 How are you all doing? A very pleasant day to all of you. My name is Butch de Lisai. I'm a writer and professor here at the University of the Philippines. I'll be your host for this episode of Cultura Scenic at Ibapa, a project of TBUP of the University of the Philippines. Today we have a very interesting episode devoted to publishing in the Philippines and with me to co-host the program is a poet and fellow professor at UP, Neil Garcia. But today he's going to be also a guest on the panel because he happens to be the director of the University of the Philippines press. Neil Garcia. Yes, hello. Good day to everyone. Let's just make this a conversation. So I will be host but also guest. And we can now begin I think by introducing or asking our guests to introduce themselves. Let's begin from the right. Yes, I'm John Jack Wigley and I'm the director of the U.S.D. Publishing House. I'm Neni Santa Romana Cruz. I'm the chair of the National Book Development Board. Hello everybody. I'm Andrea Pachon of Florida's GM. Hello, I'm Karina Bolasco, the director of the Ataneo de Manila University Press. Yes. So Neil Garcia, director of UP Press and host for today's episode on publishing. I think we should begin by asking each of our guests to share their views on what the publishing industry in the Philippines is like and whether we have enough authors, we have enough books and enough readers. Okay. Well, I'm going to talk about the U.S.D. Publishing House experience. I believe that there seems to be more authors than readers. No, that's an overstatement. We publish all year around 40 plus manuscripts and some of them are literary, others are scholarly and there is absolutely no shortage of writers. But of course the selling of the books is another matter. So I think this is we'll try to sort the problems and the challenges and the issues facing the academic presses today. But yes, I believe that there are writers in the Philippines and in the U.S.D., in U.S.D. we have books ranging from literary to scholarly. We've published a dictionary on Bisual which won, I think, a national award for this and so some of them are groundbreaking but then again I think this problem of selling the book stems from the fact that I don't know if this is a problem really but the Philippines generally has this possesses what you call a reading culture because entertainment venues and spaces such as cinemas, concert halls and malls are what draw crowds. But when we talk about let's say books and readers that's an ultimately different problem. You've mentioned about 12 issues right there. So there's going to be a lot to unpack and I'm sure we can also ask the others about their experience. Our listeners know what they're going to be listening to for the next 45 minutes or so but before we get into those issues and I know that of course the guests here have a lot to say about these things. Let's go back to a basic question what is publishing because in the thinking of a lot of people it's just printing like you're making a book what exactly does a publisher do? Nanny would you like to answer that? Nanny by the way is not a publisher herself but she works for the National Book Development Board which brings all of these publishers together. Okay the principal mandate of the National Book Development Board which is today 22 years old created by law to provide incentives for the publishing industry. So what do we do? We have tax free importation of paper we have awards recognizing outstanding books we have capacity building activities so that when our authors and publishers go overseas we go beyond selling the book as commodity but we are now looking into selling rights of our books. So it's a big industry to work with to work for considering the limited budget we have because publishing is not yet considered by the government a very critical industry. So we try everything and we are an attached agency of the Department of Education because the constituents of the department are supposed to be our principal readers but that's another issue all together. So what we try to do is promote a reading culture promote readership highlight our local authors, illustrators designers and publishers. Okay Nanny just gave us an overview of what the NBDB does that's kind of at the at the back end of publishing. After all the books they are all published and now NBDB is available to help our publishers. But again, let's go back to the first question. What is the work of the publisher? So I'm going to ask Greya who is also with the NBDB by the way as its former executive director Greya what do publishers do? Publishers do a lot of work as I have recently just been. So when a writer has a manuscript perhaps it is acquired by an editor the editor puts another layer of value to the manuscript perhaps by structuring the kits in it making sure that it is ready for the reader. The publisher is also in charge of making sure that it might be what the reader wants in terms of say this is the proper size for the book is it the best cover for it to be picked up by the particular market identified by both the publisher and the writer the publisher must be able to connect the book to the reader in terms of distribution whether this is to the brick and mortar or online he must or she must have that network of things that might be able to do this warehousing which is the operations she might have people around the publishing house that might also help the writer connect with other markets aside from games. A lot of work. Sounds like it. So technically you take care of editing of the layout and design of printing. You process manuscripts raw manuscripts into books and that's a lot of work because it involves finessing the text also for scholarly or academic process it