Blocked Chi at MPH

Saturday's MPH Writer's Circle was ... all a bit sad really. What do you do when almost no-one turns up for an author talk and you're moderating it?

Jason Fong was talking about his new book Feng Shui in the City, published by Marshall Cavendish. He had brought along one old friend who had studied Feng Shui with him, who came with his wife (whom we had to wake up before we began). Then there was Julia from MPH and later blogger BP wandered in. (He has captured the whole thing very well on his blog.)

Anyway, I kept the thing going by playing devil's advocate and asking Jason the most difficult questions about feng-shui I could think of, and he to his credit, had a good stab at answering them with talk of ions and radon gas and ground water. (But oh, I would have liked something more convincingly scientific!)

But I actually think Feng-Shui is good stuff, provided that you don't prod underneath the surface too much.

Who doesn't want a nice living environment? Things like trees and water and the flow of air undoubtedly affect us and we undoubtedly feel better when there are elements of the environment that we feel we can control.

I told Fong that I had a lot of fun playing feng-shui expert for my neighbours after reading two books by fellow Malaysian feng-shui expert Lilian Too, telling them off if they had the wrong number of fish in their pond ("Only eight? And you must add one black one to take away the bad luck") and trying to give away a stray cat's ginger kittens, telling them "Your house is very yin. Cats add a yang element, and this gold colour is very lucky".

These guys weren't too impressed with Lillian Too's books, especially with her emphasis on putting little animal statues around the house to bring luck of different kinds. (Ducks in the bedroom for marital harmony, that sort of thing.) "If you do that, your house will become like animal farm ... or like a zoo," Jason and his friend agreed.

If you want a taste of the book, do check out Jason's blog. It's also worth buying as a record of the ugly concrete excrescence that is the Klang Valley's suburban sprawl.

I wonder though if some of the house owners whose properties are photographed might be a little unhappy having their bad feng-shui recorded in a book? It won't do much for their house prices!

I think this is my last Writer's Circle for a while. It used to be a very useful monthly event where folks could come and learn about the ins and outs of publishing. Now it seems to have completely lost focus and frankly, I can think of more useful things to do on those Saturday mornings.

Some January Events for Your Diary

Here's are some not-to-be-missed January lit events to put in your diary.

How great that another venue for live literature has sprung up. Raja Ahmad has a great list of readers for Kata-Suara, to be held at his very beautiful gallery on Saturday 19th January. Do support! (More on Ted's blog.)

The monthly MPH Writer's Circle meeting takes place on 19th January too (11.00am - 12.30pm in the Booker Room.) I think these meetings are very worthwhile, particularly as you get to know so much about author's experiences of getting published and marketing their books. Sadly, they haven't been attended as well as they deserve to be. This month's guest is Jason Fong, author of Feng Shui in the City. So if you want to write a book on Feng-Shui (and I must confess I've toyed with the idea) or if you want to hear another author's "war-story" about how you move from initial concept to finished book, do come along.

If you like crime fiction, you might like to meet Singapore's answer to Agatha Christie! Shamini Flint (left) is launching her second detective novel, Criminal Minds at the La Bodega Lounge on Monday 21st Jalan Telawi 2 at 7.45. (More about this author another day.)

You are probably aware that MPH have a monthly book-discussion, and you can get a 20% discount on the chosen title.

This month focuses on Tan Twan Eng's The Gift of Rain, and to make this an extra-special meeting - the author himself will be there to talk about the book and answer your questions. (Eh, how often you got chance to chat to a Booker-nominated author, especially of the home-grown variety?)

If you haven't read the book yet (and you should because 1) it's a great big passionate, exciting read 2) you will enjoy the Penang setting 3) Malaysia really boleh in this instance, so you can enjoy feeling proud), then you have nine more days to buy it and read it

(MPH as usual has lots on, which you can check out here.)

Readings@Seksan's is on Saturday 26th January, and I'll be putting up the line-up very soon. It will be a very special readings as we are celebrating our third birthday and need you help to blow out the candles! Tunku Halim will be among the readers, and he will also be appearing at MPH's Breakfast Club at the Bangsar Village 2 branch at 11 a.m. - 12.30 p.m. (He will be appearing at several other events while he is in town, and has listed these on his blog.)

That same afternoon Indonesian authors Lakshmi Pamuntjak and Goenawan Mohamad are appearing at Silverfish at 5 p.m. (Come to Readings first and then skip over the road!) Goenawan will be launching On God and Other Things, the English translation of his book of aphorisms, Tentang Tuhan dan Hal-Hal yang Tak Selesai. This event is sponsored by the Malaysian International Literature Society (MILS).

