Thursday, July 10, 2008

ZI Zips In Zestfully

As promised, guest blogged for us by Ezra Zaid of ZI Pulications :
ZI Publications is looking at producing good quality books for the Malaysian audience (surprise, surprise!). Local publishers have an intimate knowledge of its audiences interest towards topics on Malaysia – its politics/current affairs, history, humour, stories, personalities, etc. But, perhaps what hasn’t been happening as much is keeping up with the variety, quality and substance of books that the public deserves (and probably wants, too!).

Books that carry the ZI Publications logo have to be as good (in all aspects: concept, content, artwork, font size, choice of paper, etc) or better even, especially when they stack up right between Obama’s Audacity of Hope and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner - this is the reality of it.

We are looking to produce / currently producing works of Fiction and Non-Fiction, in both English and Bahasa Malaysia. That said, we feel that there is great potential in the Non-Fiction market for both languages, especially for the Malay language audience. Currently, the public doesn’t truly have the option of reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman or Coelho’s The Alchemist in Bahasa Malaysia; so the translation market is something that we’re going into aggressively - to provide current international bestsellers, books with international critical acclaim, and maybe some of the great classics in Bahasa Malaysia. Every other country is doing the same with their national languages, and it is about time we did too.

Expect to find the following titles from us in Bahasa Malaysia:

The Islamist by Ed Husain (Penguin UK)
No God but God by Reza Aslan (Random House)
Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea(Penguin USA)

...and many more to come.

We have other projects/ideas along the way, so stay tuned. Visit us at www.zipublications.com.my and get in touch with us – manuscripts, ideas, comments, opinions, etc., they’re all welcome.

You can also add ZI Publications as a Group on Facebook!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very exciting. This should certainly brighten up the local literary landscape a bit.