involves fact checking and indexing and doing all sorts of other things and then you have to provide the right package for that text in other words actual cover and that's also work because you have studies and you get input from the author you get input from your artists etc and then you publish the book and then you market the book which is probably the hardest part as Jack was saying because we do have a very precarious distribution system in the Philippines in the sense that you only have basically the monopoly of national bookstore as the largest network to distribute books. And as we know year after year the bookshelf the shelf space for Filipino titles in the NBS branches is shrinking and so we have to look for alternatives sort of venues really to distribute the books. We'll go into those issues later. Just to add to the publishing cycle we also establish the relationship with the author so you sign a contract which is very important because that's normally this is where most authors are not aware they don't read the fine print and so the publisher also in a way takes care or depending on how much the author gives the publisher they also manage the copyright of the manuscript and the author. Also for after distribution I think the end of the cycle is a kind of feedback system that you get back especially for textbooks because you revise them and even for some trade books because there would be feedback from readers and that goes back to the first stage in the cycle where you rewrite, revise and then it goes again through the same long process. So basically the publisher spends for the whole book. Yes. So you're taking a financial risk in publishing material. Where do you where do you get your authors? How do you make that first contact between publisher and author? Where do they come from? They crawl out of the wood. Their commission works you can a publisher can commission for example in textbook development so you identify authors, possible authors from different universities and you commission the writing of textbooks and they're also submissions. I think every publishing house kind of submission guidelines that are up on their websites. Some presses have deadlines for submission per cycle but for the UP Press and USC it's all year long. It's open the whole year. But I think because we are university presses naturally the manuscripts that we expect will be sourced from the academy. So we get really books or academic titles but we also get creative titles literary titles and they're coming from everywhere sometimes even overseas we get submissions from Filipino-Americans and diasporic Filipinos who have manuscripts. I agree with Jack there is an abundance of manuscripts. We don't have a shortage of writers. There's no problem I think distributing the books and also locating readers. We are competing I think with another kind of literacy which is audiovisual and I think the educational system is aware of that that our young people are moving away from print literacy towards audiovisual literacy. Sooner or later probably instead of term papers our students will submit videos. They will produce their papers as videos because that's their literacy so they shouldn't let go of print literacy or traditional literacy because without it you really cannot produce videos. Videos are premised on scripts and good stories and things like that. It is a problem. We'll talk about new media in a while but you mentioned the term university press. You made up a book in my publishers. I've read about academic publishers children's book publishers and commercial trade books. Can you help me sort out these categories? A university press is really quite distinct because its mandate is to promote academic and scholarly knowledge and so it's normally located in a university. It's part of a university and for UP in particular it's a special operation because we are subsidised by government unlike let's say U.S.T. Press or Ateneo, the Manila Press. In other words our employees actually get their salary from government and we don't source their salary from the funds generated from the sales of our books. So our books, the sales from our books go into basically subsidising more books and also goes into operational expenses for the press. So that's quite specialised and I think, I don't know if Jack or Karina will agree that I think the proper university press does not publish textbooks because academic titles, scholarly titles are supposed to be of a higher of a different quality from just textbooks. But I think that just to be viable because we are having a problem distributing the books we already publish. We have a lot of books in our bodega and I'm sure it's the same for Ateneo and U.S.T. that just to be viable I think some of us are considering publishing textbooks or are actually publishing textbooks. I want to ask Ateneo and U.S.T. about that. Since you come from private universities are you expected to turn the profit? Yes. That's my idea. I think at least not to drain the university budget by taking away from it and maybe the of course the university press people tell me they're not there for a profit but in terms of I wanted to say something about the textbooks because part of the mission is to contribute to nation building and we see textbooks as a major a major way means to influence education and many of the biggest publishers in the Philippines are really textbook publishers. Yes. Actually, that's very true. Anil said that we are subsidized by not really subsidized but we get our budget from the school, from the university itself but at the same time we do not feel, we should not feel that we are like the burden because we have a way of returning self-sufficient publishing house but I think the problem also lies