![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Feb. 19th, 2004 02:01 pmAttended a publishing presentation on...Tuesday. Yes, am that lazy even with vacation that I update journal only today. To my horror. most of the people who showed up (and they weren't *that* many---surprise) turned out to be people who were close friends of the presenter, or at least, people knew her family. Even more horror, when, silly me gathered up enough courage to talk to one of them, ask for advise of publishing, and started introducing me to everyone else, and they all invited me for lunch.
There is no worse feeling in the world than sitting down with 20 people who all know each other but don't know you. Got even worse when we were all asked to introduce each other. Scared rabbit that I was, I babbled…>.<
But nightmare lunch aside, this is what they said during the presentation that bothers me:
Guess what the top selling books in the bookstores are? It ain’t the foreign stuff they put the bestseller’s list, no, precious, it’s not. That’s just for advertising purposes (best as I can figure). No, friends, the best selling books in the stores are: (drumroll)
The typical, cheap, trashy Filipino romance novel.
Now this may hardly be news for some of you, but it’s downright depressing for me. =( The local publications that actually do well have to be THESE. On some level, it makes sense: they’ re in tanglish (which means everyone can bloody understand them), they’re inexpensive (putting it mildly) and when Filipinos want to read something, they want to be entertained. These icky romance novels fulfill all three requirements, suggesting that the people who are selling them have brains on some level.
But is just sad. =( Meknows we have talented people. Me knows we have brilliant authors. Will they get the recognition they deserve? Nooooooo. Quality fiction is strictly foreign territory, that's the mindset, precious. >.
There is no worse feeling in the world than sitting down with 20 people who all know each other but don't know you. Got even worse when we were all asked to introduce each other. Scared rabbit that I was, I babbled…>.<
But nightmare lunch aside, this is what they said during the presentation that bothers me:
Guess what the top selling books in the bookstores are? It ain’t the foreign stuff they put the bestseller’s list, no, precious, it’s not. That’s just for advertising purposes (best as I can figure). No, friends, the best selling books in the stores are: (drumroll)
The typical, cheap, trashy Filipino romance novel.
Now this may hardly be news for some of you, but it’s downright depressing for me. =( The local publications that actually do well have to be THESE. On some level, it makes sense: they’ re in tanglish (which means everyone can bloody understand them), they’re inexpensive (putting it mildly) and when Filipinos want to read something, they want to be entertained. These icky romance novels fulfill all three requirements, suggesting that the people who are selling them have brains on some level.
But is just sad. =( Meknows we have talented people. Me knows we have brilliant authors. Will they get the recognition they deserve? Nooooooo. Quality fiction is strictly foreign territory, that's the mindset, precious. >.
