On the Horizon

News for Singapore Publishers

This is the newsletter we produce for members of the Singapore Book Publishers Association. News of importance to the region, with the SBPA take. We have a separate newsletter with news of SBPA activities.

Minister's call to publishing industry

Here's an extract from Minister for Culture, Youth and Sports (and Second Minister for Information) Lawrence Wong's speech at the gala dinner for the Singapore Literature Prize:

?And I hope we can continue to work with publishers and literary associations all year round. I also hope the industry can come up with new strategies to be more effective in marketing and outreach, especially to the young where reading habits are different now. There is now technology, and a lot more time spent on the internet. The reading habits of the young now would be quite different and we need to adapt to these realities.?

We are following up the Minister's speech with a proposal to the National Library Board to collaborate to survey reading habits in Singapore. Among other things we'd like to have more information on the prevalence of e-book piracy, the amount of e-reading via libraries and also get a better sense of the offshore business (books purchased by Singaporeans from offshore outlets like Amazon UK or Australia).

News from Singapore & the region

Thailand Surveys Reading Habits
The headlines: reading books is up, but not as much as reading on internet and smartphones

Are local children's books truly representative?
Gender bias in the Singapore Literary Awards?
Male privilege, Chinese privilege? Storm in a teacup? Or sign of more to come? Looks like the culture wars are coming to Singapore.

An Interview with Amir Muhamad, Buku Fixi
An in-depth interview with a very talented Malaysian publisher, winner of the Bookseller International Independent Publisher of the Year Award.

Channel News Asia looks at self-publishing vs traditional publishing
Gives a lot of airtime to self-publishing, though in the end it's quite a balanced piece. You see how easily publishers can be a target, or portrayed as unsupportive of writers We should increase our media profile, so that a publisher will be called next time such a story is proposed...

Great Ideas from around the world:

Children's publishers: bring your illustrators to paint murals in hospitals
Bring the talent of your illustrators to new settings - and for a great cause

Use Ingrams print-on-demand for your international distribution
It works for small publishers in India and New Zealand.

Loan ebooks to MRT readers via QR codes
It worked in Moscow. Anyone want to put a project together?

Work together to define our R&D requirements
Here's what the Europeans have done.