You can also catch Lakshmi and Goenawan at a talk at the English Department, Arts and Social Sciences Faculty Universiti Malaya at 9 a.m. (I kid you not!) on Sunday 27th January. If you'd like to attend, contact Catalina Rembuyan or via Facebook. I plan to be there ... but can't guarantee to be awake.

Feel like a party? Project Open Mike Gig are inviting you to a night of mayhem on Sunday 27th January 7.30 till very late at The Dram Projects BG-6 Happy Mansions, Jalan 17/13, P.J.
This from their Facebook ad:

Because this is an OMG event, anyone who feels like whipping out a guitar should feel free. Poets are, however, advised to keep it to no more than 17 stanzas. And no free verse about curry leaves! Mostly, however, it's a party, which means Doritos, dancing and debauchery [in that order]. Bring a bottle or three!!!

Who can resist?

Phew! Have I forgotten anything? Do let me know in the comments and I'll append it.

Weekend Bookish Things

Some pictures of bookish things of the weekend.

MPH Writer's Circle focused on illustration this month and the guests were Shahril Nizam, Amir Muhammad and S. Yu who drew the delightful cartoon pictures for Eh! Wat U Talking: Chronicles of Malay Humour. Yu also has three "graffic biographies" of Malaysian politicians in the pipeline.

The shy Shahril needed a little drawing out but was fascinating as he talked about his illustrations for If Only, and he and Amir talked about how illustrations were an integral part of Politicians Say the Damndest Things. (Lovely review of the book here by Ted, by the way.)

The conversation I thought got particularly interesting when we talked about book covers which didn't scare of marginal readers. Jennifer Eileen Peters, author of Making Chatter Matter turned up for the meet, and talked about how happy she was with Shahril's art work for her cover.

It was a very comfortable and friendly discussion which I think we all enjoyed, but still ... wish the audience for these things was a bit bigger.
.In the evening I went along to Silverfish for the official opening of Raman's new shop, which is already looking like home.

Raman was launching News From Home, a compilation of the work of three of the participants of his writing programme. The brave souls (left to right Kow Shih-Li, Rumaizah Abu Bakar and Chua Kok Yee) gave a short reading (a first for all of them!) from their work and then (perhaps even more bravely!) answered a few questions from the audience. What was evident in all of them was the desire to work at their craft and their enthusiasm for writing. I really wish them all the best with the book, and thanks Raman for the review copy. Promise some feedback.

All the usual suspects were there and here's Diana Cooper, me, Daphne Lee, Peter Brown and his wife Markiza.

Got up early today to go to the Penguin/Pearson warehouse sale. Here are my spoils! Am around RM300 lighter in the pocket which I don't think at all bad for this big pile of things I really want to read.

The sale is very well worth going to with excellent bargains and a huge variety of books of all kinds. You do need to be organised though. One tip which I pass on is to take those tough supermarket shopping bags (the ones you buy so you don't need plastic bags). They are easier to carry around than clumsy boxes.

You also do need to be fit to push through the crowds and not mind the heat and chaos and thick thick dust! But where would the adventure be if it wasn't like that?

Pictures Books with Passion

I honestly feel a bit sad that the MPH Writer's Circle meetings are so badly attended when they are an excellent way to learn about how publishing works in Malaysia and a chance to network. The last one was held for some reason on a Sunday morning (when most folks have better things to do like sleep!) and we had an audience which peaked at six people!

Last month's talk was about photography and brought together two very interesting speakers to share how their books came to be born.


Omar Ariff says that he started to take photography seriously in 1990 when he became a scuba diving instructor and bought an underwater camera. Later he was commisioned by the Petronas Adventure Team to take photographs of the Instanbul to KL Rally. He is now passionate about photographing both nature and motor sports!

His latest book Pusaka Bumi: Malaysia's Legacy of Nature is an incredibly beautiful journey from mountain to sea, exploring the rainforests and their inhabitants in full page plates. There is no text with the photos to break up the "album effect" (although there are notes at the end).

It's all about capturing moments, he said, explaining how he travelled across country at a moment's notice when he heard that he would be able to capture a particular animal. He also talked us through some of the technical details:

Keep it simple ...

he said referring to his choice of equipment.

The part of the project that gave him the biggest headache was the printing stage when he was working round the clock for 6 days to make sure everything was right.

The cost of the project? Around RM300, 000!


Mohana Gill was born and brought up in Burma. Food she says was always a passion, and when her children had finished studying and she had more time on her hands, she decided to write about it. She didn't want to write a conventional cook book though.

Her books Fruitastic! and Vegemania do a superb job of promoting understanding of healthy eating and are a visual delight as well as being full of tempting and unusual recipes. The former actually won her an international award - the prestigous Gourmand World Cookbook Awards prize for best single subject cookbook! (I bought a copy of the rather cheaper paperback Frutastic Malaysia which I'm delighted with ... fruit soup anyone?) The books are written with evident passion, and Mohana poured her own money into the project, more concerned to spread the message about nutrition than in breaking even financially.

