Saturday, February 28, 2009
Piercing the Veil
Had a good time over at the launch of Philippine Speculative Fiction IV. Thanks and congratulations all around. :)
It was good being in a room with other writers again: that hasn't happened since that lunch with Kenneth for the Digest of Philippine Genre Stories Issue 3. I was happy to reacquaint myself with a few familiar faces, writers I respect and admire.
Speaking of which, it was the first time I got to see/meet many of the authors in the local spec fic field, including many of the famous Litcritters. Dean Alfar did a great job as ringmaster. Seeing him in person, he reminded me of Chow Yun Fat for some reason (my wife tells me it's because of his eyes. I think it was a general aura of zen :P)
I also met Vin Simbulan at last, the editor for the "A Time For Dragons" anthology coming out in at the end of March, which will hold what is arguably my first official short story (well, second really - I sent two for that particular anthology). He also talked a bit about the launch on March 29.
He also mentioned a parade. I thought he was kidding. Apparently not. @_@
Philippine Genre Stories editor Kenneth Yu was also there, and did me a huge positive by mentioning my digital publishing ambitions before an audience which consisted of, well, the distilled essence of Filipino Spec Fic writing talent. Much gratitude for that sir Kenneth :)
All in all, me and my wife had a great deal of fun. Congratulations again to all the authors, and thanks to those who signed my copy! (And for those of you who didn't bring pens *looks at Charles* - remember, you're celebrities now ;) )
Friday, February 27, 2009
A Declaration [Up the (Main)stream Without a Paddle (Part 2)]
I love stories. I love science-fiction and fantasy. I think a lot of us here in the Philippines love it. I’ve read some of our cracks at the genre – and I really like what I’ve seen. I want to see more of it. I want more people reading it.
Yesterday, I gave my thirty-days notice; come the 28th of March, I will cease being an associate at the 4th largest law firm in the country. (Hence the reason why I couldn't post these thoughts with Part 1 of this entry @_@)
Come the 28th, two things happen: first – despite whatever odd jobs I may need to pull to keep from having to mooch off my wife - my primary vocation, my primary occupation will be that of a writer. I have an urban fantasy novel that needs finishing.
Second, I set about trying to establish a publishing house. A digital publishing house, with a special place for novel length Philippine Speculative Fiction.
The other week I attended a seminar on Publishing in Cyberspace, sponsored by the National Book Development Board (NBDB), in partnership with the Book Development Association Of The Philippines (which I heard of at Philippine Genre Stories). The publishers in attendance were affable, intelligent sorts, but many of the representatives seemed to be at a loss with regards to the full potential of the Internet (with the exception of those who sent younger representatives). This shouldn’t come as a surprise – many big US publishers seem to flounder a bit in the ebook realm.
Yet, the ebook market is here, and it's steadily growing. Lots of people all over the world already read reams of stories online, on their computers - just look at how popular fanfic is. Mobile devices that can read ebooks will only become more prevalent: the iPhone has apps like Stanza – which is free – which can read most ebook formats (though there are some formatting issues) and can receive files via wifi. The Kindle 2 has just been released, and late this year/early next year, the plastic logic reader might finally come out. In a year where traditional publishing struggled, Ebook sales increased - by quite a bit.
Back at the local level, at the Publishing in Cyberspace conference, a representative from yehey revealed some telling numbers: around 27 million internet users in the country, 83% of whom were part of a social network (1st in the world); 90% of whom have perused blogs. Even just limiting ourselves to the Philippines, there are a lot of eyes on the internet, a lot of people before whom we can display our works. I think there’s an audience here for genre fiction: look at the number of people who flock to the SFF section of Fully Booked – the people from all social classes who splurge on complete collections of the works of Rowling and Meyer; the number of fans drawn by Neil Gaiman whenever he’s in town; the droves who descend upon Komikon; even the popularity of story-intensive RPGs.
There’s room for growth in this market I think. As I said last post, I think there would be a market for homegrown SFF novels and serials… These are the type of stories I’ve always loved to read. These are the type of books that create not only readers, but FANS. Let’s go make some.
