Mommy porn on the Kindle

When I first read a report that said paperback sales were down by 25% year to year, but hardback sales were holding its own, I was surprised. I thought, it would be the other way round because e-books do cost substantially less than first editions, but not the cheaper paperbacks. Then I read another story, Ebooks are rekindling women's x rated reading, it all began to make sense. The Kindle is the perfect device for consuming pornographic media, especially 'mommy porn'!

I am surprised I didn’t see it earlier, although I did have a nagging feeling of a piece missing from the logic puzzle, somewhere. How could I not have seen it? Porn has always driven technology. Let’s go back to the VCD and VHS craze from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. The explosion in the sales of these devices was mind-blowing. Was there really that much media to consume, even taking into account the addictive Hong Kong soaps. One day (I was living in Puchong at the time) a neighbour invited my wife and me for drinks because we were new there. Maybe, there was little to talk about after the niceties were over; maybe, it was because the men and the women were having different conversations; maybe he thought, since I am a man, I was constantly horny, he decided to show me his collection of video tapes. He had about thirty of them and every one was porn, with nothing left to the imagination in the cover art. Being neighbourly and all, he offered to let me borrow them. I declined, saying that I didn’t have a VHS player, a declaration that had him gaping at me in disbelief. He offered to let us watch it on his player in his house, to which I said, “Yes ... maybe ... one day,” but never brought that subject up again.

Bad press

Porn has always had a bad press, but if one dares to look at it objectively, it has been the game changer, the killer app, in more industries then we care to admit. Almost overnight, the VCD/VHS phenomena facilitated the consumption of porn in the privacy of living rooms (and bedrooms). I’m not going to be judgemental about this, but some disturbing stories did emerge: a close friend, who used to send her son to a baby-sitter in our neighbourhood, was shocked to find him watching porn with the family in the living room of their house when she went to pick him up early one day, unannounced. (We used to wonder where he learnt some of his more colourful vocabulary -- he was in kindergarten --  though we tried not to make too much of it.)

Next, came the DVD revolution; porn in high definition -- don’t even try to visualise it, or you will be struck down by a thunderbolt. One only had to ask the sales staff of the electrical appliance stores which brand and which model was good for pirated media and, in particular, porn. (There was one major international brand – no names mentioned here – that insisted on being ‘kosher’, but found its market share dropping so fast that it quickly released a jail-broken model for the local and regional markets.)

The next major game changer was the internet browser, Netscape. “Wah! Fantastic man; just type ‘xxx’ and you can watch all the porn you want,” drooled a colleague. I dare say I was one of the early adopters of the computer – from the IBM 1130 in the university, to the LSI desktop at work and the Apple 11e at home. But I was so far behind the loop on this one: the entire office was talking about porn on the net, and I was still fiddling about with spread sheets.

Mommy porn

Then, Amazon.com became a favourite place to buy porn magazines -- Playboy, Hustler, you name it -- and have it delivered to your home discretely wrapped in brown paper, eliminating the risk of being spotted procuring them from magazine stands at railway stations like a perv.  Next stop: Android, of which Steve Jobs famously said, “Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone.” Guess what? They did. But with Apple keeping porn off the iPhone, it's a win-win situation : buy your kids iPhones and iPads for Christmas, and get yourself an Android for private use.

And now, it’s Kindle time! When Silverfish first opened shop, a major distributor, who deals primarily in best-sellers, brought us a box of then popular romance novels to choose from, but we declined for fear of being hammered by our customers because there were too many visuals of bursting bustiers on the covers. Now, if you are a Jackie-O look-alike, sitting at the lobby of a five-star hotel, in your leopard-skin pillbox hat, reading from a Kindle while waiting for your appointment, and he walks in in his business suit, what’s going to be his first comment? About what you are reading, or about your Kindle? Would he care if you are reading Dostoevsky or mommy porn? Okay, fast forward three years later: still same coffee shop, still same hat, the novelty has worn off, and you are reading the latest collection of essays by Milan Kundera. Would prefer to  read that in public on a Kindle, or a ‘book’ book? One thinks, you would rather be caught holding the latter, a hardback if possible for, now (as before), it’s about bragging rights. Second, you don't want anyone to assume you are reading ‘mommy porn’.

Evolution

Men would be in the same boat too, of course, but one suspects our nether regions are more readily titillated by visual imagery than by prose. That would probably explain why, while the earlier tech revolutions were led by men, this one, with the e-book, will be dictated by women.

Blame it on evolution.

