They Read The Way I Wish We Did
Sunday lunch, with my family. After the usual long, meandering conversation over food about everything and nothing (which, I feel, is important, because it's the everything and nothing that draws us closer), the topic lighted somehow on books:
My Brother: You know what? In Vietnam, they sell pirated books on the street the way they sell candies, cigarettes, and pirated DVD's here.
Me: What do you mean? As in full books? Whole books?
My Brother: Yeah, cheap, pirated. Printed and reproduced illegally and sold cheaply.
My Sister-in-law: And not just popular books. Everything. Even hard-to-find titles. Fiction and non-fiction. Whatever.
Me: What? You mean pirated books, the same as pirated software, music, and movies?
My Sister-in-law: Yup. Perfect reproductions, and even cheaper options of photocopies or lower-quality printed ones.
Me: And...people BUY?
My Brother: Well, of course, numbskull. They wouldn't print them if they didn't.
Me: To READ?
My Brother: No. People buy these pirated books to use as doorstops and paper-weights. Or to make their shelves look full. Did you take your medicine today?
My Sister-in-law: The bettter quality pirated books with the nicer paper aren't found in Vietnam, though. They're found in India.
Me: They sell pirated books in India too?
My Sister-in-law: Oh, yeah! Also on the streets. And people buy them there like anything. And the quality is nice, looks like the original thing. All the social classes are voracious readers over there.
Me: Oh man...
Is it any wonder that India churns out so many novels? There is a demand for pirated books there that probably matches the demand for pirated DVD's here. Not that I'm promoting piracy, because it is against international law after all, but I reacted the way I did because the fact that pirated books are being sold in those countries drove home to me the fact that there are many people over there who have taken reading as a habit. They read. Actually read. And, it seems, a lot. They actually set time aside to do this. My Sister-in-law believes it's a reflection of the education level of the Vietnamese and the Indians. I don't know if it's a non sequitur on my part to conclude that maybe this is why those countries are progressing fast, but I couldn't help thinking it.
My Brother: You know what? In Vietnam, they sell pirated books on the street the way they sell candies, cigarettes, and pirated DVD's here.
Me: What do you mean? As in full books? Whole books?
My Brother: Yeah, cheap, pirated. Printed and reproduced illegally and sold cheaply.
My Sister-in-law: And not just popular books. Everything. Even hard-to-find titles. Fiction and non-fiction. Whatever.
Me: What? You mean pirated books, the same as pirated software, music, and movies?
My Sister-in-law: Yup. Perfect reproductions, and even cheaper options of photocopies or lower-quality printed ones.
Me: And...people BUY?
My Brother: Well, of course, numbskull. They wouldn't print them if they didn't.
Me: To READ?
My Brother: No. People buy these pirated books to use as doorstops and paper-weights. Or to make their shelves look full. Did you take your medicine today?
My Sister-in-law: The bettter quality pirated books with the nicer paper aren't found in Vietnam, though. They're found in India.
Me: They sell pirated books in India too?
My Sister-in-law: Oh, yeah! Also on the streets. And people buy them there like anything. And the quality is nice, looks like the original thing. All the social classes are voracious readers over there.
Me: Oh man...
Is it any wonder that India churns out so many novels? There is a demand for pirated books there that probably matches the demand for pirated DVD's here. Not that I'm promoting piracy, because it is against international law after all, but I reacted the way I did because the fact that pirated books are being sold in those countries drove home to me the fact that there are many people over there who have taken reading as a habit. They read. Actually read. And, it seems, a lot. They actually set time aside to do this. My Sister-in-law believes it's a reflection of the education level of the Vietnamese and the Indians. I don't know if it's a non sequitur on my part to conclude that maybe this is why those countries are progressing fast, but I couldn't help thinking it.
posted by pgenrestories at 5:42 PM
4 Comments:
Maybe no one in the Philippines has yet tried to pirate books? Say, Ken, you have a printing press....
Kidding aside: books here are horrendously expensive, even for the local imprints. Just yesterday (in Davao) I bought a textbook printed in newsprint and it was P165. How much more for imported paperbacks which cost upwards of P300?
Expensive is relative, though; so expensive compared to what? Why, to the merchandise in the used bookstores that dot Davao City. I can get books for as low as P35. My upper limit is P150. Don't think I get trash, either: so far, I've found several scifi anthologies (BEMs, scifi by women) and a real gem by Stanislaw Lem. You won't find these in Fully Booked.
Agreed, Dom. You can find good books in secondhand bookstores at lower prices. You just have to spend more time looking for them.
But brand news books in the bookstores, though seemingly expensive, really aren't when compared to international prices. Large bookstores here are able to buy them at wholesale prices and sell them lower than if we were to buy them abroad. What makes them seem expensive is the low purchasing power of the PhP. I have relatives from abroad who buy their brand new books here even if they could get them in their home countries because it's cheaper here for them.
But as for local books, it's a matter of economies of scale. If the demand for local books goes higher, to the point that there would even be a market for pirated versions of them, then that would mean printers and publishers will have larger orders, which is sure to drive down the cost per piece. But since the demand is low, the fixed costs remain high, and thus we have local books that cost more than they seemingly should. The cost per piece of producing, say, 500 copies of a book, would drastically go down if that order were to jump to, say, 10,000 pcs. Total price would go up, but the per piece figure would be cut by at least 25%, perhaps more.
I'd agree with you on the purchasing power, but you have to balance it against our own earning power. Books in the Philippines are cheap...for those earning their money elsewhere.
Just curious: how much is a bootleg book in Viet Nam? How much cheaper is it than its genuine counterpart? Are the figures similar to bootleg and genuine DVDs?
There are really brisk selling local books, and these are the badly written Tagalog novels. They go for P35 each, at most, sometimes as low as P12. I suppose that's the economies of scale that you mentioned that's at work.
I'm guessing that what's driving their sales are not the torrid stories nor even -- God forbid -- the badly mangled language but the price.
From what I heard, high quality bootleg books (as in as good as what you buy in the bookstores) sell for between PhP40 to PhP150, depending on size, quality of paper, demand, etc. That's at least 50% off. But...they're still bootleg, and thus, illegal. Have to make that clear, sorry. Being a publisher, I have to protect the copyrights of PGS contributors also, so I can't support the piracy of books, since it might come back to bite me and my contributors.
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