Alice On Self-Publishing: 27iD and Rojak

Alice Clark-Platts, who writes our monthly column on self-publishing, also runs The Singapore Writers’ Group (SWG). Here she discusses  SWG’s forthcoming self-published anthology of members’ work, which has the working title Rojak.

Andrew Fiu is the best-selling New Zealand author of Purple Heart, a conventionally-published memoir detailing his Samoan boyhood and how he overcame a chronic heart condition by undergoing six life-threatening open heart surgeries. Today, Andrew is a writer and educator and is planning to climb Mount Kilimanjaro for charity.

Andrew visited Singapore at the end of last year. While here he got in touch with SWG, and he offered to come and give us a talk on writing and facing adversity. Out of that meeting came an introduction to Michele Gray, founder of the Australian design and self-publishing agency 27iD, who offered to help SWG publish a book of short stories.

SWG is a real melting pot of different nationalities, people who have lived in Singapore all of their lives jumbled in with people who have arrived off the plane and come straight along to a meeting - that has happened! A good term for it is rojak – the Malay word for an eclectic mix. Hence we chose our book's working title; the anthology will certainly be rojak-like in its mix of authors, and in its ideal of promoting a global community of writing and expression.

Through her company, Michele has helped over two dozen authors tell their stories. She is an editor, a book designer, a website developer; she sets up an author’s Apple and Kindle accounts and advises them on how to market their eBooks.  Some authors also want a print edition of their book. Michele can work with them both to publish print editions through CreateSpace, a distribution service for independent publishers and self-published authors, and also to market the print edition alongside their eBook on Amazon.

Michele is a huge believer in self-publishing. She told me: “Self-published authors have the same shelf space on Amazon and the iBookstore as Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, etc, but their royalties are better and they no longer have to vanity publish and store boxes of books in their garage.” She pointed out that once an eBook is created  it can be sold over and over again with no on-going printing costs: “Frankly, there’s never been a better playing field for self-published authors – it’s better now even than only five years ago.”

As always in the self-publishing sphere, marketing is crucial. Michele advises her authors to put a marketing plan in place and to use a variety of strategies from blogging to social media to gain a following. She tells them to take small steps at first: “It’s a bit like Goldilocks finding the right bed – not too big, not too small - but eventually they will find their comfort zone.” However,  she reminds her authors there’s a lot of competition out there, and that, like everything else, promoting a book takes time and hard work.

One of Michele’s favourite books is Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, which holds that life is a story and that you can choose your story. Michele is helping twenty authors in the SWG to do that very thing. She helps writers tell their stories and she says she couldn’t ask for a better way to make a living.

Useful links from around the web

You might like to take a look at these useful sites seen elsewhere around the web:

The Creative Penn run by Joanna Penn, hence the spelling - resources to help you write, publish and market your book.

Libiro - a new eBook store exclusive to indie authors. 

Alice's next column will appear on Wednesday 26th March.  If you are a self-published author, or are otherwise involved in self-publishing, and you would like your work to be featured, then please contact asianbooksblog@gmail.com. 

Adelaide Writers' Week

Next weekend over 90 international and local writers will gather to participate in the second annual Adelaide Writers’ Week, with six days of conversation and debate set to take place in the city from this Saturday, March 1, to March 6.

Given Adelaide’s proximity to Asia, Asian writers are lightly represented, although Rabih Alameddine, the Lebanese-American painter and writer, and Rayya Elias, the Syrian-American author, will be talking about the meeting of the West, and West Asia / the Middle East, Jeet Thayil and Jaspreet Singh will be there from India, and Jung Chang and Yang Lian will be attending from China.

From a quick glance at the programme, one highlight looks to be On Travel, on Wednesday March 5, with Sri Lankan-Australian Michelle de Krester and Jaspreet Singh.

In  Michelle de Krester's novel Questions of Travel a young woman escapes Australia only to return, and a young man is forced from Sri Lanka. In Jaspreet Singh's Helium a now middle-aged man returns to India in search of his former professor’s wife. Both novels wrangle with the ideas of home, political consequence, memory, history and betrayal.

I also liked the look of Subcultures, on Thursday March 6, with Jeet Thayil and Australian-Greek Christos Tsiolkas. 

Some of contemporary literature’s most compelling stories are set in twilight worlds – say drug dens, and swimming pools at private schools. Jeet Thayil's acclaimed novel Narcopolis explores opium and heroin addiction on the shabby streets of Mumbai.  Christos Tsiolkas has often exposed the dangerous worlds of the middle class, famously in The Slap, and most recently in his novel Barracuda. 