All the photos for Mohana's books were taken in her kitchen ... and one of these days I am going to go and visit her garden to see all the fruits she grows - including mulberries!

The next writers circle meeting is this Saturday, 17th November, 11 a.m. at MPH 1 Utama and the speaker is Shahril Nizam (author of If Only) who will be talking about the art of illustration. Please do come along to support.

Don't Dumb Down, Don't Preach

Well, we had a jolly old time at MPH's writers' circle Saturday, talking about writing children's literature with Daphne Lee in the hot seat.

She says that she began to write when she realised that she could not find children's books with local content, and tries to write the kinds of books she would have liked to have read as a child or teenager.

She talked about her own writing process and said that says she doesn't think of it so much as writing a book for children as writing a good book. She doesn't believe in dumbing down as and it's good for kids to read above their level.

Neither does she believe in writing books which preach moral values - though if these come up naturally - fine. And they will if you write honestly and stay true to your characters.

(I posted my own little variation on the theme of moral values some time ago, making the point that this just isn't how literature works.)

Finding a good editor is vitally important. You need to find a person you trust, but they need to be objective and able to give honest criticism. Daphne is herself a member of a writing group who give each other feedback, and that's also where she found her illustrator, Amir Shah Amiruddin.

The first book took a year to produce and then Daphne and Amir went to see Datuk Ng ... and Eric Forbes of MPH. They liked it but said that they should produce 3 more books to go along with it. Eric (who was there at Writers Circle) says it is easier to market children's books as a set - the same energy, time money goes into marketing them. The other titles took about four months each.

(More on the books in this article by Jade Chan in the Star and this one on the Bernama website by Sophia Ahmad.)

Daphne and Amir are collaborating on another couple of books, and she is also in the midst of writing a novel for young adults as well as ... (she adds a little cheekily) "the great contemporary Malaysian novel".

The session opened out into a nice discussion with some very valuable contributions from those who came.

C.Ean who won an Utusan Group Literary Prize competition talked about her experiences writing and editing her novel for young adults.

And then there was a very nice man called Wan Abhar who reached into his bag and pulled out a whole set of beautifully produced children's story and activity books and CD based around the character of a little boy called Abu B'Goode to teach children ... good moral values! I reckon he should find a good market in schools and wish him all the best with them. (If you want to contact him, his e-mail is impaque@hotmail.com)

Mind you, it strikes me that even on the front of his publicity leaflet there is a blooming great grammatical error. It should, of course, read How Do We Teach ...? .


Here's Daphne with C.Ean.

Daphne for Writers' Circle

Hope it's not too late to announce this!

MPH Writer's Circle meets today to discuss how to write and sell good children's stories. The guest speaker is Daphne Lee who writes the column Tots to Teens in Starmag in which she discusses the best reads in children's literature. Daphne is the author of a series of picture books: 1 Red Flower, A is for Anklet, If I Were a Star and Sweet Pink Posies, and she also puts together children's libraries for client organisations.

The meet takes place 11am-12.30pm in the Booker Room, MPH Megastore 1 Utama. I'm chairing.

(Picture nicked from Eric's blog, with apologies!)

Travelling Hopefully

MPH's monthly Writers' Circle meetings are an excellent way to find out about making a career in writing and getting published.

Saturday's meeting was on Travel Writing and the two guest speakers talked from very different perspectives, and the audience participation provided a lively discussion.

Vanitha K. is editor of Plan Your Own Holiday, a magazine which was conceived as a marketing tool for Reliance Travel.

She described how she feel into writing by accident, and said you really need to have the passion for the work.

She says that she likes to feature more offbeat destinations and "back-alley places", and she is concerned to provide quick information for the reader, in an easy to absorb form.

Surprisingly, she hardly travels at all herself - leaving the fun part to her writers. She accepts freelance contributions and articles, and encouraged those in the audience to send in their articles. Her magazine pays RM100 a page, and RM60-70 per photograph. If you have an idea for a story you'd like to pitch to her, you can contact her at vanitha@pyoholiday.com

The second speaker was Zhang Su Li whose book A Backpack and a Bit of Luck is an unusual travel book, focusing not just on the destinations, but also on the random kindness of the strangers she meets along the way.

I learned so much getting lost

she says.

She looked for the human stories, and says that there are so many people she wants to thank for touching her life ... but she doesn't know their names. She says she wrote from the heart, stories that she needed to tell.

I've enjoyed the stories I've read so far, appreciating how important this human dimension is to Kim (as she prefers to be known) - she also has a very nice writing style and I'm looking forward to seeing what she will come up with next.

