And, the fat lady sings

Or, so says MobyLives. The end of an era? Not quite, I think. After all, the story of the modern book is 600 years old, while that of Borders (at least its predatory incarnation) is about fifteen (forty, if you take it back to its origins). I first heard of Borders when they set up shop in Singapore in 1997, its first store outside the US. In 2003, Borders had 1249 stores worldwide under its own name, and Waldenbooks, which it owned. The Australian, New Zealand and Singaporean stores were sold in June 2008, all the stores in UK and Ireland were shut on December 22, 2009 and on July 22, 2011. Borders started closing its remaining 399 stores in the US, with business operations expected to cease by September 2011.

Harry McCracken, in his story , Borders is toast, But don’t blame the E-books in PC World says, MacCraken also says, "Until late 2010, San Francisco had four Borders stores-three of which were within a mile and a half of each other. I'm no retailing genius, but I couldn't figure out how the city could support so many giant bookstores in so little space ... Borders' smarter rival, Barnes & Noble, only had one store in San Francisco, although that, too, is now gone; there will be no major chain bookstores in the city once the last Borders is history."

(I have written before about the bizarre situation in the Klang Valley when we had twelve mega-bookstores here when Singapore had two. And Bangsar Baru had three MPH branches with their huge Mid-Valley store a kilometre away. Go figure. Then, when there is a financial crisis, the banks will get bailed out while the rest of us pay for it.)

He adds, “If e-books didn't exist, I'm pretty positive that Borders would have still collapsed in much the same way. It might have cratered even if the Internet had never been invented ... Borders is dying (dead?) because it simply wasn't very good at selling books in the 21st century.” I thought it sounded a tad defensive, but I am more inclined to agree with this view rather than with all those others who blame the demise of the chain (no, the entire book industry) squarely on e-books. 

It has been a long time coming, and (to me, at least) a certain inevitability was always part of the script. One could feel the tiredness. It was as if Borders did not want to continue despite the quote in The Detroit Press by defense attorney, Paul Magy, ‘Borders really does want to continue, and I think they really do care about their employees.’ But, is this the end of the physical bookstore, as Laura Bartell, a bankruptcy law professor at Wayne State University says (in the same story)?

What are the implications of Borders closing shop? "The chain's demise could speed the decline in sales of hardcover and paperback books as consumers increasingly turn to downloading electronic books or having physical books mailed to their doorsteps," says the Wall Street Journal.’ So, is Amazon.com, with almost every title in print on its list, the winner? Or, will e-books rule? Or, both? Or, neither?

Miles of bookshelf space have been wiped out. More will disappear if Barnes and Noble goes under, or is sold. There will be less space for new titles and new authors, and one can’t see independents taking up the slack in the short term. Still, in contrast to dozens of blogs and websites I’ve read, I’m not unhappy to see them go. Borders was an aberration; a bull in a China shop. I can live with a bookshop that has every title in the universe, as long as they play fair. Borders didn’t. They undercut the market, sold books below cost and made hundreds of independents bankrupt. The good news is, they are gone. The bad news is, Amazon is now a virtual monopoly.

I have no sentimental attachment to Borders. When I was in school, I loved the MPH on Stamford Road in Singapore. Later, in KL, I became very fond of the MPH in Bangsar Baru. I would be sad to see MPH go, although they are nothing like what they used to be.

Says the New York Times, ‘The news exposed a deep fear among publishers that bookstores would go the way of the record store, leaving potential customers without the chance to stumble upon a book and make an impulse purchase. Publishers have worried that without a specific place to browse for books, consumers could turn to one of the many other forms of entertainment available and leave books behind.’

Help! The sky is falling!

We have moved

Okay, so this is not an opinion piece as much an announcement. Our new address is 28-1, Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur. Yes, we are still on the same street but a few shops up.  (Right next to the Subway sandwich place). When we first moved from Sri Hartamas in the year 2000, we packed everything in one day, moved the next, unpacked everything the next day and were in business the day after that. When we shifted in 2007, the entire process took about five days. This time around it is ten days and we are still in a mess -- not that it has stopped customers from coming in. We sure have accumulated plenty of stuff, mostly books. (I am posting some photos here, including one of a swollen finger.)