in the on the one hand we feel that we should be a university press because all major universities should have university presses that adds to the prestige of the school but at the same time I also feel like how can we sell the books we cannot just churn, print the manuscripts year in and year out and nothing will be read so there are and then of course some of our even faculty members from USD think that the publishing house the USD publishing house is just for printing and since we are a single campus that's also our advantage I think because we have a very I mean we have like 40,000 students so if we're going to let's say publish a textbook and really get the support and the endorsement from the academic affairs we know in USD that the books are already being sold but at the same time the feeling that of course the university press shouldn't just text books but I agree also with Karina that we should look into that also there should be more the schools in other words what I'm saying is we are already in the middle we want to preserve the prestige of the university press but at the same time we also want to meet and we feel that textbook writing is the fastest way to have an exclusive domain of each other if you look at the example of a big university process abroad they have subsidiary process to take care of textbook publishing because it does subtract the prestige of the university press itself to start publishing textbook so I think maybe that's the model I'm thinking of pursuing for UP press as it is we're publishing books with textbook application possibilities so that's how I sort of justify it they're used as supplementary materials in college courses etc like parasitology we have a book on parasitology which is the only one in the Philippines on parasitology specific to Philippine parasites put together by a team of experts from UPPGH we cannot call it a textbook it's actually a reference book or a supplementary material they use it for their classes so I think to venture into direct textbook publishing the book itself will be a textbook we need to have a subsidiary press to take care of that the reason we can justify that is education and we're downstream really in terms of the educational system we get products from secondary education and from primary education if they come to us damaged then we suffer so how do we intervene we intervene by producing by making sure that the reading materials in let's say high school are of such a quality that more or less the students will be better better served by that we can justify it as being part of its mission to actually dabble in publishing textbooks for senior high school basic question how many students in the Philippines and how many universities we have how common is the university almost every every Philippine university has an office of publication or publications office but not all of them I have something called a university press so how did you know I know LASAL, FEU University of San Carlos I think LASAL yes of course San Carlos Sileman University has the big ones the major universities okay so that's one side of the publishing industry here but Andrea is with commercial publishing it's all about money segment actually stop that Andrea how do your operations differ from these other presses you know, okay so we are a commercial publisher but we are not you're a commercial publisher as we know so we do have it we also have a trade division but you know all commercial the trade we have children what do trade books include trade books include the literary and non-literary non-fiction and fiction so we have book books we have several imprints let's say romance which is not the witch commercial it's not really making the big boxy boxy aspect from it we are not the biggest trade publisher in the country really not that much you're in the grey it's sort of the grey and I think we can be proud that we are primarily a mid-lens publisher which means we are in it for the long game we're not going to take we would love books like that we will not turn it down because it's going to help finance the other books no if you look at the anvil titles it's really quite eclectic so you have cook books you have self-help books you have all these other books but you have very great wonderful literary titles books in social science etc in a way it's like the mother lilies regal films they have a lot of formula things no the background of that was when we because when anvil started it was really mandated or asked to produce a bunch of books that would sell in the book store so at that time everything Filipino books were only academic and scholarly but if you look at the imported books there were so many genres so our job then at the beginning was to produce equivalent titles in all these different genres in the book stores but are written by Filipino authors that's why the range is really amazing I think a very interesting question do Filipino books sell and if they do what do you sell what do you want to buy from the Philippines? what are the best selling titles of U.S. depress for example so we can just talk about that no we'll go down I think because we actually the academic presses are really small but I think the books that sell to us are the authors who have a cult following I think that's one thing with us we have Lourdes Vera we have Tomashans also we have Joey de los Reyes they have books these authors are marketers also they know their market they sell books to sell authors that's a new paradigm for us there are many authors that submit to us they just rely on the publishing house to market and distribute their works and one of the problems is sometimes we encounter a manuscript which we know would really win awards it's a good manuscript but we know