 Okay, so welcome everyone to our next session on day four of the SOA Centre of Taiwan Studies Summer School. Our next session here is publishing in Taiwan Studies. Meet the book series editors. And what we're going to do in today's session, we've invited three book series editors to talk about their experience of promoting Taiwan Studies through the means of publications. And this is the first time we've done this kind of session, but I think it also reflects the changing field of Taiwan Studies. When I first started out studying Taiwan as a PhD student, there was only one Taiwan Studies series, the Emmy Sharp book series. Since then, the field has really kind of grown. And so we have now multiple series that are also quite active. And when I first met Michael Cannings here from Kanfa Press back in 2013, the Kanfa Press series hadn't even started. And it's really remarkable to see how much has been published there since. Unfortunately, our speaker, Nikki Olsford, who's just created a new brittle series in Taiwan Studies, had to pull out at the last minute. So it's just going to be the three of us. So we'll have Michael Cannings talking to us about his experience of Kanfa Press, which was created in 2014. We have Nikki Lin from National Taiwan Normal University, who's going to be talking about two series that she's involved in. The Cambria Taiwan Literature series, which I've had the pleasure to be involved in in this new book, Son of Taiwan, which is stories of government atrocity. So it's a really nice experience for me to be involved. But Nikki is also involved in a second series called the Springer Cynophone and Taiwan Studies series. And lastly, I will talk briefly about my own experience of being involved in the Routledge Research on Taiwan. Sorry, the Routledge Research on Taiwan series, which we created in 2009 and which is featured in a lot of our book events. So we're going to briefly introduce our series is talk about a few of our guiding questions. And then we're going to open up to audience questions. So I'd like to start with with Michael. Could you kind of talk us through a little bit about what is Kanfa Press, how did it emerge? And what kind of things do you try to publish? Yeah, so hi everyone. I'm Michael Cannings. As David has said, I started Kanfa Press with a couple of friends in 2014. At that point, I was based in Taiwan. The two partners of mine are still in Taiwan and I'm now back in the UK. We've back shortly after starting Kanfa Press. So we're slightly different from the academic presses that we'll also talk about today in that we are a private concern. We're not attached to a university or a big publishing house. We're small and independent and it's basically just the three of us at Kanfa Press with occasional freelancers where we need them. We really set out on a mission to produce books that we thought weren't being given a platform about Taiwan. And David just talked about the other series that have come along since, but at the time that we were looking at it, Routledge was kind of in its infancy and there was the Emmy Sharp books had been discontinued for some number of years. But also in terms of sort of the general reader, we felt like there wasn't an outlet which serviced people who were interested in Taiwan, but who weren't necessarily academics or wanted to read deep academic research. So it was designed really to produce the kind of books that I wanted to read about Taiwan and that I felt weren't being published. And really the kind of, there were a couple of books behind the genesis of Kanfa Press. One is a book called Foremost in Odyssey by John Grant Ross, which is a travel log. It's not an academic text at all. But it's kind of, it's really well written and it's a great introduction to Taiwan for the layman. And the other was a Barbarian at the Gate by TC Lin, also known as TC Locke, who is a naturalized Taiwanese person who was born in the US and served in the Taiwanese army under conscription. And that couldn't find a publisher for what's a really fascinating story. And so we wanted to bring that to a wider audience. And since that point, I think we've kind of expanded the mission a bit. So we expanded beyond Taiwan. So China was the obvious first choice, especially given the state of publishing over there with censorship and so on, that in Taiwan we were free to publish whatever we wanted. And since then we've gone to Korea and Japan as well. But Taiwan is really the focus for us. The three of us met in Taiwan. We're still very deeply linked to the country. So that's really where our hearts lie. Since starting, we've picked up some academic books as well. So we have a balance now of books for the general reader and also academic texts. So I probably can't see them over my shoulder there. I've tried to kind of artfully pile them up. But we have three academic texts at the moment. And we're looking to expand that in the future. So essentially our books cover pretty much anything about Taiwan in English. There's no real restrictions we have in terms of topics that we'd like to cover. The guiding light for us is, is it interesting to the three of us who run the press? So it's not really run as a commercial business. We try and turn a profit and pay ourselves a little bit out of it. But the guiding light is, is the mission to produce these books, which we hope are of a decent quality and of interest to people interested in Taiwan. I just wanted to follow up on one thing, Michael, because I remember that when Canva first started out, I think doing ebooks and then you did move into physical hard copies. Could you kind of just comment a little bit on that process and what made you do that shift? Yeah. So traditional publishing, as you probably know, is they use something called offset printing, which means that you print 500 copies or a thousand copies or something of each new book. They sit in a warehouse and gradually get sold over the next few years. The, the innovation that's really made Canva Press possible as a print publishing house is print on demand. And it kind of has a bad name from the early days of print on demand when the quality was very poor. But around the same time that Canva Press was founded, a company came along called Ingram Spark, which is a print on demand publisher, printer, I'd say. And they provide a very easy way for you to do extremely low volumes. I mean, a single copy. They will print and ship to somebody if they like, which means for some, some organization like us, we can take risks. We're not looking at putting 3,000, 5,000 pounds into printing a run of books. We are essentially, we've got no capital going into books. So if there's something we like and we think there's maybe 100 people, 100 other people might read it, we're still going to do it. So that, that advent of quality print on demand printing is a complete game changer for niche books and niche publishing outlets. So when that came along and we, when we worked out all the kinks of it, which is about 18 months after we started, then we started to shift all of our e-books into, into print as well. And so now we're probably at the stage where in terms of unit sales, it's about 55% in print and 45% in e-book. Wow. Okay. So that's a really big impact. Okay. Thanks, Michael. And let me pass on then to, to Niki to briefly introduce your two series. Oh, yes. So I'm currently involved into a book, a talent study book series. And one is a Springer Nature's Sign of One in Talent Studies. And the other one is the Canberra Press, a talent literature translation book series. So, well, first, I would like to talk a little bit about the Springer Nature series. Springer Nature's Sign of One in Talent Studies. We started about two years ago, that's not long ago. And it initially is, it came out of the NTNU, UCLA talent study program that, because we have the annual conference. So we wanted to have the, the book series to publish our conference paper. So we're really kind of fortunate to be able to cooperate with the Springer Nature. That's, but there we wanted to change our mind. We wanted to kind of, kind of widen our scope to, not just, you know, to publish the edited conference paper, but also the monograph. And okay, so we started like that. And yes, and this book series, the Sign of One in Talent Studies, is actually focused on any humanity studies related to Taiwan. And yeah, maybe I should explain a little bit why we called this the book series, Sign of One in Talent Studies. Well, there are several reasons. And the first reason is because the Sign of One study is a film initiated by Professor Shoshun Mei, who is the, yeah, who is also our chief editor. So we thought, okay, why not? We could, you know, this might be a good idea to connect our, you know, just to connect the study