We like our new address. It is bigger (a little), has a view (of the street) and there is no upstairs. We have moved our phones. Telekom insisted on appointing two different contractors to move the two lines -- since one of them is being used for Streamyx, never mind that it also had a phone on it. The two came at different times and it took them much longer than necessary. (Don't try to figure it. Telekom logic defies human common sense, and there is more of it later.) Then we got the keyphone and security cameras done. (Painless.) The signboard is up; a new drama will begin. Maybe, I will simply get a runner to kow thim the deal. I don't have the stamina anymore, what with Bomba wanting a piece of the action, as well.

And, it's going to be a busy July:

1. Saturday, 9th July 2011, 2.30 pm. Silverfish Writer's Forum. For this session we will be joined by a critique group of SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators). Linda Tan is the Regional Advisor for SCBWI in Malaysia and president of the local chapter. SCBWI is the largest  organisation dedicated to people who write, illustrate and are involved in children's books, covering various mediums from print to TV. Their HQ is in Los Angeles. There are more than 70,000 SCBWI members worldwide. The critique group is one of SCBWI's key activities in many countries. Many have found such groups to be supportive and helpful. The forum is open to anyone, especially those interested in children's books. Admission free.

2. Saturday, 16th July 2011, 5.30pm. Book Launch. The Amok of Mat Solo by Salleh ben Joned (a book that no one dared to publish or perform on stage for over twenty years) will be launched by Royal Prof Ungku Aziz, with a few songs (unplugged) by the talented Anna Salleh to celebrate her father's recent 70th birthday.

He was no rebel,
no avenger he,
the cause of his anger was a trivial thing,
a manhood insulted was a trivial thing.

The Ballad of Mat Solo (1981) -- Poems Sacred and Profane.

We will also celebrate Silverfish Books' 12th Anniversary on that day -- yes, we have been around that long -- and hold our grand shop-warming party (at the new premises) at the same time. Admission free.

3. Saturday, 23rd July 2011, 5.30pm. Readings from 2 books, Anarki di Kuala Lumpur by Mohd Jayzuan (Sang Freud Press) and Kasino by Saifullizan Tahir (Fixi). If you have never been to a frinjan event, you have to come to this to redeem your faith in the Malay writing scene. This is where it is all happening.

4. Saturday, 30th July 2011, 5.30pm. Book launch of DUKE by Rozlan Mohd Noor, another Inspector Mislan mystery in which he solves the twin Dukexpressway Murders, by the author of 21 Immortals. Here is a synopsis:

A married man and his young woman companion, whom he is planning to marry in Thailand shortly, are found dead in a car locked from the inside, with gunshot wounds, during Ramadan, on the DUKExpressway leading out of the city. It looks like an obvious case of murder-cum-suicide to all but Inspector Mislan, who is surprised by the amount of political interference and pressure he gets to close the case quickly, and at the attempts to frame him up for the fall.

Another great Malaysian crime novel by Rozlan Mohd Noor, with an ending that will surprise even the most ardent fan of the genre.

Admission is free to our last bash before Ramadan starts.

5. Silverfish Writing Programme that starts on the 16th of July, 2011 has been fully subscribed. Participants are encouraged to attend any or all of the events above to get themselves aquainted with the KL literary scene, and the standards to expect.

(I am not putting up any other post this month, so it is all summarised here. (Too busy moving, lah.) Raman 

Wisdom of crowds (or not)

Read this report by Brandon Keim in Wired Science and you can download a free pdf file of the full paper from here. Although it is not directly related to book publishing (or selling) it is a phenomenon that has puzzled me for decades.