The many other conversations set to take place will cover topics as varied as the Great Barrier Reef, both World Wars, clean water, the working class, NYC in the 70s, colonial Australia, gold mines, God, politics, apps and the environment.

Laura Kroetsch, Writer's Weeks' director,  said: “This year is all about big books and big ideas - be it in fiction, non-fiction or comics. New to the programme is a day devoted to comic art and illustration. Comics Can Do Anything brings together artists who explore topics as varied as sexual politics, classic literature, immigration, family relations, and of course alien creatures. Other sessions feature some of our most acclaimed and often controversial thinkers for robust conversations about contemporary science, war’s legacies, and the power of the Church.  Not to mention that audiences will enjoy some of today’s most exciting fiction writers as 2014 is without question one of our strongest line ups of novelists to date, including Eleanor Catton, who took last year's Man Booker for her novel The Luminaries.”

Comics Can Do Anything, on Sunday March 2, certainly looks interesting, but given Australia's geographic closeness to Asia, the way Manga  and Anime have been inspirational to illustrators everywhere, the long history of graphic novels in Asia, the vibrancy of graphic novels now coming out of Asia, and the fact that many readers in our region are obsessed with the form it's disappointing - and perhaps surprising? - that none of the featured graphic novelists is Asian.

Twitterers can follow the discussion unfold and join in by using #AdlWW.  Follow @adelwritersweek for more information. See the full list of live-tweeted sessions here.

Korean Cultural Programme At London Book Fair

The London Book Fair (LBF) is an international marketplace for the publishing industry – an event for the negotiation of rights, and the sale and distribution of content across both print and digital formats.  Each year the Fair has a Market Focus. This throws the spotlight on the publishing industry in a given country, and encourages trade between it and the rest of the world. This year LBF, in April, will have South Korea as its Market Focus.

To run alongside the Korea Market Focus, The British Council, in partnership with The Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea), has announced the Korea Cultural Programme. This will feature ten of Korea’s most prominent and exciting writers representing the depth and diversity of contemporary Korean writing across a range of genres and formats. The delegation includes: Hwang Sok-yong, Vietnam War veteran, political dissident and novelist whose best known work is The Guest; Yi Mun-yol, known for his award winning novel, Our Twisted Hero; Kyung-sook Shin, the first Korean, and the first woman, to win the Man Asian Literary Prize for her novel Please Look After Mother; Kim Hyesoon, one of Korea’s most distinguished poets; Yoon Tae-ho, ground-breaking webtoonist; Hwang Sun-mi, author of the bestselling children’s book, The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly.

These writers will participate in a variety of events, some open to the public. They will explore themes including the literary imagination, change in Korean society, the role of the family in Korean literature, digital innovation in literature and Korean literary traditions.

In addition to the Korean writers, The Cultural Programme will involve UK writers, translators and editors. 

Taken overall, the Cultural Programme will provide an opportunity for UK audiences and publishers to meet and interact with Korean writers, who will in turn be able to engage with their UK counterparts in front of an international literary audience. 

Cortina Butler, Director Literature, British Council said: “The British Council anticipates that the Korea Market Focus Cultural Programme will have a lasting impact on appreciation in the UK of the strength and depth of contemporary Korean literature. We are delighted to be working with The London Book Fair and the Literature Translation Institute of Korea on this programme and believe that it creates a unique opportunity for the writing, publishing and reading communities in the UK and Korea to build understanding and make connections.”

Kim Seong-Kon, President, Literature Translation Institute of Korea, said: “The eyes of the world are upon the 2014 London Book Fair as the event will provide a collegiate place where different cultures and books from all over the world will meet in good will. The event will also play an important role in promoting cultural understanding between Korea and the UK.”

Amy Webster, International & Market Focus Manager, The London Book Fair said: “The London Book Fair is delighted to be partnering with the British Council on the Market Focus Cultural Programme. Along with partner LTI Korea, the British Council’s author programme promises to give expert access to a culture and a literary tradition which many of our audiences will be keen to discover in and around the fair. As publishers are now leveraging content across many platforms, it is exciting to see a number of this year’s featured authors have books that have been adapted for film, and also write specifically for the web, which adds an exciting new dimension to an already well-anticipated programme.”

If you want to begin exploring the energy and diversity of Korean literature in English, the LTI Korea has made a sample of work available to download for free here.