of Taiwan to a kind of wider, kind of wider scope. So the second reason, well, is actually somehow related to the first one that's in terms of the methodology that by combining the Sign of One studies and Talent Studies in the one book series kind of allow us to kind of connect, you know, to link the issues rooted in Taiwan, you know, into the like a more like comparative or more like a transnational or more like a relational kind of academic discourse. So there was, you know, our goal. And for this book series, our goal is to publish at least two books a year. And so in order to kind of show, you know, to have the better picture of the book series, then I'm going to show just really quick about what it is like. Okay, okay. So, so far we have a part, because we only have two years, this book series is actually quite new. So, so far we have three books. We already published three books and also one first coming. And the three books, you know, the things are all the books are, you know, covering like environmental literacy and then the Taiwanese monitoring and also the indigenous knowledge in Taiwan. And this one, the one first coming is the legacy of indigenous music. So, and also we are pretty happy to, to, you know, recently we received like three more book proposals and they are about Taiwan literature and Taiwan modernist arts. And then I think the third one is the kind of identity politics in post martial law called Taiwan. So, yes, if things go smoothly, then they will be published either later this year or next year. So, so this is about the telephone in Taiwan of study. And then I'm going to also talk about my second book series. And then it is the translation, you know, is the Taiwan Literature book series and it's a mainly the translation of the Taiwanese novel and short story collection. And it is, it is made possible by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, Taiwan Wen Xie Guan. And yeah, it's because in the recent years, the Taiwan Ministry of Culture, they are, that has been quite keen, you know, to promote the Taiwan Literature internationally. And so they provide really a considerable amounts of grants, the funds to National Museum of Taiwan Literature, you know, to sponsor the translation projects and also to establish the database of translated literature. So our book series, our camera press book series is actually part of this bigger kind of larger translation projects. So of course we're really happy to be able to work with camera press to publish our book series. And oh yeah, and so again, I'm going to just show really quickly how they look like. And yeah, oh sorry, no. Wait a minute here. Okay, so so far we have published six books and the top row, the first row of the three books were published last year. So well, just come up last year. And the first, the first one, the Taiwanese Literature reader edited by me are actually the show story collection of the Taiwan, the Japanese Corona era by so with the collection of six stories written by the prominent Taiwanese writers like Lai He and Lai He, Yang Kui, Long Yin Zhong, etc. And yes, and the second book is is called the Sword of a Dead Mountain. It is Yixuan Hun. It's written by the prestigious indigenous writer Fa Fa. And he is also the award-winning indigenous writer. And so the third book is also very important is a history of Taiwan literature. Yeah, it's by Ye Shi Tao, the right is written by Ye Shi Tao. And this book is very important because this is the first book for the Taiwan literary history, you know, the literary history of Taiwan literature. This very important is considered as the classic that everyone want to study Taiwan literature must read. Well, although, you know, the original book, the original work was written in 1987 is although it's more than three decades ago, but it's considered the classic. And the second row we can see are the three books just published actually this May just come out very fresh. And the first one is the Sound of Taiwan that Debbie just showed us. The Sound of Taiwan and the second one is the Transitions in Taiwan. These two books are about Huai Taira and also the Transitional Justice in Taiwan. Yes, I hope to particularly mention that thanks to Debbie's and Jewel's excellent translation for the Li Ang's Auntie Tiger, Hu Gu Po, which is actually the story about Xie Xue Hong. Yes, and also yeah, the third book is about queer literature. Then maybe everyone knows that in 2019 Taiwan become the first Asian country to legalize the same sex marriage. So in Taiwan, the queer LGBT activities and literature also receive a lot of attention. So oh yeah, and one thing I'd like to point out is the book cover. Actually I'm pretty proud of it. The book cover those works are from the famous Taiwanese artist. This one is the Chen Chengbo's The Street View of Danshui. This is a photo by the Japanese anthropologist Niao Jiong, and this one is a Lanying thing, also an important artist. And this one is Huang Rong-Chen who is also the victim of the white terror. And this one I like very much is the symbol of the freedom or the democracy of the white, the wild lady, and it's by the Ouyang Wen. And the queer literature is by the Xie De-Ching, who of course he never like come out but he's one of the earliest gay artist. Yes, so those are about the our book series and also because all the translators are they are expert in their fields and not only the translation is very reliable but also they provide really very useful notes. So this is actually our target audience for this book series is about academic because we want more as a textbook to read in a classroom. But I think since it is the kind of translation of short story and novel so I think it can also attract the wider in kind of general public audience. So we hope this series can really provide an opportunity for wider reader like readers to understand Taiwan through reading its literature or just take an interest in maybe Taiwan cultured history through its story. Fantastic, thanks for that Niki. I have to say that I really love what both of you are doing. If you think about I think one of the really frustrating issues we had in the past was the lack of really good kind of non-academic books on Taiwan. It could drive us crazy when we went to the bookstore. That's why I really love what Canfa has been doing and I think the same applies for the translation project and I think it makes teaching Taiwan literature so much more viable and I do hope in the future that we can try to teach Taiwan literature because it's always been a gap of ours at SOAS. Let me just then speak briefly about the Routledge series. I think the emergence of that series back in 2008-2009 was related to the growth of Taiwan studies at that time in the early post-2000s. So we had North American Taiwan studies conference, we had the European Association of Taiwan Studies conference emerging in 2004 and we start to see a growing number of Taiwan studies programs particularly in Europe and also in the US. So it meant there was a growing market for publications particularly academic publications coming out of conferences for example but also out of PhDs. So these were some of the kind of the key sources we were getting but I think as I think Michael's mentioned there were weaknesses in the existing Taiwan studies kind of publishing field at that point in time. Emmy Sharp had been amazing in the late 80s and 90s and I was a big buyer of Emmy Sharp but for some reason that kind of tailed off. Horacewitz in Germany also emerged in the early 2000s but somehow I've never really felt that series was working, I did publish with them the ones so we decided to give it a try and I think even when Michael and I first met in 2013 I think we still weren't really sure how it was going to develop, it was still an early situation and the books we were publishing were still I think hit and miss but since then I think the field has really kind of developed really quite rapidly. We're getting a large numbers of proposals these days in terms of readership I think we try to be quite broad in what we cover so a little bit different from the Cynophone series that Nicky looks after in other words we are covering both social science and humanities but I think a lot of what we try to publish is things that we can use for teaching. I think that is one of the things that we keep in mind because we teach Taiwan at SOAS and there's a growing number of Taiwan studies courses being established in Europe, North America but I think also in Taiwan you have a growing number of English language taught programs, courses, degrees so we feel that that is a market I have to mention that there are some big challenges that I feel that I have in the series that I manage one of them is the price of our books and I