Of course, going digital also means that whatever the state of the market here may be, we don’t have to limit ourselves to our own shores: the accolades received by the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler of Charles Tan and Mia Tijam should be encouraging. In the United States, the number of people reading fiction is on the rise. Books can do well even during a recession – all the more when they are so much cheaper than other entertainment forms… as ebooks have the potential to be.
That doesn’t mean that the author will be getting less – ebooks can allow an author to get a larger slice of the revenue pie. Ebooks allow the author to do things which would be difficult (high def color photographs on every other page) or impossible (experimentation with audio files, or hotlinking, or what have you) with a physical book. We could even experiment with visual novels – the Ren’Py Visual Novel Engine is free and, from personal experience, I know there’s a great community that supports it. This is a great time to be an author.
There’s a lot of work to be done yet: a business plan to make, investors to convince, bandwidth to purchase, editors and codemonkeys to hire, marketing strategies to figure out. It will be hard work. It may fail horribly – but if it does, I hope others will learn from my errors and push forward.
But for now, I am throwing my hat in the ring. I am 29 years old and from now on I’m setting out to cross out quite a few things from my list of potential mid-life regrets. If I don’t end up contributing anything to the development of Philippine Speculative Fiction… well, at least no one will be able to tell me I didn’t try.
I’m betting on us – us as readers, us as writers. If you like the odds – or, hell, if you don’t like them but want to spite them anyway, then welcome aboard.
Let’s do this.
Yesterday, I gave my thirty-days notice; come the 28th of March, I will cease being an associate at the 4th largest law firm in the country. (Hence the reason why I couldn't post these thoughts with Part 1 of this entry @_@)
Come the 28th, two things happen: first – despite whatever odd jobs I may need to pull to keep from having to mooch off my wife - my primary vocation, my primary occupation will be that of a writer. I have an urban fantasy novel that needs finishing.
Second, I set about trying to establish a publishing house. A digital publishing house, with a special place for novel length Philippine Speculative Fiction.
The other week I attended a seminar on Publishing in Cyberspace, sponsored by the National Book Development Board (NBDB), in partnership with the Book Development Association Of The Philippines (which I heard of at Philippine Genre Stories). The publishers in attendance were affable, intelligent sorts, but many of the representatives seemed to be at a loss with regards to the full potential of the Internet (with the exception of those who sent younger representatives). This shouldn’t come as a surprise – many big US publishers seem to flounder a bit in the ebook realm.
Yet, the ebook market is here, and it's steadily growing. Lots of people all over the world already read reams of stories online, on their computers - just look at how popular fanfic is. Mobile devices that can read ebooks will only become more prevalent: the iPhone has apps like Stanza – which is free – which can read most ebook formats (though there are some formatting issues) and can receive files via wifi. The Kindle 2 has just been released, and late this year/early next year, the plastic logic reader might finally come out. In a year where traditional publishing struggled, Ebook sales increased - by quite a bit.
Back at the local level, at the Publishing in Cyberspace conference, a representative from yehey revealed some telling numbers: around 27 million internet users in the country, 83% of whom were part of a social network (1st in the world); 90% of whom have perused blogs. Even just limiting ourselves to the Philippines, there are a lot of eyes on the internet, a lot of people before whom we can display our works. I think there’s an audience here for genre fiction: look at the number of people who flock to the SFF section of Fully Booked – the people from all social classes who splurge on complete collections of the works of Rowling and Meyer; the number of fans drawn by Neil Gaiman whenever he’s in town; the droves who descend upon Komikon; even the popularity of story-intensive RPGs.
There’s room for growth in this market I think. As I said last post, I think there would be a market for homegrown SFF novels and serials… These are the type of stories I’ve always loved to read. These are the type of books that create not only readers, but FANS. Let’s go make some.
Of course, going digital also means that whatever the state of the market here may be, we don’t have to limit ourselves to our own shores: the accolades received by the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler of Charles Tan and Mia Tijam should be encouraging. In the United States, the number of people reading fiction is on the rise. Books can do well even during a recession – all the more when they are so much cheaper than other entertainment forms… as ebooks have the potential to be.