probably will have a limited readership or no um that's a tricky question but I think I think it relies on the description then we have an editorial board I usually tell this or present this to the editorial board but of course the final decision has to come from me I know that this is a manuscript that is really worth publishing so what I do is I try to balance it by accepting manuscripts then I have a commercial appeal now we have a commercial UST because our mandate was faith, illumined by reason catholic, pontifical university but now it's a good thing that when I talk to the the priests are young in this case they are a little more open that's why what I do is to augment because we know that to just make a buffer or at least my trade off so I accept manuscripts that are not really that top of the line but I know who has a wide readership we don't have that pressure because our mandate is very clearly to support cultural literacy and to promote national culture as long as our editorial process actually deemed the manuscript worth publishing as long as it passes then we publish it we don't really care much about whether it has a market value whether it makes money or not so you look at our budega it's full of books I'm sure but actually the books are selling the books but I've noticed that certain books move faster than others so what kind of books are these well the best selling titles of UP Press are still the folklore series of Damiana yes each book is very thick so it's already expensive but how many thousand copies is that so oh my god I think 10th printing 11th printing so it's already each print run is 2000 authorized because it really runs out and you know the market for that would be diasporic Filipinos they want to remember where they come from and so they look for these alamats and legends that they had been read to or heard when they were children and so they buy the books so that's those are the best selling titles but then next to those would be actually social science and literary titles the literary titles in particular that sell our fiction titles short stories and novels more English Filipino more English than Filipino but even the Filipino ones to sell if they are written by people like Jun Cruz Reyes and you know they have caught followings or they have recall value already but poetry titles don't sell the simple truth of it all is that poetry books take forever to sell so we have still some copies left of poetry titles that were printed 10 years ago and I'll ask Andrea because they're the closest to the market to the open market out there when Neil mentioned let's say Dr. Uhenyo's book has sold maybe 200,000 copies you should see the checks I signed yes I mean it's a reason for joy but it's also cause for worry because we are publishing abroad and you know they sell in the millions why don't we get to that stage where an author can sell a million copies of his or her book in a country of 100,000,000 people because most of them are supposed to be the queen we're still residually all wrong well I think you know closest to that would be well happy about this stuff okay she has four books that she has published which I think earns a lot of money she can live off those four books Bob Orr's book because those books are adapted in schools okay so if you are not in school you can be assured that your checks will be substantial what makes me for a Filipino best seller how many thousands of copies does it take to be called the best seller here what kind of book any kind of book if it's a cookbook it's probably 5000 copies sold in a year to the end to Deanna's kitchen we should all write cookbooks 30 okay I put books through Deanna we could probably pick up a couple of authors and probably ask them if it's 500 to 1000 copies you can tell already if it's to be measured if it's more general but obviously she's a seller of a piece that's Deanna Carver and probably she is on trying non-traditional media but I think another aspect that you might look at here is the profile of the Philippines yes, which is well, I think the Philippines is a very commercial market and it's probably not what our literary writers might want but literary fiction not just here in the Philippines is really a niche market if you know that that a literary text is much more difficult to read demands more from the reader then you need manager but you do have these crossover books now and then which are acceptable both as literary titles and as popular maybe smaller and smaller circles that when I saw it I knew it was something that would cross markets yes, but there are many of them and not even books I'll read everything and anything so yes, and you can try for UP Press if the book sells out a thousand copies sell out in a year we consider it the best seller and we reprint right away actually we have a policy of books that are sold out within five years we can consider reprinting if we base it on bookstore data what's that Bob Ong for a time 30 or 20 of his titles sold 500,000 copies can you imagine? all together in one year also Miriam Santiago's Stupid is Forever sold more than half a million copies that's an ABS-CBN title and they even followed it up with Stupid is Forever more so it can go that many millions of copies again for our viewers to know these manuscripts is submitted to us will not pass our review process yes but I'd like to ask for example Bob Ong if I how much do I get out of selling a book? 15% of the net sales industry rate is that like at par with the global sample? is it still fair? is it fair? 15% okay but maybe you will choose the people that they make a living from the books Jessica Zaffer for a while I remember and Bob Ong certainly makes a living from the books from your end of things Nenny