think because we are mainly targeting libraries with the hardbacks and it's something that really drives me crazy. I often have arguments with my editors at Rowley trying to convince them that this will sell enough copies to be viable in paperback but I think e-books have helped a lot and I do see the gradual rise in the sales of e-books particularly I have noticed in the sales for the Covid year that the balance between the three we are roughly about a third paperback a third hardback and third e-book now which I think does but it means that so many of ourselves actually are still paperback and the hardbacks for libraries have really gone down because libraries are moving towards e-books and the other thing I have to say that I really feel a bit frustrated about in my work is about the covers and there I think both of your series definitely have a big advantage over us that we are quite restrictive at least in our hardbacks they won't encourage us to do kind of imaginative covers. Okay so that's basically where we are but I think it's a really exciting time. We've published 38 books now over our 12 years and I know at Canfa the number of books I think I've heard Michael talking about the numbers they're really astounding and again this also shows what can be done with a few enthusiastic people behind the project so I know that Michael spends so much time on each volume and I'm a little bit lucky that I do have that kind of technical support but what I would like to move on to next then is the question about what we look for in proposals and the practical side of how people can publish with our series in other words what should they do first maybe Michael would you like to go first because I can imagine that you have a slightly different system for different types of books Sure yeah we do so generally we maintain a pretty open policy to submissions our the general idea is if it's interesting and it's about Taiwan we're going to talk to you I think because of the nature of us vis-a-vis the more academic presses if you are looking for the cache of publishing with a big name in an established series then that's where you're going to go I think what we pick up is the books that maybe don't quite fit into a defined category or are kind of cross disciplinary in some way that are maybe a little bit outside the mainstream but still interesting so I'll give you a couple of examples of that we've got one coming up by James X Morris he's based at Academia Seneca and he is researching funeral culture in Taiwan particularly the built environments of graveyards and looking in particular at one graveyard that he did an extended study on and how that was basically being dismantled and destroyed for development and trying to sort of work with grassroots organizations to save as much as that as possible so it's in that interesting space where he is an academic and it comes from a that sort of viewpoint it's heavily referenced footnoted as an activist part of the book he himself is involved in trying to preserve this culture so it's not a disinterested view of the situation so that might be something that doesn't fit with the traditional academic press but we love and we'd be delighted to take something like that on I think also there are subjects that academic press might not be so interested in that are synthesis ideas of rather than looking for novelty in a very tightly defined area we are interested in sort of bringing together a synthesis of concepts of understandings to present an overview of something rather than a deep dive a lot of the time so a good example of that an edited volume on the LGBT movement in Taiwan going back to the 1960s interviews with lots of people involved and chapters selected from different writers and that will go through sort of underground days connections with movements in the states and in Japan and then through to equal marriage laws that happened a couple of years ago covering that side of things so the idea with that is each of those chapters could probably be a book in an academic press but we're looking for something that provides an overview and actually kind of a handbook for other LGBT movements in Asia to look at and say okay well this is how Taiwan did it this is how the civil movement came together this is how they dealt with the media this is how they dealt with government figures and so on and to use that to sort of develop an approach that's going to work in their country so looking at places like Singapore, Malaysia, Japan Korea where the in Taiwan in some cases not far behind but there are definitely lessons there to be drawn so I think that activist side of things which maybe doesn't quite fit with an academic press where there's a bit of campaigning involved we have a definite viewpoint and we are pushing that viewpoint so that's something that's interesting to us but in general we're very open so like I said if it's about Taiwan and it's interesting to the three of us who are behind Canva Press we're going to take it on and we really consider the commercial side too much so that's the main criteria is it good, is it interesting, yes okay we'll take it and in terms of the proposal what do you normally for example with academic presses we have a kind of standard format about three to four pages is that what you're looking for well I mean academics tend to submit in that format because it's what they used to so we're quite happy with that some of our books have started as a conversation one in particular I was in a tea house with T.C. Lin talking about his book or talking about his book in Mandarin which came out first and really he just kind of dumped the manuscript on me at that point read the thing, loved it, needed a bit of work and took it on from there so if you want to submit in an academic format we're delighted with that generally what we look for is at least a couple of completed chapters synopsis of the book and a chapter list and also we like to have some idea of where the author sees the book among the other books in the area so I'm massively in favor of well-read authors of understanding your situation that you're in we've had books pitched to us quite often that are hey I'm going to write something about topic eggs when they don't really understand the literature that's already out there so demonstrating an understanding of what is out there and how your book fits in with that that's really crucial for us because we're not putting out books for the sake of it we are looking to add to the whole field and I can see some similarities there I really like this idea about it starting as a conversation because often at academic conferences one of the things I'm looking for is that idea and then look at the next stage for me then is the three to four page proposal and I guess we're thinking about, I think as you say where does this fit within that existing works, is it going to kind of build on those so even I think that's something that applies across both academic and non-academic publications but I would say that we probably do put a fair amount of stress on the on the commercial side because I have seen cases where academically the project looks great but we're not sure it's going to sell particularly to libraries and again that's another one of our constraints I would say that actually in terms of the review process normally we reject mostly at that proposal stage and we are much more less like to reject post review, generally if we really like a project then we will send it to review because we believe it's going to pass review although that doesn't always happen, we have had kind of a growing number of post review rejections but it's not what we're we're looking for so there are a number of things that we're kind of looking for in those proposals the academic quality, originality, commercial, will it sell, will it pass review, how about Nicky could you talk a little bit about what you're looking for in the proposal and also how you assess the proposal and whether you go through review Okay basically for the book series of Signup on the End Taiwan Studies it's because this is the academic and also well it's mainly focused on the Taiwan Studies so anything about any humanities study, humanities study related to Taiwan's are welcome so yeah and yeah of course we also because the Signup on because the Signup on Taiwan Studies focus more on the complex relationship between the local and the global so we kind of particularly welcome any proposal that deal with the issues of the like identity or the multiculturalism, canonism, post canonism everything but it basically will welcome all the topics so and about the maybe I talk about a little bit about the review so we have you know for the Signup on the End Taiwan Study we have the book form so anyone who want to