That doesn’t mean that the author will be getting less – ebooks can allow an author to get a larger slice of the revenue pie. Ebooks allow the author to do things which would be difficult (high def color photographs on every other page) or impossible (experimentation with audio files, or hotlinking, or what have you) with a physical book. We could even experiment with visual novels – the Ren’Py Visual Novel Engine is free and, from personal experience, I know there’s a great community that supports it. This is a great time to be an author.
There’s a lot of work to be done yet: a business plan to make, investors to convince, bandwidth to purchase, editors and codemonkeys to hire, marketing strategies to figure out. It will be hard work. It may fail horribly – but if it does, I hope others will learn from my errors and push forward.
But for now, I am throwing my hat in the ring. I am 29 years old and from now on I’m setting out to cross out quite a few things from my list of potential mid-life regrets. If I don’t end up contributing anything to the development of Philippine Speculative Fiction… well, at least no one will be able to tell me I didn’t try.
I’m betting on us – us as readers, us as writers. If you like the odds – or, hell, if you don’t like them but want to spite them anyway, then welcome aboard.
Let’s do this.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Up the (Main)stream Without A Paddle (Part 1)
Read a pair of interesting articles today, taking opposing positions on the question of whether or not Philippine Speculative Fiction is marginalized: For the affirmative we have Charles Tan of Bibliophile Stalker; for the negative, we have Bhex of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Blog.
My favorite (and only, but shh...) editor over at Philippine Genre Stories then posits that ol' Marvel Civil War question: Whose side are you on? (Well he doesn't really say it that way, but... @_@)
My answer: I got nothin'... Largely because from my (admittedly limited) experience, the issue isn't really framed the right way.
First off though I'd like to say thanks to both Charles and bhex for sharing their thoughts in such clear, succinct ways. Both essays are well written and peppered with illustrative examples, so I'll refrain from summarizing (and probably over-simplifying) the arguments of each, but while the keyword in both is "marginalization" that concept needed to be understood in relation to the word "mainstream."
Yet if "mainstream" refers to the prevailing attitudes/preferences of Philippine readers (as opposed to publishers/critics)... I just don't think that they care about whether a story is spec fic or not.
* I've never known anyone who would turn their nose up at a book because it was Philippine Spec Fic. Frankly, I know few Filipinos readers who would turn their nose up any story just because of fantasy or science fictional elements - the level of realism of the story just doesn't seem to be that big of a factor to Philippine readers.
* I do know that there are people who read Spec Fic but not Philippine Spec Fic. This seems to me to be because: (a) they only visit the SFF part of the bookstore, and never set foot in the Filipiniana/Philippine Publications section (or just can't distinguish the Spec Fic stuff from the rest because the book covers just don't scream "Genre!"); (b) what is available in local Spec Fic is either (i) not in the genre they want; or (ii) not of the length they want - i.e. novels.
* In relation to the above, I know people who simply do not read short fiction - an attitude I am intimately familiar with because I was of that persuasion until, oh, PGS :P It was not because of any inherent dislike of the form, but simply because my readership preferences were honed by not only novels but Big Fantasy Series': I think the sequence of my early reading chronology went like this - Guardians of the Flame Series (5 books at the time) - Belgariad/Mallorean Series (5 + 5 books) - Lord of the Rings/Hobbit (4 books) - Shannarra Series (6 books at the time) - Memory, Sorrow and Thorn Series (4 very loooong books) etc. Heck, I don't think I red a stand-alonee genre novel until I was well into high school, and had been reading voraciously for years.
* Philippine readers also seem to sharply diverge when it comes to language - most of the Philippine Spec Fic I've seen is in English, and a lot of our countrymen just aren't that comfortable with English to be reading stories in the language for fun.
I don't quite agree with bhex's definition of "marginalized" as exclusion to the point of "never having a shot" - with a definition that universal and categorical, it makes it difficult to see any form of literature as being "marginalized." I do agree with Charles that, while the situation has improved, genre fiction doesn't get the respect/encouragement it deserves - but this is a problem for genre in general (not just or even primarily locally), and chiefly in the literary/academe.
I do agree with bhex however that Phillipine Spec Fic doesn't need to be celebrated by the literary elite for it to be widely read - and I think the aim for all of us who read, write and love it should be precisely that: to make it more widely read.