In a paper titled How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect, (edited by Burton H. Singer, University of Florida), authors Jan Lorenz, Heiki Rauhut, Frank Sweitzer and Dirk Helbing found that, “Although groups are initially “wise,” knowledge about estimates of others narrows the diversity of opinions to such an extent that it undermines the wisdom of crowd effect in three different ways. The “social influence effect” diminishes the diversity of the crowd without improvements of its collective error. The “range reduction effect” moves the position of the truth to peripheral regions of the range of estimates so that the crowd becomes less reliable in providing expertise for external observers. The “confidence effect” boosts individuals’ confidence after convergence of their estimates despite lack of improved accuracy." The recent global financial crisis is given as an example.

In lay language: In the study, members of one group used their own mental capacity to arrive at answers, and they got it mostly right. In the other group, when members are allowed to be influenced by answers of others, the answers became skewed, less accurate.

The authors say, “When individuals become aware of the estimates of others, they may revise their own estimates for various reasons: People may suspect that others have better information, they may partially follow the wisdom of the crowd, there may be peer pressure toward conformity, or the group may engage in a process of deliberation about the facts.”

This is something I have wondered about for a long time. (It is also for this reason we do not promote self-help and management books, though we sell a few. Please read the primary sources and make up your own mind, we’d say.)

One only has to visit any social networking site to witness the phenomenon, the hysteria of misinformation, everyone trying to influence everyone else. Social networks are neither good nor bad, they merely mirror society. While the mathematical model is fascinating (and does agree with many of my lay observations), I am more interested in the ‘why’. Are we hardwired that way? Is it part of our survival or coping mechanism? Are we merely being manipulated? (My assumption here is that the truth is better than the lie, though I am not interested in a Socratic argument about it. Am I being biased?)

From Thesaurus online:

TRUTH: accuracy, actuality, authenticity, axiom, case, certainty, correctness, dope, exactitude, exactness, fact, facts, factualism, factuality, factualness, genuineness, gospel truth, gospel, honest truth, infallibility, inside track, legitimacy, maxim, naked truth, nitty-gritty, perfection, picture, plain talk, precision, principle, rectitude, rightness, scoop, score, trueness, truism, truthfulness, unvarnished truth, veracity, verisimilitude, verity, whole story

LIE: aspersion, backbiting, calumniation, calumny, deceit, deception, defamation, detraction, dishonesty, disinformation, distortion, evasion, fable, fabrication, falsehood, falseness, falsification, falsity, fib, fiction, forgery, fraudulence, guile, hyperbole, inaccuracy, invention, libel, mendacity, misrepresentation, misstatement, myth, obloquy, perjury, prevarication, revilement, reviling, slander, subterfuge, tale, tall story, vilification, white lie, whopper

Below are two short stories which may or may not be related but have made me sit up and think.

One. When I was in college (more than forty years ago) I witnessed an incident. I lived in Block E of the Fifth College (yes, they were not very creative in naming the blocks or colleges). It was custom (a strange one, admittedly) to jeer any visitor from another block. This was normally done in good humour. Once, however, it turned ugly. The visitor was initially jeered and called names, as usual, which he acknowledged with a smile and a wave, as usual, then someone threw something. Soon an entire mob descended on him and proceeded to beat the poor chap as he ran to safely. I looked on from the third floor, where my room was, in shock. I was helpless. Although I was a senior member of the block, there was nothing I could do. That was my first introduction to a mob.

Two. I was in Trengganu in the seventies when I heard about the death of a close friend. I only heard it this morning, I said when some friends met in Kuantan that evening. Then someone else said, he heard it the night before, and, so, started the combative conversation, louder and more insistent. Someone else insisted she had heard it the morning before that, until it reached a point when one person claimed she heard of the incident the day before the death actually occurred! I could only sit and admire. It was a combative conversation at its finest!