apply, anyone who want to publish the book can send us just write and send us the book form and so once we receive the proposal, the book form proposal for a book and once we receive the proposal then it will be review first by the board of editors and who will give some recommendation and then submit it to Springer Nature and also the Springer Nature will review to see if it fits their requirements and it is like academic and then and then if Springer approve it then Springer will directly sign the contract with the authors and so once the book is done then it will be like a further more forward-wasted peer review and then go into the editing and then go into a publication so this is the whole process and one thing I would like to mention is because the Springer Nature is pretty well established academic press with lots of offices and staff all over the world so they tend to move things really quickly so if the author laid in the manuscript they will keep sending the reminders because they are very quick because our book series is only two years but we already have a full book so they are really quick about that I think you are right that technically that is one advantage of working with big publishers that they will deal with certain things such as chasing the reviewers arranging the kind of production which my sense is that Michael that is something that you probably have to put in a bit more time in terms of things like you are probably a little bit more hands on in the Yes certainly so I think in fact I am scaling back at the moment in terms of the new books that we are taking on just because all three of us are overworked but I think for us the advantages with all the technology that is around nowadays you can do all of this in house if you want to if you are prepared to learn the skills that go into Photoshop into the desktop publishing software into the commercial side so I did an accounting course before I did this I wanted to sort of be a jack of all trades and cover lots of bases but yes for the most part it is the three of us in house for almost everything we occasionally contract out some covers and we occasionally use third parties for copy editing particularly if we are pressed for time but everything else is the three of us and I can see that BU has raised the question about promotion which is one of the things we did plan to talk about I mean if we compare to when Michael and I first started the kind of tools for promotion are much more diverse but one of the question marks that I always have I don't know how Michael feels about it is what really works I'm not really sure but I wonder whether Michael you wanted to comment first on your kind of strategies for promotion because there are so many out there and we could spend so much time on them Yes I mean I think probably our target market is a little bit different so you mentioned pricing earlier on that is one of our big pushes our most expensive hardback is $45 US and generally our paperbacks are under $20 in fact almost all under $20 so we are looking at the general reader we are trying to make these books as widely accessible as possible and ebooks are all under $10 so they really are very cheap by the standards of the industry that enables a few different promotional approaches for us which maybe aren't open to academic presses so actually the number one way we sell books is through our newsletter so our newsletter subscribers are great customers of ours we also use the newsletter to give them sneak peeks they can buy books ahead of time they can get discounts and so on so we do treat our newsletter subscribers differently to everybody else that we deal with every other promotional channel they get a better deal and they also get some original writing and other things to keep them interested so it's not a selling proposition but we do sell books through it outside of that there are particularly when it comes to Taiwan actually the Facebook group there's a Facebook group I think it's called Taiwan Book Nerds or something like that Taiwan Books, Nerdery and Discount I can't remember the exact title but there's about a thousand people in there and that community is incredibly supportive although they do moan about prices as Davos will know more for me than you but those guys are incredibly supportive and we do get quite a lot of sales through them we also have quite a lot of luck with Taiwan based publications who review the books so Taipei Times being an obvious one but also the newer outlets like Newslands and Ketergallen Media and New Bloom and so on those guys are incredibly supportive and we will always get a few reviews for Taiwan Books in those publications so those three channels are probably the best in terms of sort of accidental sales we actually do quite a lot through Twitter and mostly through my account rather than the corporate account so I talk a lot about Taiwan and I am not very controlled or professional about it it's sort of heartfelt, it's what I feel about most things and I swear from time to time and I talk about other football and other things as well but generally sort of an approachable voice is what I try to be about Taiwan and I don't talk about our books a great deal mostly I'm talking about other things in Taiwan history and politics but that does serve as a route for some people to access the books so social media although it can be a distraction certainly and it can be a lot of work has proven very useful for us what hasn't proven so useful is the traditional channels so journal reviews occasionally sell a few books but as David said earlier library sales are way down and we never really did that many library sales anyway hardbacks are about 7% of our business so we only started doing them because we thought we might sell a few into libraries but they're not a huge volume and we wouldn't really miss them if they're gone we're going to keep doing them but that's not a big market for us so I would say the newsletter social media and then reviews in sort of trusted widely read publications local publications tend to do the job for us because we were talking about Taiwan studies blogs in the earlier session I think that again is an area that has really expanded quite rapidly so I know we've particularly been keen on getting reviewed with New Bloom, Taipei Times I'm not sure whether we've done medical and media yet but I think you're right that that's and I think the fact is that a lot of those platforms actually care about the field of Taiwan studies and I think that helps while the academic journal reviews they can be quite slow that is one challenge we have and it's a difficult balance but you can be quite proactive with them but they're not necessarily playing ball there and I think the speed is an issue I would also agree that the pricing is one thing that I think does give you an advantage I really like the way you're dealing with that area I suppose for academic publications the other thing that we do a lot of is book talks and particularly for my new book I've just gone book talk crazy the other potential site has been podcasts which again I hadn't done before this book but I actually found they're really kind of youthful platforms because of that kind of interactive nature and again that is a relatively new area in the kind of Taiwan studies a field but again I feel it can be quite frustrating that the let's say because we're me and Nicky are with a kind of an academic press it's often not so flexible in those kind of things like the website is very bland it's not something that we can adjust in the way that perhaps you can I was wondering whether Nicky you wanted to comment on your experience or promotion Yes, I think this is pretty new both of the two book series just come up this year actually it's like for example the Taiwan literature book series last year we have three books that we wanted to actually plan to have some book talk in the general everywhere but because of the pandemic so we couldn't do it and also this year because Taiwan just happened suddenly like a breakout broke out the pandemic and so everything stopped so I really feel a little bit like a pity that I still from last year to now I do not have any opportunity this is probably the first time to talk about the book series I'm very happy today to have this opportunity and the springer nature yes I think the books are so expensive it's really expensive but springer nature our startup on the Taiwan study book series first of all because the springer had a pretty large footprint in the publishing words and so I think it can get attention easily it can reach the readers and also yes our book has the print edition as well as the e-book so it's like if the reader if you were only interested in one chapter then you don't need to buy