Travel and Get Paid for It

Stuck for something literary to do tomorrow? Come along to this:

The idea of being a travel writer sounds very romantic, but is it the reality? Come and join the next KL Writers' Circle and find out:
. How to write sound travel articles
. How to determine salable travel article ideas
. How to target suitable travel publications

Details of the meet are:
Date: Saturday, 18th August, 2007
Time: 11am-1pm
Booker Room, MPH Megastore 1 Utama

Guest speaker is Zhang Su Li, author of travel book A Backpack and a Bit of Luck and Vanitha K, Editor of Plan Your Own Holiday magazine.

This session is facilitated by ... me! Hope to see you there!

Translating the Text

MPH Writer's Circle this month has invited along veteran translator Abd Latiff Bidin to talk about his craft and answer questions.

Date: Saturday 16th June
Venue: Booker Room, 2nd Floor, MPH Megastore, 1 Utama.
Time: 11-12 a.m.

Facilitated by ... me. Do come along to support (If you aren't going to the Karen Armstrong talk, of course.)

Bringing Characters to Life

First I'm going to rap some knuckles.

Sad it was indeed that so few people turned up for the MPH Writer's Circle* meet on Saturday even though so many people SAY that they want to write the great Malaysian novel!

We were talking fundamantals really - how do you craft great characters and make them live on the page? We had three very good speakers, one academic, two published authors and the dialogue flowed between them.

Professor Lim Chee Seng of Universiti Malaya (below) spoke more broadly about how writers bring their characters to life through names, dress, physical features and drew on the writing of Balzac, Shakespeare, Lawrence Sterne, Tolstoy ... and even the bible for his examples!

Nizam Zakaria (below) has now turned full-time writer. He reckons that characters will die if they are not close to what readers can relate to. He writes for TV and is often asked if his script is plot driven or character driven: but he finds it impossible to separate the two things out - they really go hand in hand. Some of his characters, he says, are based on aspects of himself. He also said that he describes his characters minimally, but likes to reveal his characters through what other characters say about them.

Kam Raslan (below), author of Confessions of an Old Boy, not to be out done by Professor Lim's literary references very nicely drew on examples from Jackie Collins and the film Titanic to show:

the ancient tussle between character and plot ...

Good characters create the plot and must relate to events in:

predictably unpredictable ways

and must be able to justify what they are doing. No character can ever be simply a foil for the main character.

The conversation was opened up even more when the audience joined in. It was really great too to have yet another very successful Malaysian novelist come along to the session, Beth Yahp, who talked about how her characters emerge from scraps of conversation recorded in her notebooks.

A couple of issues came up in conversation which interest me greatly:

Why don't Malaysian authors don't reflect the racial diversity of the country in their fiction, seldom creating characters from other racial backgrounds in their writing?

Should Malaysian authors use of Malaysian English in dialogue. (Prof Lim believes there is:

no need to mangle our English and make it laughable ...

while I'm pretty undecided on the issue.)

These are questions are v. much on my mind and the desire to write a thesis to explore them (and other fascinations) in an academic context grows ever stronger.


*Didn't know about it? Perhaps you should contact MPH to be put on the mailing list. (Call up the Marketing Dept @ (603) 7781 1800 or the Customer Service Hotline @ (603) 2938 3818 for more information.)

MPH Literary Tatler

Am playing catch-up with some pictures of a couple of MPH events that I meant to post earlier. what can I say ... my hard-disk crashed so I couldn't post them immediately ... and then so many other things got in the way. (And I was a little lazy too ...)

Anyway, if you missed last month's Writers' Circle (held at 1 Utama, 13 March) kick yourselves because there was so much in the talk for writers of creative non-fiction!

Invited speakers Larry Parr (co-author of business tycoon Tan Chin Nam's Never Say I Assume!) and Balan Moses (author of Brickfields: A Place, A Time, A Memory) talked about the researching and writing of their books.


American author Larry Parr had forgotten the first time we met some years ago. I was wandering around the Sucasa very early one morning looking for a decent cup of coffee. (I was due to observe one of my students teaching in the school opposite but needed a caffeine fix first! School canteens don't have Americanas!) I bumped into Larry who told me that there was no coffee available, but there was a small newsagents which also sold second-hand books very cheaply for charity. (Damn! Wasn't going to let that slip!)

We got talking about books (as one does!) and it turned out that Larry collects old novels written about Malaya which he's bought from second-hand bookshops here and in the States. I'm actually quite envious! He told me then that he was going to be working with tycoon Tan Chin Nam on his autobiography and it seemed a really interesting project. We exchanged cards, but I didn't see him again until the Writers' Circle at MPH 1 Utama when he talked about the finished book and the challenges of writing the story of this very important businessman, whose life story parallels the history of the country.