since you kind of oversee the whole industry what do you think are the basic problems of Philippine publishing? first of all we had a readership survey which is quite outdated now 2012 but we're preparing for a more comprehensive one this year we were given the budget in that survey what were the books they wanted to buy the Bible we don't know if they really read the Bible or they're expected to say Bible top of their head and then cook books and then humor books advice books those are the top constant sellers now I think a basic problem we have Andrea alluded to it is our distribution we have good books we have good authors we have fairs where we highlight award-winning books if we were in the more in the first world countries every library would be required to buy classroom libraries would have it so that is an essential factor here in the Philippines please help me find our public libraries where I can check out books we are very tight with our book budget but I have to buy every book I want to read why is it so during president Ramos's time he showed me a provision on some republic act where there would be public libraries in the municipalities we chose wonderful but when we do that we forget that every year you have to build up the collection and replenish for me that's a very critical question don't we have a champion in government who will undertake the buying of good books for our public libraries we haven't found a constant champion we've had champions who will do it for Nino Yaquino reading day but the next election he won't be there anymore so in PBBY and BDB we were saying Karina had suggested this when we choose communities why don't we use public libraries as one of the criteria along with the basketball courts and other wellness things it's really hard but when I talk to librarians they say but we have public libraries like Kesson City public library is wonderful but it's because it's new I want to visit it two years from now and it's beautiful I asked last month how many books do you have a thousand that's not much and that will be used and you'll have to replenish I maybe just my experience with the press is that especially during the international book fair when all the publishers get to gather in one place in Moa and sell the books our sales come from these municipal libraries actually because we are a government press we are the UP part of the UP system many of them are actually required to buy our books so we sell a number of titles because of that but I don't think it's uniform across all the municipalities of the country only probably the bigger cities will be sending representatives over to buy the books and I think they're mandated by their own governments local governments to actually do that there's a budget allocated to make sure these municipal libraries are supplied with new books every year that's why we have to keep publishing new books because they will not get the old titles anymore they bought them already so we have to have always new titles and like Jack I think our average number of books new books per year was around 40 to 50 titles a year and those are enough actually to bankroll the other books so long as all these municipal libraries do their job and buy the books so we don't really have to try too hard Jack if only the law is being followed and these libraries buy the books because it's also hard for example in the national bookstore they don't accept books anymore which were published like last year or two years ago I brought it up actually it's a virtual monopoly the national bookstore system it's nationwide you cannot just submit books to them and expect them to actually carry them in their branches they select and only their branches only certain branches and so we have to look for alternative venues and the problem there is for example if it's a high volume national bookstore outlet they can only order let's say 5 to 10 copies per title because they don't have a storage room and then if you have a friend who buys let's say 5 or 10 books then all the copies are gone and then they don't take the time to call to restart so that's really a problem and it's sad also because our authors expect to see their titles in national bookstore or national bookstore shelves and they keep making us to kulit why isn't my book there? are you distributing my book or not? and we tell them only in specific branches but probably the 3 copies that they asked for got bought already and so when you visited you didn't see the title anymore actually for university presses there are 2100 university and college libraries if there are only 1000 with social sciences and the rest are specialized our 1000 copies should go theoretically should not warehouse anymore so it's really reaching out to these libraries and maybe we're trying to see how we can do a standing order arrangement which is done in other countries all these municipal libraries these are not municipal libraries these are university and college libraries private but it also includes the state the state universities but that's just a few of the 2100 so we're trying to see a way of setting up a kind of standing order arrangement that if they trust the university press every new title is automatically delivered to the library so they don't have to worry about keeping up with what's the latest that has come out and then we arrange a kind of payment term maybe a package for them the municipal libraries and the public libraries will not want our books they will want the books from Enville or the trade publishers because these are for communities all kinds of people will go there young housewives who want to buy and read romances some will want to look at cookbooks so I think the constitution of a collection for a public library is