I don't think that the fantastical element of the stories is an obstacle to that however: Putting aside the issue of the vernacular, I think it's just that locally we haven't yet produced the kind of spec fic that readers are accustomed to and look for: the sword and sorcery epics, the serial urban fantasies, the multi-arc space operas.
To use a movie analogy - we've got great animated shorts, insightful documentaries, biting political satires - but no hollywood blockbusters. Not yet.
(I've got some proposals to change that... but for reasons that'll become clear, I can't go into those reasons until Friday or beyond... But I hope you guys can help me brainstorm on those too ^_^)
My favorite (and only, but shh...) editor over at Philippine Genre Stories then posits that ol' Marvel Civil War question: Whose side are you on? (Well he doesn't really say it that way, but... @_@)
My answer: I got nothin'... Largely because from my (admittedly limited) experience, the issue isn't really framed the right way.
First off though I'd like to say thanks to both Charles and bhex for sharing their thoughts in such clear, succinct ways. Both essays are well written and peppered with illustrative examples, so I'll refrain from summarizing (and probably over-simplifying) the arguments of each, but while the keyword in both is "marginalization" that concept needed to be understood in relation to the word "mainstream."
Yet if "mainstream" refers to the prevailing attitudes/preferences of Philippine readers (as opposed to publishers/critics)... I just don't think that they care about whether a story is spec fic or not.
* I've never known anyone who would turn their nose up at a book because it was Philippine Spec Fic. Frankly, I know few Filipinos readers who would turn their nose up any story just because of fantasy or science fictional elements - the level of realism of the story just doesn't seem to be that big of a factor to Philippine readers.
* I do know that there are people who read Spec Fic but not Philippine Spec Fic. This seems to me to be because: (a) they only visit the SFF part of the bookstore, and never set foot in the Filipiniana/Philippine Publications section (or just can't distinguish the Spec Fic stuff from the rest because the book covers just don't scream "Genre!"); (b) what is available in local Spec Fic is either (i) not in the genre they want; or (ii) not of the length they want - i.e. novels.
* In relation to the above, I know people who simply do not read short fiction - an attitude I am intimately familiar with because I was of that persuasion until, oh, PGS :P It was not because of any inherent dislike of the form, but simply because my readership preferences were honed by not only novels but Big Fantasy Series': I think the sequence of my early reading chronology went like this - Guardians of the Flame Series (5 books at the time) - Belgariad/Mallorean Series (5 + 5 books) - Lord of the Rings/Hobbit (4 books) - Shannarra Series (6 books at the time) - Memory, Sorrow and Thorn Series (4 very loooong books) etc. Heck, I don't think I red a stand-alonee genre novel until I was well into high school, and had been reading voraciously for years.
* Philippine readers also seem to sharply diverge when it comes to language - most of the Philippine Spec Fic I've seen is in English, and a lot of our countrymen just aren't that comfortable with English to be reading stories in the language for fun.
I don't quite agree with bhex's definition of "marginalized" as exclusion to the point of "never having a shot" - with a definition that universal and categorical, it makes it difficult to see any form of literature as being "marginalized." I do agree with Charles that, while the situation has improved, genre fiction doesn't get the respect/encouragement it deserves - but this is a problem for genre in general (not just or even primarily locally), and chiefly in the literary/academe.
I do agree with bhex however that Phillipine Spec Fic doesn't need to be celebrated by the literary elite for it to be widely read - and I think the aim for all of us who read, write and love it should be precisely that: to make it more widely read.
I don't think that the fantastical element of the stories is an obstacle to that however: Putting aside the issue of the vernacular, I think it's just that locally we haven't yet produced the kind of spec fic that readers are accustomed to and look for: the sword and sorcery epics, the serial urban fantasies, the multi-arc space operas.
To use a movie analogy - we've got great animated shorts, insightful documentaries, biting political satires - but no hollywood blockbusters. Not yet.
(I've got some proposals to change that... but for reasons that'll become clear, I can't go into those reasons until Friday or beyond... But I hope you guys can help me brainstorm on those too ^_^)
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