Yone's style; poetically analytic, her prose is at once both coolly observing, and deeply engaged with its subject matter.  

The only criticisms I've seen of this book concern the political material which both Ree, from Singapore, and also Renu, from Hong Kong, found a little indigestible. "I couldn't keep the Burmese politicians straight". Said Ree. "The sections on the various political factions in Burma were confusing and too long." Said Renu.

I admit that when Law-Yone wrote of her father's political activities, I occasionally felt like I'd stumbled into a Monty Python debate about whether revolutionaries were the Judean People's Front, or the People's Front of Judea, but then I reminded myself of the seriousness of what was at stake in Burma decades back, and also of what is at stake in Myanmar now.  So I told myself if I were getting lost in thickets of unfamiliar names it was my fault: I was being lazy; I ought to pay more attention.

Reading Golden Parasol has left me keen to read Wendy Law-Yone's latest novel, The Road To Wanting. It is not, however, November's book club pick. No, for next month I've chosen A Crowd Of Twisted Things, by Dawn Farnham, published by Monsoon.

In December 1950, the worst riots Singapore had ever seen shut down the town for days, killing 18 people and wounding 173. Racial and religious tension had been simmering for months over the custody battle for wartime waif Maria Hertogh between her Malay-Muslim foster mother and her Dutch-Catholic biological parents.

In May 1950, Eurasian Annie Collins, following this case and filled with hope, returns to Singapore seeking her own lost baby. As the time bomb ticks and Annie unravels the threads of her quest into increasingly dangerous territory, she finds strange recollections intruding, ones that have nothing to do with her own memories of her wartime experiences: disturbing visions and dreams which force her to doubt not just her past life, but her whole idea of who she truly is and even to question the search itself.

Twisted memories, twisted minds, twisted lives, twisted beliefs, the twists of fate and their tangled consequences. A Crowd of Twisted Things is at once a lament for the loss and damage of war, an unravelling mystery and a journey into suppressed memory and the nature of self-delusion.

I'll post discussion of A Crowd Of Twisted Things on Sunday December 1. Please post your comments before then. Happy reading! 

Self-publishing in the Asian market

Asia, with its 4.2 billion inhabitants, has more than 60% of the world population. That is a vast potential book-buying public, though one fragmented by language and culture.   

What does this mean for digital and self-publishing on the continent?  Alice Clark-Platts investigates:

At the recent Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, Nury Vittachi, author of the Feng Shui Detective series, mentioned, in conversation with Sebastian Faulks, the strength of the Asian book market. In terms of population, the size of the US, UK and European book markets pale in comparison to the mass of the Asian market. In India alone the book publishing industry is estimated to be growing at 30% per annum.

What does this mean for publishing and self-publishing in particular? Well, in small markets such as Hong Kong, traditionally considered an English-speaking market, due to economies of scale print copies of a book would need to exceed 2,000 copies to make any economic sense. This is equivalent to roughly 2,000,000 in the US[1]. Clearly, ebooks and self-publishing offer a way in to this valuable market for aspiring authors when publishing houses may refrain from taking on new authors due to economic concerns.

Or consider the emerging market of Indonesia, with its population of over 240 million. Here the market is especially fragmented[2] and so traditional publishing houses may flounder to reach readers, whereas more nimble self-publishers might be able to identify niches, and target them appropriately.

In China, self-publishing websites draw 40% of web user traffic to stories by Chinese writers[3]. Evidence such as this suggests that authors in China have been quicker than those in the West to grasp the importance of reaching out to readers via electronic means.

What about developments such as crowd funding for creative projects? The Asian market has been slow to adopt crowd funding - concerns over public failure and losing face may be at the heart of this reluctance? However it is surely only a matter of time before companies such as Singapore-based Crowdonomic catch on[4].

The diversity of the Asian markets means that conventional publishers cannot be attuned to the vagaries and nuances of each particular market. Here self-publishing can attack – spotting and targeting specific markets for particular genres and interests. For example, 25% of the Indonesian population is made up of children - writers of kids' and young adult fiction may be intrigued by the opportunities presented there. 

Self-publishing gives the author control – not only of the content, style and presentation of their book but, more importantly, with respect to the profits garnered from it. Under traditional publishing contracts, an author may sometimes only receive a 10% share of the spoils.

Companies such as Trafford Publishing in Singapore offer self-publishing services ranging from editorial to marketing. This may help to ease the where do I start? feeling that new authors might have. Equally, self-publishing gurus such as Joanna Penn at www.thecreativepenn.com offer a wealth of articles and information to help an author navigate their path.

This is the first of what is intended to be a regular series of posts on digital and self-publishing in Asia. If you are in the process of self-publishing for Asian markets, or you have a recently self-published book of interest in Asia, or you run a self-publishing company, or you offer editorial services to digital and self-published authors please get in touch with me, either by posting a comment, or by e-mailing asianbooksblog@gmail.com.

Alice Clark-Platts

Notes

[1] Peter Gordon of Hong Kong Chameleon Press, cited in China’s Emerging English Language Book Market, www.publishingperspectives.com, 8 May 2013

[2] Joy Hawley Indonesia’s Sea of Opportunities www.publishingperspectives.com  11 October 2013

[3] www.traffordpublishing.com.sg

[4] Kurt Wagner CNN Money 8 July 2013