the whole book you just need to purchase and download the individual chapter and of course it's cheaper but still not that cheap so this is one thing and so for this book series of course it's all promoted by springer nature and they have a website and they also have their distribution they have their way to promote their book series so we don't get too much involved and then for the camera as I mentioned we still didn't have a chance to promote it but we do have a project this year to organize the reading workshop this is also sponsored by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature in order to promote the six books we published we are planning to organize the reading workshop basically it's outside of Taiwan so yeah we will cooperate so the audience if you are interested to have one hour or two hours read our books then you're welcome and you can contact me and we can provide some funds to buy books or buy drinks to get a student or a friend to get together and to read our books but I have to say that the events really do help in my experience I think one of the reasons why like my series is because me and my team work so hard on running book events and I think this was also proved when Michael came to us for the book Lord of Famosa by Joyce Bergfeld and this was one of our best selling ever book launch events so it's a really kind of memorable and I think also I would suggest don't rely too much on Springer or I think that these mainstream publishers have too many publications and they they'll do something for us but not too much so I think we really need to do a lot of work and the other kind of full up thing I think to Nikki's points is I think for me and I don't know whether Michael agrees in a way the pandemic helped us because it kind of made us become more imaginative in the way we promote our books and maybe I feel I'm trying things in terms of promotion that I hadn't done in the past I don't know whether Michael agrees or not I don't know how you feel on this. Yeah definitely and I also think that audiences and more receptive to online events now we've all been forced into a zoom world and yeah so if you are organizing something then people are much more willing to put it in their calendar and actually show up the event you're talking about we did it so I asked with Joyce's book was fantastic and we had a lot of events again but in the meantime during the pandemic what it has shown us is that you can have something like we're doing today and there'll be people here from Taiwan from the states and in the UK and just you can reach a different audience than you can if you're locked in one geographical location I think especially for us as I'm in the UK I'm also not in London so I'm not central and my two partners are in Taiwan the sort of organizing logistics around events can be a little bit tricky so that sort of gift of being able to go online do things online has been huge for us I think also like you said the shift to ebooks has been was more pronounced during the pandemic especially last summer we saw that percentage shifting so we had June July August we were overall over those three months we were 110% up total sales against the year before similar number of books released but people bought loads of books last summer and in some ways that's that has tailed off a little bit but levels are still far above where they were so it's really helped us the kind of both the willingness to read ebooks and also the fact that people are willing to attend events online so it's been great for us I see we have a question here from one of our SOAS alumni Raymond he was asking have you ever met PRC authors at conferences that have covered the same topics I'm guessing most PRC Taiwan studies authors right from a government perspective and this kind of links in with the question that I've also heard at times asking whether we would publish kind of a PRC Taiwan authors would that be an issue for us I mean I have to say that at least in my case I've never received a book proposal from a PRC based academic although we probably have published some book chapters within edited volumes maybe a more likely scenario is getting proposals from PRC scholars who are based abroad but even there I would say the numbers are not huge I don't know whether either of you had any thoughts on Raymond's question yeah so we've had one book proposal from somebody based in the PRC on a Taiwan studies topic it was about what a Taiwan province of the PRC would look like in an organisational sense so administrative sense sort of one country two systems one basis and then saying well how are they going to run individual cities and counties and so on my thoughts on doing something like that in this case the book wasn't very good so the decision was kind of made easy but my feelings on doing it are that I'm not a neutral when it comes to Taiwan and Taiwan's future status and I think taking on a book by a PRC based scholar who will obviously have to cleave fairly close to the party narrative I'm not sure what that adds to the conversation if it is just going to follow a hard party line much more interesting to me are academics outside PRC academics outside of China who have more freedom to speak so I wouldn't rule something like that out but I would be skeptical going into it because my aim in this is really to kind of promote a broader understanding of Taiwan and I think if you are cleaving very close to the kind of orthodoxy that the PRC repeats then I'm not sure where the value is Yeah I mean in my case I think I've had some discussions with PRC based Taiwan studies scholars but it's never really gone beyond those kind of initial conversations we've talked about ideas for example I think one interesting idea was to have a book on the PRC's Taiwan policy so an analysis rather than a kind of a or maybe it would be interesting to look at something that looks at the Taiwan studies centres and programs in China but again none of them have really materialised yet I don't know whether Niki you had any thoughts on this question We haven't received any like a proposal from the scholar like PRC based or perspective but well I think basically it's welcome of course like maybe in the future we will receive this and of course because this is about Taiwan studies so we want like at least the research is from really from Taiwan it's not just like an undershadow of the Chinese framework and just take Taiwan as a periphery or something like that we want Taiwan in the centre of the research basically we want this is our standpoint but of course in the future we can receive a different view to look at Taiwan and in different perspectives I think that's also welcome but I don't know if the scholar isn't from China maybe it's not safe for them but it's a study based on Professor Shishu Mei's theory about because her theory doesn't include the men in China in his series more look at the outside of men in China I don't know but I will see We touched upon Biu's question but Biu did you want to come back because we only touched upon part of your question No I'm fine you guys are knowledgeable thank you very much You also touched upon the readership element Yes because I think in the early years when we were trying to approach different publishers when you don't have a dedicated Taiwan studies it's a little bit hit and miss and it really depends on the editor's personal viewpoint and positions so I think having that as a home is quite nice to be able to belong but what do you guys think would there be a danger of immerse yourself in the echo chamber and I'm just asking whether we can only be published in Taiwan Studies series So just throw in the ideas Anyone want to respond Mike? Jump in on that a little bit on the echo chamber thing I think about this quite a lot It's a slightly different thing to what Biu was just saying but the writing about Taiwan from a non-academic perspective tends to be we get many more proposals from people who are on the green political side of the spectrum So looking for voices from Taiwan who are challenging that narrative is tricky in English. There aren't many voices out there that are vociferously defending an ROC, KMT, orthodoxy for Taiwan and those voices that are out there I don't think are doing a great job of communicating that So that's something I'm very wary of particularly when we talk about the Waitera era and you are getting you're getting one side of history Now that doesn't mean that we want sort of an unopposed narrative from the other side either but I am wary that certain voices are driven towards talking about Taiwan and those voices often have a political viewpoint on the green side of the spectrum So I think we need to be careful to balance that out where we can, but it's difficult if the