very different from a university and college library maybe some of our books were used that are history books but then my experience that they do order particularly the bigger cities have been ordering books from us also because the decision system is very easy between new and the government so I think we have an edge there speaking of promotions let me bring up another important question how do we sell Philippine books abroad or Filipino authors you have more experience here than most people since you've been out there also as a literary agent you know what it's like out there what's keeping Filipino books and Filipino authors and being better known overseas well I think for the longest time the one who's really been selling Philippine authors abroad or maybe as a therapy as if you pick up a particular author and study the individual publishers and see what might fit for the particular manuscript who might be its market in the world so that was how I would be selling authors even in Anbu I wouldn't pick up my whole list I would pick up a few of the authors whom I feel might be able to cross borders what does it take to cross borders exactly would you be looking for in an author or a specific work it should be a novel shouldn't it it doesn't have to be a novel as a matter of fact that's a couple of non-fiction oh tell me about it what are those non-fiction titles and you see by the list that he's been doing throughout the years what kinds of books he might be interested in so that's how I would approach selling I am certainly limited by the people I know and it's not just something that I know an editor and he's going to take a book for me it's not really worth that way so personal connections come it's very personal it has something to do with building relationships with not just people but with companies so knowing that over the years what they want building your name as well and that they would be able to trust you that they won't send them a dog because that destroys your reputation and he sends out something that too many of those will mark you are Filipino authors difficult to work with a little bit what do you call it what we're looking for here they don't want to revise they're just speeding that's particularly literary authors because we don't have any literary editors actually but when you get feedback you don't even have to be someone who has a line by line editor you can't be a 5 page feedback that goes through let's say the narrative part the base the themes the building of characters and it's not line by line the characters are flat, not round the language you start from scratch you do them so we have a lot to learn if you want to cross over to the global market with the university process because we get two peer reviews they usually come back with very detailed suggestions for revision and they follow that's why it takes longer my experience with the U.P. Press is that literary manuscripts are either rejected or accepted entirely scholarly manuscripts are mostly rejected the few that are not rejected are actually conditionally approved meaning they have to be revised which is why which is why butch if you look at our catalogue our list of titles we have more literary titles than scholarly ones because the scholarly books actually very few of them pass their review process why is that I think that maybe we can bring up something not quite related to publishing but to the issue of publishing but to the issue of literature itself in the country we have national structures that support creative writing we have the workshops most of the big universities have their own workshops now we have awards we don't have a similar support for academic or scholarly writing so we need to sponsor someone has to think of sponsoring national academic writing workshops where these scholars can actually finesse their manuscripts and turn them into publishable books the research is probably okay which is what the feedback from the reviewers normally say that the research part is okay but the writing is terrible and it's the actual writing that needs some help and so that's where I think we can sort of there's room for improvement but I also wanted to say because one of the questions that we can ask in the book industry in the country what are the strong points or where is it strong and where is it weak I think we recognize that where it is strong is that there is this sort of abundance of talent a potential talent particularly for literary manuscripts so many writers right we don't have a problem sourcing manuscripts but we do have a problem editing the manuscripts and I think we don't have a good editorial culture in the sense that particularly even for literary editing it should be alright for a writer to submit his manuscript for literary editing but most writers wouldn't want that they would just say I'll just give it to another publisher and even the quality we don't have too many good literary editors either we do in-house editing in UP Press but only a couple of my editors are actually qualified to do literary editing and when a manuscript requires that actually I sit down with the author and say it's not covered by the work and you are one of my editors if you need to get him or someone else it's fine but it's your own call you source your own funds to pay your own editor scholarly editing sometimes technical editing we need someone like another economist for an economics manuscript another economist who writes better can probably help you write the pro so that it's better somebody get me a quick run down maybe Andrea e-books what's going on well I think the format of e-books I did it similarly for an enhanced book which uses the kind of content that's the effective that kind of format so I've been noise