Indie survival guide in the post tsunami book world

(for authors, publishers and retailers)

Small guys are zilch

I read a story some years ago in Time magazine, about why big businesses are better than small ones. There was a story of a Japanese convenient store business in a small town where the owner knew all her customer; chats with them for a while and serves them tea before they depart with some groceries. Moral of the story: it is nice customer experience, but inefficient. Imagine the number of burgers McDonald's would have flipped within that half hour! I read another similar story in the Economist recently. The bottom line: economics is important, culture is not (except for tourists -- and that's economics). And small inefficient businesses, no matter how much cultural cache they hold, have no business existing.

Biodiversity

I am no economist, but I'm a believer in biodiversity. Don't put all your eggs (not that kind, you filthy mind) in one basket, every child is taught. Wrong advice? When a big guy (like Borders) goes down, the entire industry is shaken up. Books are returned, remainder-book dealers are overstocked, retailers dealing in them have a great time and, consequently, more major stores wobble. It's happening in Malaysia; just ask anyone in the industry. If a few small guys go under, they'd be replaced by others with hardly a ripple. The new bogeyman in that universe is the e-book. A major chain in the city that halved the size of its largest outlet recently and moved one floor down, gave the e-book excuse in a newspaper story. Please, who are you kidding? You had a bad business plan, one that could only succeed with a backer with infinitely deep pockets.

A lecturer in my engineering school would say, "When in doubt, go back to first principles." The era of the major book store is over. It was an aberration to begin -- huge floor spaces in expensive down-town malls, selling low margin bestsellers at crazy discounts (ostensibly for market share) was a doomed strategy from the start. That formula didn't last a decade. So, now, we have to get back to basics.

Vermin survive holocausts

Books are culture. Bookselling is part of that culture. As much as the Harvard types want to reduce it to a commodity, the only hope for the book (dead-tree or digital) lies with the indies, the small guys -- authors, publishers and retailers. Particularly, in the last two decades, authors have been blinded by the dazzle of that big fat advance. I read in the newspapers recently that the chances of winning a certain American lottery is one in 176 million. About the same for authors who want to get on the international bestsellers' list, maybe less. Many Asian authors who publish in UK and the US, disappear after the second book, if that. The reality is grim, but that does not mean authors need to despair. Few authors can be all things to everybody. (It is not a surprise that there is only one JK Rowling in the entire population of the world.)

How is the book going to survive, then? By going small. Authors, keep your day jobs and become the champion of your town, your province, your country, your part of the world, in your genre. Enrich your community, your culture; you will be remembered for a hundred years because nobody worships  heroes like small towns. With e-books, your work can still be made available worldwide at a relatively low cost. Let Amazon work for you, not you for them. However, treat any income from that source as a bonus. Your gravy will come from those who live with you, who identify with your writing. Do the local circuits; it costs a lot less. Visit schools, colleges, universities, libraries, clubs, and give talks at indie book stores, rotary meetings, at any place that will have you. Do your social thing. You have to push your book yourself. The publisher who helped you get it out there is probably too poor to do much. Publishers, promote your local writers; forget about the big hitters unless you specialise in translations. Be disciplined, stay focussed on your niche and be the best that you can be. Don't let the temptation of riches lead you astray. Enjoy what you do. Publish different formats. Have multiple revenue streams. Go into retail. Get thrilled when someone from across the globe recognises what you do. Retailers, what is there to say? I have never felt more impersonal than in a chain store; I have never felt impersonal at an indie. Indie retailer, ever thought of going into publishing? Become the Shakespeare & Co of your town. Do your thing. Host your town authors; be the nerve centre of your town.

Little guys are like vermin. And, like cockroaches, we will survive a nuclear holocaust. Hundreds of small indie publishers and retailers were trampled on and destroyed by the behemoths in the first decade of the new millennium. Now that the invaders have left, or self-destruct, it's time for us to rise again. (Sounds like a sci-fi movie; War of the Worlds? Listen to the soundtrack!)

It's the product, stupid

And, indie authors, publishers and retailers, embrace technology, technology, technology. You know the best part? There is so much free stuff on the internet, its crazy. Beware some bloodsuckers offering 'free' software; they can be damned sneaky. But most are genuinely good people. Search for 'open source'. These are the angels. (I still haven't found a good free alternative for inDesign and Illustrator, though.) Visit the Silverfish Books website that has been entirely built for free (not counting sweat and tears). A CEO of a major chain recently boasted that he spent a million ringgit on their on-line store. I remained quiet. I paid zilch. But then, one can only do the free stuff if you are small and don't have a Board of Directors hovering. If there is one thing I have learnt, it's that the PC and the web are the great levellers, a boon to all indies, no matter what trade you are in. In particular, they have brought  down the cost of entry into the book industry. Silverfish Books would not have been possible without the computer and the internet. Be careful; let technology work for you, not the other way round. Go at it with a vengeance.