authors are not out there and not contacting us Yeah, it's tricky And Nicky? Well I have no idea yet about this, so maybe I'll just skip this but it was actually something that we did touch upon on Monday we had a session about writing books on green parties and one of the things that came up in our discussion was how do we actually reach different types of readership So we have a readership for example for our own countries politics and then can we catch for example that discipline in terms of let's say the study of small parties can we catch green party supporters internationally So I think one of the key things here is making sure we connect with different potential readerships And I can imagine that with something like literature that does give you a lot of potential particularly when you do literature in a comparative way So I think that's I think BU is right that we need to kind of think beyond Taiwan studies, I think it's the way that we mark it, but I think having that home can be really nice for authors because they know that their work is going to be valued But I think to a certain extent there's a bit of, I think both the authors and also the series editors also have to be imaginative in terms of the way that we understand different books for different I think it's the same also with events as well In theory we should do events that reach out to kind of different country interests, different themes And I think if again we can't just rely on our mainstream publishers to do that work for us And I suppose just kind of bringing BU back in there because BU has created a number of books I wondered whether you wanted to comment on your experience of hitting that readership Probably in a very difficult position But thank you, I have to say I admire all the especially you guys have to deal with so much things, you know, covering and dealing with probably difficult people as well The editor of individuals single volumes, it is problematic but not as bad as you guys are facing, so I congratulate you But I do want to come in because I have to say, although I question you guys but at the same time I just want to take one example When I wanted to publish my monograph in 2000, I can't believe how long ago that was, and I approached a major publisher I waited for 10 months and there's no reply and I say, then I call this person's on holiday, so I said, OK, David, can I submit to the Taiwan series? I'm sure all the Taiwan series editors is always efficient and very helpful, going through very quickly So one year later, the chief editor of that publisher called me and said, oh, we would like to publish your I thought, what happened to that one and a half years gone, so actually I think how quickly you deal with a manuscript is also a very important element in the success, I'm sure Although I have to say that one big challenge we do have though is finding people to review books It's becoming more and more difficult, maybe because of the way that academics are so pressed for time That is one of the reasons why we are pretty confident with a proposal or a manuscript before we actually send it to review because often it becomes senior academics maybe who are close to retirement and have a bit more time or maybe junior academics, but it is a real kind of nightmare I see we have another follow-up question from Raymond So here Raymond asks, have you considered submitting books to Amazon or positioning on the web to gain rankings? That's to say, if you come high in Google or Amazon searches you'll get more sales I can see Michael you're nodding would you like to respond there? Yeah, I think for series editors this is probably out of your hands, but as somebody who runs a publishing company this is something that I do cover So if I am able to share my screen on here, I think so Yes, I am Sorry, bear with me a moment But all of our books are on Amazon so that's a major route of sales for us But also I do pay attention to search engine optimisation so I do want our books to rank as highly as possible and I do spend time on that We'll not be able to record the contents of your screen until it's quit, right? I'm not going to do that because it will close down the app, so I can't show you But if you do a Google search for books about Taiwan then you'll find us at number three in the rankings, if you do Google search for just Taiwan books you'll get a list right before anything else of books about Taiwan with cover images and the books in there change but generally our books rank pretty highly so I can see if I did search for Taiwan books on Google right now of the first sort of ten books there's for most of the trade is ours, Taiwan in a hundred books is ours for most in Odyssey is ours and a pile of oysters is ours So that's kind of a result of spending the time on the search engine optimisation and really trying to think about what people are looking for when they look for a Taiwan book So trying to put yourself in the mind of the reader and say okay what are the things am I looking for, is white terror the first word that's going to come to my head or am I going to be thinking about martial law or am I going to be thinking about political prisoners or if you're dealing with a book in that subject so it's considering all of those things that people might be looking for and then you still have to write like a human when you're writing about these books you don't want to come across as some computer generated nonsense but it is slipping in the right words to make sure that you rank well and paying attention to the little details on the page like the metadata and so on so that's proven very fruitful for us particularly that page that we have on our website which is books about Taiwan that ranks highly in Google and we get a lot of click throughs and sales from that so yes there's something we pay attention to So is a lot of that down to the books blurb or the books title that's key there Yes so I don't really consider search engine optimization from a title point of view occasionally from a subtitle point of view particularly if you have something more poetic as the title then you might have a prosaic subtitle you get this a lot in academic books as well so you might have a book called Chasing the Dream and then it will be called the imaginary in Taiwan novels of the 20th century a very prosaic subtitle those things are loaded for SEO and then the blurb that you have about the book yes you would slip in the right keywords to make sure that it gets ranked but also it's about people linking into your site so the more people are sharing your content the more links that you have in from elsewhere so from discussion sites from bulletin boards from reviews that all boosts your Google ranking a little bit so I think that's if you have control over it's really worth considering you have some control I guess as series editors when it comes to book blurbs so there are some good tools for helping with that probably not the forum to go into those at the moment but if anybody's interested I can sort of share what I've learned about that. Yeah Nicky did you have any thoughts on this? So much to learn I really have no experience about how to promote or how to make it look better like Amazon or how to rate this really this is a totally new thing for me and yeah of course like my tool of book series the audience the reader is totally different and instead of an entire study of course it's more for academic and so yeah indeed I never thought like how to promote it or how to make it sell well in the markets really never come to my mind but well I think for just for promoting like a time study I think it was to really try to make like even it is the academic book series but I think it was to you know try to reach more audience I think it's also good for promoting the Taiwan studies and yes and also for the literature book series well I don't know of course we are selling also on not only on the Cambria Press website but also on the Amazon and so but I don't know yet I don't know how good it is so yeah there's a lot of things to learn and well I don't know because I'm just you know I'm just a teacher professor at a university so yeah but I think it's just very interesting and yeah so well I can learn really a lot from you guys and I hope I can promote the series but yeah I do think you know you know even I think for the Taiwan studies even in Taiwan you know inside Taiwan I'm a sort of member of the Taiwan department of Taiwan studies very often asked by people like what exactly you guys are doing? Why? What is all about? So it's like even in Taiwan you know people don't know what a Taiwan study is and also they are confused like what? Do the Taiwan's have literature? You know it's something like that so yeah so even you know somehow it's already