Raman

Weirdoes and nut-jobs

Not too long ago I wrote about publishing being a weird business and that, ‘In none other will one meet so many weirdos and nut-jobs.’ Many of my customers were quite amused by that thinking, perhaps, I was referring to them. None of my them seemed offended (not to with me, anyway). I suspect that people who read books do entertain (and even celebrate) the notion that they are somewhat different from the herd. Truth is, they are. Readers are a minority in any country. The book industry of the past two (or three) decades was just that: an industry. It lived in an alternate reality. Books are not dead, they said. More titles were published every year (though one wonders why). But, nevertheless, books were dying, smothered by the very hands responsible for keeping them alive.

‘Readers’ became mindless consumers herded by cynical, relentless mass marketing pressure. It became all about books that ‘must be read’, complete with midnight queues. ‘Book discovery’ and real reading moved to the fringes. The fanboy (and girl) took over. One customer said she felt manipulated. Indeed, she was, we all were; manipulated to the point where we admitted we liked something when we didn’t -- like believing ‘Coke’ is good for health, or ‘... he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me’. It felt dirty. It was dirty.

Does all this sound elitist? Some use that word, without fully understanding its implications of power, influence and (worst of all) class. ‘Intellectual’ is close but not its implications of superior mental capacities. It’s about knowledge. Since the 80s intellectualism (in this country, for sure) has been taking a beating and has been cowering in ‘shame’ against the onslaught of the ‘common man’, and mediocrity; a swing to the right, of unbridled capitalism that gave nothing back (all, ironically, in the name of democracy). Greed was good, a virtue. ‘It’s not my fault if people are stupid and want to give me all their money.’

(Some years ago, when I first set up shop) I was having a long conversation about the media with a newspaper person ... about newspapers insulting the intelligence of readers ... yada, yada ... when I asked him at what level newspapers were pitched. He hesitated for a moment, and then said that in England the newspapers were typically pitched at 16-year-olds. (I was taken aback and I hoped he was speaking of tabloids, otherwise it would be too depressing.) “How about Malaysia?” I asked. He hesitated again before saying softly, “Lower.” It was scary, but sort of explained the level of intellectual debate (or the lack of it).

Question: “Would you rather have a discussion with someone coming from a position of knowledge, or someone coming from a position of ignorance?” Would you consider the two positions be exactly equal and valid?

Anyway, coming back to weirdoes and nut-jobs, I think I have mentioned (in earlier columns) about the father who wanted his school-leaving daughter to take up writing because JK Rowling made so much money. (The girl was not particularly interested.) Then there was this father who grabbed his daughter and bolted out of the shop and down the stairs when Phek Chin asked if he was going to buy the book the child just tore. (He had the audacity to come back, but still refuse to buy that book.) And we have had so many customers who looked like taxi drivers or Bandaraya workers, who’d quietly browse through every shelf for hours and, just as we think they are not going to buy anything, bring a stack of books to the counter worth RM300.

We once had this customer when we were in Desa Seri Hartamas who, on his first day, spent about two (or three) hours going through our shelves. He came back the next day and spent another two hours. He didn’t buy anything. On the third day I got a little nervous and I decided to talk to him. He said he was a labourer with Tenaga and that he liked books but he couldn’t afford them. I told he could browse as long as he wanted and that he could even sit at our tables and read them. I suppose I must have made him very happy from the way he smiled. He said, “Thank you sir, thank you sir,” repeatedly, until I started feeling a little embarrassed. The next day was Sunday. We were open and he spent eight hours in the shop. (He declined tea) We saw him a few more weeks after that, then he stopped coming.

At the other end of the spectrum is that loud know-it-all customer who will talk your ears off, drop names, try to impress you with his knowledge (God know why) and then leave without buying anything, only to repeat the performance on another day. Some will go through all your shelves and ask you for an author or title they know is not there. (Sometimes I will have it in another place, but when I get it for them he (almost always a he) will say that he prefers the ‘other’ cover -- whatever.)

I am sure I have mentioned the oily ones who'd throw their manuscripts on the table and tell you it is a sure bestseller, and the indignant ones who will shout at you and call you names when you decline to publish theirs (for whatever reason).

Still, when you come across a manuscript that works, you become so delirious it makes everything worthwhile.