As Steve Jobs would have said, "It's the product, stupid!"

PARAH or HARAP?

As we were walking towards our car after the last performance of Alfin Sa'at’s PARAH, at Pentas 2 in KLPAC in early February, a friend said about her relative, “My sister won’t get it lah. She’ll say … see, see, see … I told you so!” I guess that would be the reaction of more than a few in the audience. (One person in the audience asked it the book, Interlok, is real.)

 Alfian’s play was like a punch in the stomach, designed to wake one up, to get a grip. But I felt there were many things that were not there. Certainly, the writer and the director would have had to decide what to leave out, or we would have been in Pentas 2 for a week. And as an editor, I understand that the most difficult task a writer faces is what to leave out. This is no criticism of Alfian’s play or Jo Kukathas’s direction -- they both did fantastic jobs, as did the actors. And I liked the way the play was produced in Malay (move out of the way DBP, the language belongs to the people, not to bureaucrats and politicians); English would have sounded so elitist and condescending.

I remember my first awareness of racism. We (my family) used to live in Johor, and we were visiting relatives in Bukit Timah in Singapore. I was sitting with the ‘men’ in the living room, while my mother, sister and my younger brother were in the kitchen. I was about thirteen, I think. My uncle was complaining to Father about his children running around with 'all those Chinese boys'. I dared not breathe. I stole a glance at Father, and saw him keeping a studious silence. He did not say anything apart from a ‘hmm’, which could have been interpreted either as acceptance or rejection.

I had never kept my Chinese and Malay friends a secret, nor did I try too hard to suppress my over-exuberant teenage hormones. My Chinese friends satisfied my nerdy needs, while my Malay friends -- many of whom were from the Police quarters on Jalan Masjid -- were simply great fun. (We loved music, but we also did many naughty things on the side, but in secret.)

During the drive home, I didn’t know if I was going to ‘get it’. I kept very quiet, trying to be as polite as I possibly could without throwing up. (That might have helped -- or not.) Father did not say a word either -- not in the car, not at home, not for weeks, months or years. He never did.

Another time was at the school padang, during the rugby season. I was with the field hockey crowd, and our season was over, but that didn’t stop us from knocking the ball around on the periphery, while watching the rugby game in progress.  Before long, the rugby ball rolled (or tumbled) in our direction, and one of my friends, Yoges (not his real name), decided to be helpful and tried to kick it back. Unfortunately, being aerodynamically challenged, the ball flew off at a tangent. Halim (not his real name), who was running towards us at that time, let out a tirade of swear words in several languages, complete with pariah, keling and 'descendants of slaves', questioned the legitimacy of our citizenships and our births. I was stunned because, first, I thought Halim was my friend and, second, because I had never heard the words being used with such venom. He was quickly escorted away by his friends (all Malay) and we, still stunned, decided to call it a day.

But, it was not until I arrived in KL in May 1969 that I saw how ugly it could get. On the first day in campus, I was forced to choose a side, and if I was seen with someone of a different colour, I'd hear, “Are we not good enough for you?” If you were Indian and you couldn’t speak Tamil you had it (even if you spoke Malayalam or Telugu or some other language at home). My Chinese friends (some of whom were Hokkien or Babas) had to live with the constant snide remarks, “Chinese also cannot speak Chinese,” because they didn't speak Cantonese. One (now a prominent politician) told me, "My parents say I can marry any girl I want as long she is not Kek (Hakka)." The Malays didn’t know what hit them -- yes they were referred to as ‘them’ when one was polite and many other things when one was not. I had never seen such ugliness in Johor.

Coming back to Alfian’s play, I couldn’t help feeling that he was a little unsympathetic towards the Malay character. While Kahoe and Mahesh were subject to racism, Hafiz only freaked out because he didn’t know who his parents were. (It could have been the playwrights metaphor for the Malay condition; having destroyed so many of their roots, they no longer know who they are, and that bothers them.) How about the constant taunts and slights Malays face: Melayu bodoh, Melayu malas, Melayu balek kampong, etc? The polite term in Tamil for a Malay man is Malai-karan, and the derisive reference is normally natukaran -- countryman -- a pretty benign term.  But the Hokkien term, huan-na, savages, is anything but. I have been told by my source that it has similar connotations to the term 'nigger', but she thinks the speakers don't realise how offensive the word is. That might be the case, but it's still a horrible, horrible thing to say. My source also says, she thinks, there is no other word for the Malay people in Hokkien! True? Someone, please, please, please, say it's not. (Indian's are referred to as keling-a, but increasingly the term In-toh is used.)