difficult to persuade you know or tell Taiwanese people that yes we have you know the Taiwanese ingredients it's fantastic and so yeah still a lot of things to learn and well but I did you know hear someone told me that the reason why they come to Taiwan to study you know to come to study Taiwan literature is simply because just one day he went to the bookstore and so he said oh wow the Eiyu Shouji you know is a novel diary and so he started interested because he totally has no background he doesn't have any knowledge about Taiwan but just simply because this book this novel because she read this novel so she you know trigger her you know the kind of interest and so that's why she come all the way to Taiwan and fall in love with Taiwan so yeah so well yes I really have to learn more like how to promote the books. But I think your point links us into something that we haven't somehow talked about yet today and that's about bookstores and whether they still matter because again one of the things I find really difficult is okay we have so many really good books and quite a lot in paperback now but usually only one or two of them are available in bookstores in Taiwan while there's normally a lot of books on China but I can imagine if I was a tourist going to Taiwan or even being at the airport in Taiwan you'd want to get some books on Taiwan and I know that Michael you've had some success maybe a little bit more success of maybe getting your books into independent bookstores in Taiwan so I was wondering whether you could comment on that. We have in a small way it's still a frustrating exercise for us one of the difficulties with book shops is it's kind of an unusual model in that books are always returnable so a book shop can take your books and two years later they can decide okay it hasn't sold and they can send it back and they owe you nothing so it changes your business model if you have to account for sending out hundreds of books that you may sell you may get back when you get them back there might not be a resaleable condition so on so there are some considerations there also there is a kind of hesitancy that I've come across there's a lack of belief that Taiwan is interesting in English even inside Taiwan so this is a while ago now maybe four years ago I was talking to the English buyer at Eslid Temping in Taiwan and she said people aren't interested in Taiwan books in English and at that point I wasn't I was talking about can for press but I was mostly saying we need Taiwan books it's not just about books that I've done but there are so many great books out there I mean I read a ridiculous amount of that whole thing back there is Taiwan books and there are so many out there that can be of benefit to people but you're dealing with very few gatekeepers that's the issue and if they're not interested then you're not going anywhere so where we have had some success is dealing with small independent book shops so many of you will know Causeway Bay books so Mr Lam who was abducted in Hong Kong taken to mainland China he was a book seller later moved to Taiwan and set up there I'm sure many of you are familiar with his story so he has a number of our books and we do a good trade through there we are talking to a couple of other people about getting our books in to their stores so there's a shop called Taiwan which is by NTU which is a very sort of deep green Taiwan bookstore they're looking at taking our books as well but beyond that it's tricky the bookstore scene in Taiwan for English books is dominated by a couple of big players well now mostly now that page one has gone caves don't really do much in English anymore so yeah it's really quite a small market if anybody wants to take my idea of buying a campervan installing a mobile book shop in there and touring around Taiwan please I'll help you in any way I can if I was 15 years younger and had no kids I'd be right on that fantastic so I see we have a question about Taiwanese indigenous literature I think this one might be this could be directed to both of you asking whether how you see that market is it to niche I was but I think that Nikki you have published on indigenous Taiwanese literature do you want to say anything on that question oh yes for for the camera Taiwan literature series indeed yes the the camera press it told us that well of course you know the works included in included in our book series are selected by committee and so but of course we okay after like a six books and all the publication the six books then we are actually thinking like a what to publish and so and so we receive we welcome you know the publishers and also as well as the readers suggestions and yes the editor of the camera press told us that if you know next time you know for the next translation project they are actually interested in you know some topics and one of the topics is indigenous knowledge because yeah it's can you know because the final phenomenon of the the history you know like Taiwan indigenous is not only in Taiwan you can also find a similar because of modernize the globalization and so the indigenous people they have the same you know fate encounter the same fate and so this story or indigenous not you can you know really have that risk like echo can attract some more people and yeah and another thing I want to say it is actually the camera president suggest as to have the like a supernatural yeah like ghost story and and also the like a young boy you know because recently this kind of topic become so popular you know also in Taiwan and also I received a proposal you know from maybe you see a student because she wanted to research in Taiwan and the topic is yeah so yeah so actually I have a question this is like what what to the audience or the reader want to read what what they want to know of about Taiwan so this is also I'm interested because so far we have like gender the LG the quiz quiz study clear literature and also have the indigenous and and white terror and so what next what do you like this is my question although time is running out okay so we'll leave that one open to audience to come up with suggestions there was one other question that was part of the indigenous question was asking about if there are other models for promoting Taiwanese literature in the way that other Asian countries have done for example Japanese literature that also makes me think about the question about whether Taiwan's government should do more to promote Taiwan studies publications to what extent should for example the Ministry of Culture help promote these kind of books I can imagine that for example your Taiwan studies or Nicky's Taiwan studies literature that probably does get some government support but I don't know whether that's the case for yours Michael unless it's a translated volume personally I wish they would find a way to see this as part of their kind of remit but I'm not at least in my series I haven't really felt that yet yes I think there are some issues here because it's there's nothing less cool than a government promoting something so you need to be in the background to really make that work so the example of Murakami in Japan is a great one because it's had a lot of government funding but you don't know that it's the Japanese government funding it what happens in Taiwan so we've got a bit of money at the moment to translate a novel but that really only covers the translation costs and there are some small grants available for promotion but really that's it would cover flying the author over to say the UK to do an event and then flying them back and that's pretty much it and if you're going to push a writer so the best example of this is Umii and stolen bicycle and the man with the compound eyes the man with the compound eyes got tremendous reviews and Darryl Sturck who translated it is a wonderful translator and stolen bicycle likewise and of course the short listing for the Booker was it the Booker? I forget now got that wrong was a huge help too but what Tim might be suggesting there is the man Booker thank you Tim what Tim is suggesting there is to sort of pick a few champions I think like Japan has done and then push those champions heavily I think Taiwan could benefit from something like that but I don't see the short term prospects of that happening I think the Ministry of Culture anchor authors that's a good phrase Tim thank you I think the Ministry of Culture approach is more aimed at volume so getting as many books as they can translated into English my feeling about that is that a lot of what's translated never finds an audience and that's a great shame it's not very well promoted and you're also looking at a problem of are you picking the right books to translate in the first place so I think the example of looking at Yao