Larry is a fascinating speaker. (This wikipedia article contains some inaccuracies e.g date of birth and number of kids.) He was an expert in Soviet affairs and the editor of Glasnost magazine, and he also edited Chess Life magazine, the official publication of the United States Chess Federation.

(And he's going to be co-writing a thriller, but it's all top secret for now!)

Balan Moses is the news editor of the New Straits Times and has spent all his working life with the newspaper. His book on Brickfields is a loving portrait of an area of the city with a very distinctive history that's rapidly changing out of all recognition. And into the history and geography of the place, Balan weaves personal recollection and portraits of the inhabitants ... as well as mouthwatering descriptions of the food to be found there. It is in many ways a guide book to an area that tourists seldom travel too, but which yields as much (or more) cultural interest as the more famous haunts.

The book is apparently selling very well, and small wonder because I feel it's one that KLites, and particularly Brickfieldsians (!) must surely take to their hearts. I heard from friends who attended a talk that Balan gave at the Commonwealth Club, that members of the audience virtually hijacked the meeting to talk about their own reminiscences of the area and suggest what should go into the next volume!

You can catch Balan at the "Readings" in May. (More about that later.)

The other MPH event was the second Breakfast Club for the Litbloggers held at the Bangsar Village branch on March 24th with Mrs. Good (Lydia Teh) slugging it out with Mrs. Dark Side (Xeus). I'm joking of course ... it was a lovely morning spent with friends chatting about writing and getting published. Both Xeus and Lydia are very good speakers and kept the crowd well entertained.

Xeus (whose very full account of the event can be found here) gave some excellent writing advice.

Lydia Teh was just hilarious. She turned up with a horn so she really could honk! And I loved the piece she read from her book which was a glossary of expressions translated from standard English read into "Manglish" (Malaysian English).

It was Kak Teh's (Zahara Othman) birthday and it was lovely that we were able to celebrate it with her. I like this not yet posed, informal shot. Left to right: Chet, Xeus, me (tangled up with the ficus plant), Lydia, Kak Teh blowing out her candles, Eric Forbes and Janet Teh.

Do come along to the next one this coming Saturday. If you missed Larry Parr, you have a chance to see him again. The mind-expanding Farish Noor will also be along, as will I Am Muslim author Dina Zaman (whom I am introducing).

I must add a silent prayer that the irrepressible and irrelevant questioner behaves himself. Still Kenny will be moderating the session, so we know we're in safe hands. (He will restrain me as ... )

Oh ... and if you do come along, do stay in Bangsar and come along to "Readings" afterwards!

MPH Happenings for March

MPH Writers Circle resumes this month with an interesting session this Saturday(17th), 11-1p.m. in the Booker Room of the 1 Utama branch. The focus is going to be writing memoirs and autobiographies.

The first guest speaker is Larry Parr who is co-author of business tycoon Tan Chin Nam's Never Say I Assume! (A whole lot of articles from the Star and about Tan Chin Nam have been archived here.)

The other is Balan Moses. You may have already seen Brickfields: A Place, A Time, A Memory in the bookshops. I bought it the other day at the MPH Warehouse sale and have been enjoying it. I particularly enjoy the way that he combines the story of this area of the city with personal anecdote, photographs and charming sketches.

I must add that -I'm very fond of Brickfields, and got to know the area when I was supervising my students on teaching practice. Sometimes I had a long gap between the lesssons I had to observe and wandered around appreciating the food (wonderful banana leaf!), the green spaces, the architecture of the "100 Quarters" in Jalan Rozario - sturdy housing built by the British, and the general "Indianess" of the area. I also used to love to visit Skoob when my favourite secondhand bookshop was still in that area. I've been fascinated to find out about the history of the various buildings from Balan's book.

The area is changing so fast now, with office blocks and condominiums,
luxury hotels and KL Sentral station, the main city transport hub, so the book captures a slice of the past before - sadly - it disappears forever.

Well, on Saturday, I'm going to be moderating the session, so I hope to see some of you there!

This is also a suitable point, I think, to put up an ad for the second Breakfast Club the following Saturday (24th) when Lydia Teh (Life's Like That) and Xeus (Dark City) will be slugging it out at MPH Bangsar Village II. (Isn't Kenny's poster great?)

Amazing May Zhee

I chaired MPH's Writer's Circle yesterday. The topic was Writing Fiction, but there turned out to be only one speaker.

Lim May Zhee is one determined young lady. She has written and self-published her first novel, Vanitee Bee, which might best be described as chic-lit for teens. Despite being just 16 years old (15 when she wrote the book) she talked and fielded questions from the floor with a maturity beyond her years. And there was a lesson for us all in her experience - if you believe in your book and want to get it out - just go ahead and self-publish.