Two stories:

One, I was giving a ride to two of my wife’s friends. They were talking about this and that and, as usual, it veered towards social justice (or injustice). “It is all for their kind only lah. They can do anything they want, they still get everything.” (I asked my wife when we came home, “Why did they speak like that? They don’t even know me.")

Two, I was driving with three friends towards Pudu looking for bak-kut-teh along the crowded Jalan Tun Perak when I swore, “Aiyah, I wish they’d watch where they are going.” This friend, who was at the back, said, “Never mind, you can run over and kill a few. There are too many of them, anyway.” I was shocked. Sometimes, I think I should have stopped the car and told her to get out. But she was laughing. Did she think it was a joke? Did she think she was being clever? Did she think the rest of us would have agreed with her? Did she speak that way because all her other friends did? Did she think it was fashionable to be a racist? Is racism merely a fashion?

Why the hell did the rest of us tolerate that?

Why are UK books so crappy?

When I finally got my hardcover copy of 1Q84 some two months ago, I was appalled. It was the UK edition – the paper was coarse, the printing uneven, typography chunky and the cover design cheesy. I kept drooling over the American editions I saw online. You can accuse me of being fussy or call me a “Yankee lover’, but facts are facts. I have been selling books for over 12 years, and I have never understood why UK editions of the same titles are so crappy. Britain produces more titles per capita than any other country in the world.

Some years ago, when we were selling the Faber & Faber edition of Orhan Pamuk’s My name is Red, in A-format, another distributor imported an American edition of the same title (albeit in the larger B-format) with a selling price of RM39.90 (that is, 5sen less than the British edition). We took 20 copies immediately, not because it cost 5sen less, but because it was far better designed and manufactured. The difference was so apparent, it was embarrassing. Why are you still selling that crap edition, some customers asked? Yes, the British edition really did look bad. The book was twice as thick, threatened to scream like a vestal virgin if one opened it out by more than 15 degrees (wtf… how does one read it?), had schoolboy typography, was printed on cheap yellowing bulky newsprint, and looked as if it was cyclostyled using a 1950s Gestetner.

Have you ever seen the UK Vintage edition (also-A format) of JM Coetzee’s Disgrace? I will toss it even if it comes with a free magnifying glass. Don’t even ask about the page layout, text margins and alignment, typography, binding and printing. Okay, the A-format is really meant for us poor third-world country cousins; the natives should be grateful. But how does one explain the difference in quality in the B-formats? Take an American edition of a Vintage, place it side by side with a UK edition of the same title, same format, and you will see the difference – quality of paper, design, typography, printing and binding. And you know what? The American book would often cost less. (Even if it cost more, I’d prefer to pay the extra – the book will open smoothly and comfortably to at least 150 degrees, will not threaten to break its spine, be easier on the eyes and will not yellow so easily.)

One can also compare American and UK Penguin paperbacks (or any other common imprint) side by side. UK editions fare less badly in the case of hardbacks, but they still cannot compare with the ones from the US: more stylish, better printed and bound and, usually, cheaper.

Some years ago, Silverfish published a book by an Englishman (who was in Kuala Lumpur for the 2004 literary festival). He bought several copies of his book to give/sell to friends and to place in a local bookshop. He later sent me an email saying how surprised most people were at the quality. In Frankfurt, too, I’ve got very favourable comments (though, to me, the East – the Czech ambassador insists it’s Middle -- European books are to die for).

Recently, I had an interesting exchange of emails with a publisher in the UK. When he was here last year, I had suggested that he print the books in Malaysia to save costs. He had also been impressed with the quality of our books. He sent me an email recently, saying that he was finally ready and asked me to get him a quote. I gave him a list of things I’d need for a proper quote, including a cover design in Adobe Illustrator with proper crop/registration marks and colour bars. The text document he had attached (pdf) was in A4 size and appeared to have been done on a word processor. (I didn’t even bother to comment on the typography.) His return email asked why I wanted all those things – he had his cover design only in Photoshop. When I suggested that Photoshop might not be the best design tool, he threw a hissy fit, saying that’s how it was done in the UK, how they’d simply give printers the pdfs of the text and covers for them to sort out, how what I was asking seemed like a lot of ‘faff’, and that ‘these are book covers, not works of art!’ implying that it was about time tree-dwellers learnt how the modern world worked.

I told him he could do it himself. Sheesh.

A joke, albeit a cruel one, often heard, in the shop is about the quality of books from India – with their crooked layout, ‘potato-printing’ text with missing words/lines/paras and the recycled ‘toilet-paper’ pages. But, the quality of books from India is improving rapidly and, the way things are going, will soon be better than those from the UK.

First, they forgot how to make nice cars. Now, they can’t even make nice books.