Guai literature for example is a really good idea China's recently had a lot of success with sci-fi so genre fiction is another interesting thing to look at comes with its own ready made community but yeah I think the Ministry of Culture could certainly do a lot more than they're currently doing and Nicky in your case the Taiwan literature series would you say is that working with the Ministry of Culture directly or is it via the the Museum of Taiwan literature because National Museum of Taiwan usually actually affiliated to the the Ministry of Culture so actually they're the same so they are from the same funding and so yeah and but okay because actually in the past years you know maybe for many decades at least three decades the government funds actually you know government really have a huge like a funding for translation projects already many many years but it's it's not well how to say circulated you know it's like translated and then published but you don't know where you can buy those books maybe they are just more into the library and so it doesn't reach the audience more like readers so for this project because the government because the National Museum of Taiwan literature they know this problem so this project is particularly we have to cooperate with the the camera price you know the publisher who is like a business and so actually one of the purpose is for us is to have the group kind of make like interest attracts certain attracts more readers and make this our book series in a market and so that's a market decide if we are good or not so it's actually a test and we want to really make it more like a commercial but just like me because I don't have much experience I still have to learn a lot from that so I hope I can do a better job in the future. Yeah but I do take your point I know this is something that's being discussed in some of the book projects I've worked with with partners in Taiwan that often it can be easier to get something published in Taiwan but then the problem is the distribution even working with a German publisher I've also had question marks about the distribution so that was part of the reason why I did shift to working with with Rowlett despite its constraints I see we have a question from the Cabe Nawa who's asked the question about whether it's possible to publish or translate books in other languages other than English or Chinese to reach different types of readerships. Yeah so in general terms yes it is the books about Taiwan program offers grants for all manner of languages so they are very interested in reaching new audiences so I think you know there are translating books into Vietnamese into Russian into Bahasa and you know there are a number of these things happening again there might be the problem with the connection to then promoting those books and getting them distributed distributed but the funding does exist to do that yes speaking now for can for press because we do everything in house and all three of us are native English speakers we don't work in any languages other than English unfortunately beyond our competency and then in the field of literature are you kind of hoping to move into other languages Nikki? Oh yes actually the translation projects by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature they are you know it's not only English translation they also promote in Japanese and also some European languages yes so but of course the English you know they can read really the biggest you know the largest communities of the readers so yeah so English of course is the most important one yeah but yes this is the government is you know they try to promote in different countries and with the in different languages yes that's what they are doing but one thing I'm kind of curious about and again it applies probably more to Nikki with the kind of the growth of the new immigrant community in Taiwan with Vietnamese particularly or Indonesian communities over time could this also become part of Taiwanese literature I was just kind of curious about your views on that and perhaps also a similar kind of question to Michael do you feel that that might be an interesting kind of angle a kind of different angle to understand Taiwan maybe from the perspective of a migrant worker or a migrant spouse because we academically that kind of literature has grown but not really from that voice I think there might be something in documentaries so so that's maybe Nikki do you want to go first on that question oh yes um yeah actually the governments you know they are doing the south bound and so they really made a lot of efforts to either to include those like other people migrants you know from like Southeast Asia and and you know to include them into the like how to say it's like okay actually my other projects you know to kind of publish the kind of children book and this is actually it's we translated into Taiwanese and also Vietnamese so yeah so government is actually king you know to do this and so this is one thing and the four because they are good in Taiwan they are more and more immigrants and the second generation is like in our class they are like at least two or three you know a second generation of the the mother from Southeast Asia and so yes I think they have an old story and then you know gradually get involved in society and they write their stories and also in Taiwan we have the like awards it's the particularly for migrant workers so yeah I don't know if they still continue this I don't know if it's a kind of stop because of the pandemic but as I can remember we have this we have this yeah that also reminds me that maybe I don't know is there a really an award for English language fiction or nonfiction about Taiwan that would be I would love to see that kind of that kind of prize that's something that we need to kind of push the I'm pretty sure there is for let's say translate a prize for translation but I'm not sure if there's there's one that kind of captures the kind of stuff that we do but in the final couple of minutes what did you feel about Michael about that issue about migrant perspective books? Yeah so we published this book you can see that there Migranti last year and the irony of it is it follows a young man from the Philippines who is living in a pretty desperate situation and signs on to be a fisherman in the Taiwanese fleet and sort of chronicles his unfortunate story as he goes through life on a fishing trawler and also you know he has some looks like we lost Michael there what he's kind of just reconnecting in the last couple of minutes we just have a question about word limits I can respond on that one at least from the series I'm involved in the Routledge Taiwan series usually we aim at around 100,000 words because we can go a little bit below and a little bit above that yeah Michael if you believe it I'm in northern England and my computer just crashed because it was too hot it's a very nice day outside sorry so I was saying about Joe's book the irony of it is the story follows a Filipino migrant fisherman he also meets other Filipino migrants who are working in factories and domestic situations but the irony of it is that it's written by JW Henley who is a white Canadian expat living in Taiwan and he addresses this in the preface in his sort of introduction to the book where he says he was approached by his reasonably well-known writing on migrant issues he's been to the Philippines many times he's been out on the boats and so on he was approached by a number of migrant workers who said we don't have the time to do this many domestic workers get Sunday off perhaps and everybody knows the kind of struggles they face and so the main problem there is people in that situation who have the time and the mental space to write and so what Joe did in his story is he had a group of migrant workers who he interviewed who were talking to him talking through their experiences with him and he created a synthesis out of that into the novel and he says right at the beginning I would rather it was not me telling this story I would rather it was these people using their own voices but the constraints on them at the moment are such that if it's not going to get said then I should say it so I think that's the big worry for me in getting this more understanding of migrant workers so there is immigration from Southeast Asia of Southeast Asian spouses coming in and they may have a different situation but for those who are here who are in Taiwan on three-year work contracts as many of you will know writing is a mentally draining exercise it requires a lot of time and space to do but for us that's very difficult if you're working as hard as these people do great so we've now just gone over our time so we're going to have to bring things to a close