into e-books is it going anywhere? not really the global trend is that not really they're not doing well also maybe because it's not the kind of thing that might be bought so for the foreseeable future we're still really mainly in print well the e-book bubble has burst I think that's what the watchers are telling us globally it's not delivering the way it's supposed to the sales are going down with the print books going up so in fact it's probably smart or good for us to actually consider e-book publishing or digital publishing as just a minor alternative business model but our primary model should still be print publishing now we're running out of time so again this has been a wonderful conversation but I'd like to ask each of you for a few last words for our listeners getting with you Jack message to our readers sure to our viewers well yeah like I said we've also talked about e-ventures I'm not sure yet I don't know if we could catch up but I think being ahead of a publishing house is very hard especially if you're swimming against the tide we have mandates but at the same time we feel that this is our passion because we want to promote the reading culture of the Filipinos even though we feel that our Filipino books are not represented in commercial publishing, commercial bookstores maybe this is our calling I have been in the connected with the USD publishing house for 10 years now and I still fight the same passion I hope that the future of Philippine publishing is not bleak and we're doing our best to promote our books because if we don't read our fellow Filipinos who will read our books that's all I hope that there will be more readers than authors and that the general public will also take a closer look in reading our books even though we're academic presses I belong to the academic press I feel that it's high time that more Filipinos should know about what we do and what we publish Neni I can see that the board has to be more aggressive go beyond Metro Manila also highlight the local literatures we have so many languages the deaf-edned teaching materials in mother tongue in the different regional languages and it would help if most of our activities went outside Metro Manila and of course my perpetual cry about the access to books it really should be made available to everyone not only those who can afford them thank you yes I think publishers are a partner of schools and of government in promoting literacy in the country and literacy is the condition for the nation without literacy we cannot really have empathy for each other which of course literacy fosters imagination imagination is the foundation of empathy but I think that other than just sourcing, publishing and disseminating books publishers should more and more consider an additional function which is really to help create a social and a critical life for books because it's not enough that you actually produce the book or even put the book on a bookshelf to be bought you also have to sponsor occasions for the books to live and so with the UP Press we have started partnering with such entities as the Institute of Creative Writing and other such bodies within the university sponsoring fora book forums symposia in order for our books to be discussed and appreciated by the academic community so I think maybe that's an additional function that traditionally publishers didn't have to do but now I think we need to consider doing it thank you I guess it's for I'd like to speak to the writers given the question for the writers I think Andrew would love to work with authors who feel that art is collaborative work when you are open to inputs on how to make the book better and I can guarantee that it would come out as a better product and might emphasize product capital P the book is still a commodity that has to reach a consumer and that is a reader and for us and for me in particular the reader is not an amorphous reader is exact you can speak to the reader and you are trying to reach the reader in various ways with publicity and marketing and selling through writes and network and so it's a very a reader is a being it's a human person and so for every imprint that Anvil comes out with we have identified the profile and if the author is willing to talk to that reader and help us shape the manuscript so that it might be better received by the reader I would love to work with that after that thank you I think the problem with books and reading is the same for the problem for theater, local theater local visual arts it's all throughout and I think it's because of the way we teach the arts here we're always like performance oriented so the talented we catch them and we train them whether it's dance, music, writing workshops for everybody but we never do anything about the rest of the class the rest of the 40 who are not as talented or who are not talented at all they're not being taught to be the audience for these artists for these writers we never discuss history Philippine history of our visual arts of our literary arts of our dance or music we never expose our students to our local works not only in literature but when you take the usual art course you will show them the western Picasso and everybody but they probably will be able to recognize a painting but we'll never know any Filipino painter so it's the same all throughout so our we have to develop also our own art history, music history dance history so that this schools can teach it and yeah, raise a generation or teach a generation to appreciate our local works well thank you Karina and again thank you to all our guests today these are the top guns of Philippine publishing I'm Buccellisa and thank you for your continued support of culture, scene and other from TV UP thank you very much