"May you live in
interesting times," goes the Chinese curse, and 2014 has certainly
been anything but boring. The year opened with the raid by Jais on
the Bible Society of Malaysia in Petaling Jaya who took off with 321
copies of the Alkitab, 10 copies of the Iban Bible
- Bup Kudus and 20 copies of Luke's Gospel in
Malay, causing much indignance, belligerence and confusion in equal
measure. Was this an act of high-handedness by a bunch of pocket
Napoleons, or something much more sinister -- a well thought out
political-chess play. Then, a deputy minister gets walloped in public. And
forgives the assailant!Then, on what I though was the bright side, the new year opened with three motorists stopping for me at a pedestrian crossing! This was in Bangsar Baru. And another lady driver let my car pass at the Maybank junction instead of creating a grid-lock. Wow, wow, wow! Then it all came to end quite abruptly when three barbarians tried to run me over at the zebra crossing 10 yards from the Bangsar Baru Police Station. (Where else?) In one case, I was already halfway across when a white car stopped and waved me on, when one of Attila the Hun's peasant sister in a red Myvi saw me crossing and immediately floored her gas peddle and sped past me! In the other two cases, too, I was already halfway across. It's no wonder that Singaporeans see us as a frontier country. (By the way, many of these barbarians are mat salleh, not just local.)
The real reason for this piece is that Silverfish Books will be celebrating our 15th anniversary this year in June. I knew it June last, of course, but it didn't hit me like a tsunami then. Approaching December it did, though. 15 years! WTF have I been doing for 15 years?!
When we opened our doors in Desa Seri Hartamas in 1999, it was probably at the worst time possible. It was just after the Asian currency crisis and the country was in deep recession. And, here I was concerned about books! I used to get my books from the UK through the Good Book Guide, or from Skoob Books. (MPH Bangsar Baru had a section labelled "For Mature Readers" -- one shelf of Penguin Popular Classics. That's how pathetic the book scene in KL was.)
Then, another tsunami struck: the mega-bookstore madness. Remember those days? There were more bookstore space in Klang Valley than in the whole of Singapore, a city of English readers with twice the population. It was a recipe for disaster. What were the bookshop owners thinking? What were the banks thinking? Only Kinokuniya played it sensibly. The rest is history.
Silverfish Books too would have been collateral damage, if we hadn't been quick on our feet. We moved into publishing, and focused our efforts on Malaysian titles in English (which, surprisingly, the chain stores neglected). So, many of the decisions we made were based on circumstances. We were certainly affected business-wise. Like hell, we were, and we had to do some major ikat perut and managed to keep our heads above water.
In terms of retail we have a decent following of regulars (in the country and overseas -- amongst individuals, universities and libraries) for our Malaysian books in English. No other shop in the country has our collection (at least, not our back lists). Yes, we tend to be looked at as 'intellectual', but these are the people we want to engage anyway. In publishing, we dare say we're world class, with five of our books appearing on international short and long lists since 2009, and selling foreign language translation rights for a book we have not even published yet!
What happens now? We could carry on as we have in the past, plodding along. You know, after you ikat perut so long, your appetite lessens somewhat. But on the other hand, we have dreams. Our Malaysian English collection is nowhere near what we'd like to be, and we'd also like to add Malay, Chinese and Tamil books to it. So, one dream is for a truly Malaysian bookshop with a curated selection of books in all the major languages, which would attract knowledgeable customers and scholars from around the country and the world. (We are already doing that now, but it could be better organised. And probably move to a swanky shop-space.) Included in the collection would be books from other Southeast Asian countries (I prefer not to use ASEAN, because it really is a failure. All they have done so far it pose for group photographs in silly shirts.) And of course world books, meaning from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.
All this means work. When you work 12 hours a day, and you are a shopkeeper-cum-publisher who translates, edits, critiques, writes, runs workshops, administers and manages a business, is the IT technician, the webmaster, and the plumber who fixes the toilets, time is often short. Still, I have never been afraid to dream. When I wanted to organise the first KL International Literary Festival in 2004, everyone else around me had palpitations, but not me. (It was scary how steely I was.) What do you have to lose from a dream, anyway? Besides the dream itself? Such journeys are always lonely, although sometimes when you meet a fantastic co-traveller, it would be like ... what? ... the Beatles at the Ed Sullivan Show?!
So, here's to, at least, another ten years of Silverfishing!!!