We were most amused to learn that May Zhee didn't even tell her parents about her project until the book was published. She raised the money she needed by herself. She says she realised that she needed a copy editor and took the manuscript to Silverfish for vetting. Then proofread it carefully again herself, and then sent it to the printer who also designed the cover for her.

She approached MPH's marketing department and they agreed to distribute the book for her, but then her dad had to be called in to sign the contract on her behalf since she was underage!

May Zhee hopes to make a career in writing. I'm pretty sure she will manage to do pretty much what she sets her heart on, she's such a self-starter.

My only (teacherly) advice to May Zhee is that she really should begin to read much more widely - even if she loves chic-lit. She hopes to read literature at university and will need a strong foundation. I listed links to some good sites with lists on teen-reads the other day, and that's probably as good a starting point as any.

Managing the Q&A turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. One gentleman was problematic and started to hog the whole discussion, not giving others a chance - particularly the shier members of the group whom I wanted to coax out rather more. I hope I didn't upset him too much when I had to tell him that his question was irrelevant - but I had to take charge of a situation that was becoming increasingly difficult. (I know the guy in question is burning with the desire to get his books into print, but he does need to think about how other people are feeling ... and not be so ... kiasu. The best way out of his dilemma is actually to pluck up the courage to send out his manuscripts to editors and get professional feedback.)

How nice it was that this guy came along. Recognise him? 'Tis The Great Swifty aka Edmund Yeo, who has been a blog-friend for some time.

I was rather stressed after the session and went to Delicious for a while with David Byck to have something to eat. When I had recovered it was time to head for town for Lydia's booklauch for Honk If You're Malaysian.

I drove through the Saturday jams to reach the hotel ... just a little after time ... only to find it was the wrong hotel. It was supposed to be at the Crowne Plaza and I was at the Crowne Princess. What kinds of idiots gives a hotel a name which is bound to get confused with another? (What kind of idiot doesn't read the invite carefully enough?). More stress.

(Lydia, once again am very sorry ... and glad that the event went so well for you.)

At least a nice tea at Animah's with friends and a good gossip made me feel better.

More rushing about today. Mong-Lan's reading is at Indie Scene Cafe this afternoon at 5. Will maybe see you there!

Update:

Swifty filmed Writer's Circle! I hate to see myself on film so I won't watch it.
May Zhee also blogged it. She thinks I look like a book!

The Shape of Publishing to Come

It wasn't that huge a turnout for MPH Writer's Circle this Saturday ... maybe most wannabe-publisheds run away from any topic that sounds techie.

But Paul McLean's (of Fuji-Xerox Asia Pacific) presentation about print-on-demand publishing was extremly informative ... and for me, inspiring. I'm convinced that for many of us POD is the shape of things to come, and it's only a matter of time before not just individual writers but local bookshops and publishers (are forced to?) embrace it.

Why? Okay, let's take two scenarios. (Mine, not Paul's.)

A Malaysian publisher has a very good reputation but only a small local market. He prints by offset publishing for the local market. He wants to sell more overseas. He has a good webpresence and posts books to international clients who order them. But he would like his books on the American and British market and on Amazon.com. Even if he finds someone to store and market the books for him in those countries, he still has to put his books in boxes and expensively ship them there. It's troublesome and expensive to get the books where he wants them.

A young Singaporean writer (okay, I'm talking about our friend O Thiam Chim) writes a book and decides to self-publish. He decides to do Print-On-Demand publishing with an American company who can get his book listed on Amazon.com and made available to an international audience. Problem: when he wants to sell his book to a local market, he has to import his own books from the US and pay shipping and duty on them. This makes the book so much more expensive than if he has printed locally (by POD or offset).

Print-on-demand could be the answer for both of them. It needs to work like this. The writer or publisher create digital product which can be printed on demand here or from centres overseas. Clients (anywhere in the world) order via internet or via a special booth in the bookshop and are supplied cheaply and quickly (within hours perhaps) with a quality product. There are no shipping costs.

If the book sells really well then it makes sense to move to offset printing which is cheaper for quantity. If the book doesn't sell, not a great deal of money has been lost. There are no warehousing costs. (These add significantly to the cost of a book.) There are no unsold books to pulp. A book never needs to go out of print.

The technology for this already exists. But as Paul said yesterday, selling the idea to client organisations is the hardest part. (MPH is already in negotiations by the way which will put them ahead of the crowd.)

And there is no POD company which operates internationally yet. So bridges need still to be built.

The physical quality of POD books needs to be assured - the publisher doesn't want his overseas clients to buy books which are inferior to the offset copies he produced for the Malaysian market.

Will we buy POD books? I bought my first a few months back a few months ago without noticing.

I'd read about a psychology book on a website. Looked for it and found it on Abebooks. Ordered it and got a nice new copy within a few days at a reasonable price. It wasn't until I'd finished reading it that I realised that the publisher was iUniverse and the copy had been printed specially for me! The book fulfilled all expectations and was in no way inferior for its having been printed digitally. More importantly, I hadn't even paused to think whether this copy had been printed digitally or by offset while I was ordering it or reading it.

It will be interesting to see how the whole POD thing develops here. And I think none of us - writers, readers, publishers, or booksellers can afford to ignore it.

Meanwhile, if you are interested publishing your book by POD locally, you can check out G&L Solutions.

E-publishing for Writer's Circle

The MPH Writer's circle meeting this month will focus on trends in e-publishing on demand. The guest speaker is Mr Paul McLean , Epicenter Manager, Fuji Xerox Asia Pacific Pte Ltd who will talk about the role of print-on-demand in e-publishing.

I will be there because 1) it's good to know everything about publishing if you're a writer ... and even if the knowledge doesn't seem relevant now, a little light bulb in your head may go on further down the line 2) I have no choice 'cos am the moderator.

So come along and join us:

Date : 18 Nov (Sat)

Time : 11am - 1pm

Venue: The Booker Room, MPH Megastore 1 Utama, 1 Utama Shopping Centre

To register, please call Customer Service at 03-7726 9003 or email csoneutama@mph.com.my

Yesterday an MPH catalogue Tokens of Love with a picture of Christmassy baubles on the front fell into my letterbox, and I expected to be beguiled and tempted by bookchoice. But the fiction pages (all two of them out of 27) featured only popular stuff - thrillers and chic lit and the like (fine in its place, but not my cup of tea).

More literary (more quality? more prize-winning) fiction was nowhere at all to be seen (she says wagging an accusing finger in the direction of the marketing department).

Bibliobibuli's heartfelt message? Please don't dumb down the choices or underestimate your readers.

That said, I will be enjoying a little bookspree after the meeting on Saturday and I hope the books I've coveted will be there. (I haven't bought a book in days and have delirium tremens.)

Printing at the Writer's Circle

We didn't get a very large crowd this month's MPH Writer's Circle, perhaps because printing is a less sexy topic than how to get into print in the first place! Never mind, it made for a nice informal session with plenty of time for audience questions.

It was good to meet children's author Rebecca Loke. When I was putting the KL Litfest programme together a couple of years back, someone asked me why there was nothing about children's writing. I put together a session at the very last minute, and Rebecca was kind enough to come along and speak. I didn't get a chance to meet her that day because I was tied up elsewhere. So this was my first chance to say thank you, in person!

Rebecca talked about the publication of her Rhythm and Rhymes series, and took us through the things you need to think about when printing children's books e.g page size, the cover, colour vs. black and white illustrations, binding. She also shared with us some of her favourite children's books.

Ivan Tan and Francis Yong from MPH's printing department then talked us through the more technical parts of the process and I found it interesting to know about the part of the book-producing process that's usually invisible to the writer.

Print Your Book!

I'm moderating KL Writer's Circle tomorrow and the topic is printing. Here's the blurb from the MPH website:

Learn about the different options you have for printing (different techniques as well as paper type). Also the things you need to consider and look out for when sourcing for a printer.

Guest author: Rebecca Loke

Date : 16 September 2006 (Saturday)
Time : 11am – 1pm
Venue : MPH 1 Utama, Booker Room

For more information, please call Customer Service Hotline
at 03-7726 9003.

Self-Serving Great Grandmother's Dishes

MPH Writer's Circle today and it was nice to have Oon Yeoh back in the driver's seat.

The topic was self-publishing. Azizi Ali talked about his self-publishing venture first. This was pretty much a repetition of what he said in a session last year but I guess he was trying to drum up support for his seminar How to Write a Best-Seller in 88 Days. (Why 88? Why not 30 or 153? Think Chinese numerology lah!)

Best piece of info from Azizi - the most important page of your book is the back cover, since research has shown that readers spend an average of 3 seconds looking at the front cover and 8 seconds looking at the back.

I was much more interested in hearing about Shirley Zecha's part family-history, part cookbook My Great Grandma Never Left Our Kitchen. Shirley talked about how family recipes (a unique blend of Indonesian/Dutch/Chinese/Nyonya influences) had been passed down the generations from her great-grandmother to her grandmother, to her aunt and finally to her. Four women who lived in different eras were united in their passion for food.

But it took a fifth woman to bring the book to fruition: Shirley's daughter Claudine realised that the recipes and stories were not just a family treasure in danger of being lost forever since she isn't a cook herfelf, but of much wider cultural relevance.

She put the book together and became the publisher. ("I'm only the cook," said Shirley, modestly.) After consulting cookbook publishers who seemed to have very set ideas about what a cookbook should look like, she decided to self-publish to have more control over the finished product and the process of putting it together.

Claudine says she managed to find the right team of people to edit and design the book (her background in advertising clearly came in useful), and all the cooking was done at home over 10 days, working from early moring till late night. The photos of the dishes, taken in and around the house, are absolutely mouthwatering and I couldn't bear to look at them because it was too near lunch time!

Claudine was pretty shrewd about approaching newspaper and magazine editors so that articles about the book appeared in the press, particularly at times of the year when interst was likely to be greatest, for example, Mother's Day. Cookery demos at MPH created more interest. Hotels in Malaysia were persuaded to stock copies, and HSBC adopted it as a corporate gift, which boosted sales. The book has sold about 3,000 copies so far and can also be found in London at Books for Cooks.

I'd love the book for the slice of Malaysian and Indonesian history it serves along with the food.

(Incidentally, while we're on the subject of putting cookbooks together, I was fascinated to read Starlight's behind-the-scenes-account of her current project ...)


Below is a picture I snapped this afternoon of Aneeta Sundararaj signing a copy of Snapshots! for me. Looking forward to reading it.

Shirley Zecha for Writers Circle

MPH Writer's Circle meets this coming Saturday, 15th July in the Booker Room of MPH 1 Utama.

The topic is self-publication and the main speaker is Shirley Zecha, author of The Zecha Heritage Cookbook: My Great Grandma Never Left Our Kitchen.

If you'd like a place, please call Customer Service at 03-7726 9003 or email csoneutama@mph.com.my.

Generating Income from Fiction

You can never short change a reader

editor Eric Forbes (below) reminded his audience at MPH Writers' Circle yesterday, urging them to write with passion and authority if they wanted to submit their work for publication.

Most of the manuscripts submitted to him are, he said, "mediocre", and his years in the job have taught him "how little good writing there is in Malaysia". He talked about what editors look for in a manuscript and how to prepare one for submission, and gave some sterling advice about writing in general. (Eric being one of the best read blokes I know, of course sprinkled in lots of literary examples.)


Off The Edge columnist and author Kam Raslan (below) was a thoroughly engaging speaker, and began with words of encouragement:

Writing is doable because people are in the business of publishing, and there are people out there wanting to buy books ...

He went on to underline many of the points made by Eric, particularly that the best way in to a writing career for a new writer is often with a proven track record of articles and columns in the press. (A show of hands showed that surprisingly few of the want-to-be authors of the Writer's Circle had had anything published at all!) I liked Kam's quote (he said it was from John Wayne in an old film):

You're not a writer until sombody tells you you are!

Local newspapers and magazines, he said, are pretty desperate for quality articles (which is why so much substandard stuff gets published here). Writing regular features and columns to a deadline teaches you good discipline, and the knowledge that people will read you means that you're forced to turn out decent copy. Feedback from readers is invaluable, and your columns can probably be compiled later in book form. (Kam did this with with Amir Muhammad and Sheryll Stothard in Generations: A Collection of Malaysian Contemporary Ideas described by a critic as " a smorgasboard of ideas and opinions on Nineties Malaysia".)

I've mentioned before that Kam's novel is soon to be published by Marshall Cavendish in Singapore. Kam is realistic about book sales, realising that there is a very small market for fiction in English in Malaysia and Singapore, and a writer gets only 10-15% of the cover price.

But he's canny! For some months now, episodes from the novel have been appearing as columns in Off The Edge, purportedly reminiscences written by a certain Dato' Abdul Hamid bin Dato' Sidek!

Not only is this of course a great way to create interest in his work, but it also has meant that Kam has already started earning an income from his fiction. He also sees his novel as being a sales tool for the stage play he plans to base on it, which will be a way of generating more income ("and I don't have to split it!")

He also urged writers to "try to tap into the zeitgeist". He gave the example of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch which gave Hornby a ready market of Arsenal supporters, football fans, and folks interested in reading about surviving relationships.


There were plenty of questions from an audience hungry for still more information, and then there was all the informal networking that goes on. It was great to see so many friends there, both Writers' Circle regulars, and new faces to the meetings.

I also met novelist Shoba Mano (below: author of The Prodigal Child) for the first time. Shoba will be speaking at the next Writers' Circle Meeting, I understand.

Had a lovely lunch in Delicious with Kam, Eric, and Lydia Teh. All of us comparing our bookaholic symptoms. (Shan't divulge the shameful truths that came out!)

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