The story of how Periplus bookshops - and in a larger context
the book publishing company, Periplus Editions - evolved from
a modest distributor of travel guides and postcards in the
mid-1980's into the world's leading publisher of English-language
books on Asia is the stuff of publishing legend.
Both the press itself, the company's bookstores and its distribution
organization have over the past two decades made a significant
and lasting cultural contribution to Bali and to Indonesia
as a whole. With more than 10,000 titles available through
their distribution affiliate Java Books, Periplus has become
a major player in the book retailing and publishing industry
in Asia, Indonesia and Bali. I recently spoke with the publisher
and founder of the company, Eric Oey, to find out how he did
it.
How did you get started in the publishing business?
I didn't train or plan to become a publisher. Publishing is
often called the "accidental profession" because
people like myself who are passionate about books often just
stumble into it. My academic background was in Indonesian
language studies at UC Berkeley with a minor in Chinese studies.
My first job was as the sales manager for Singapore-based
APA Productions, publisher of the APA (Insight) Guides in
the late 1970s. I worked for them for a year before continuing
my studies.
What kind of books do you like to publish?
Some people think that we mainly publish guidebooks. I suppose
this is because we initially made a name for ourselves publishing
a whole series of detailed travel guides to the various islands
of Indonesia. That was kind of an offshoot of our travel guide
distribution and my background with APA, really. But since
that time we've started publishing lots of other kinds of
books and today guidebooks make up less than 3% of our total
list.
If you examine our catalog or website you will see that we
publish just about anything and everything about Asia that
people are interested to read about. We try to publish high-quality
books, both fiction and non-fiction, including reprints of
some of the classic titles about Asia that have long been
out of print. We have a proven track record in publishing
books that sell and that people want to own and read.
Although we're not a university press, we bring out some academic-like
titles, which is to say serious and scholarly books. Take
our Ecology in Indonesia series. These esoteric titles don't
make much money at all, most of them have sold only 500 copies
or so since they were published in the whole of Indonesia!
But it's an important series on an important subject and this
kind of book really needs to be made available to people,
so I view bringing them out almost as an obligation.
Have you had any difficulties reissuing old books?
Periplus has brought out a number of classic out-of-print
books on Bali and in a sense, we've taken over the mantle
of the former Oxford-in-Asia line, a brilliant series on Asia's
history, culture and arts. The process of bringing out an
out of print book is a lot of work and holds many surprises.
First we have to source a copy of the book, then we have to
get permissions from the copyright holders. Often it's difficult
to find out who holds the rights or to get in contact with
them. For example, it took us about five years to obtain rights
for Miguel Covarubbias's classic, Island of Bali, which was
originally published by Alfred Knopf.
We do make a special effort to republish fine old books. I'll
give you just two examples. Very recently we reissued Bali
Chronicle, a brilliant collection of essays by the famous
Indonesianist Willard Hanna. We had to hunt down Hanna's widow
and finally found her in Hanover, New Hampshire by looking
through the phone directory and calling all the Hanna's listed.
It had been out of print for more than 20 years and is really
the most fascinating and well-written history of Bali available.
Other examples are A House in Bali by Colin McPhee, Dance
and Drama in Bali by Walter Spies and Beryl de Zoete, A Tale
From Bali by Vicki Baum and Dancing out of Bali by John Coast
which was just recently re-published. All of these are famous
books on Bali that don't sell very well but which a few die-hards
just have to have and read. The average tourist of course
doesn't care, but there are people out there who are interested
and want to know more about Bali.
How does an author go about submitting a book to Periplus
for possible publication?
We're always interested in hearing from good writers who have
something valuable and unique to say. Email queries are welcome
but it is usually better to send a written book proposal properly
printed out on paper as it's easier for us to evaluate. Include
sample chapters, a table of contents, a summary of the book
and bio data on the author. Better yet is to send the whole
book! We also appreciate it when authors tell us about competing
or similar books already out in the market, because it shows
that they know their subject. Otherwise we have to hunt around
ourselves to find out what has been published and if those
books are selling or not. This can take quite a bit of time.
We like book proposals that are well thought-out and professional.
We get a lot of letters stating that someone is thinking of
writing something and would we be interested or not -- but
that kind of proposal is very vague and doesn't make a good
impression. An author should ideally have done their research
and homework before sending in a proposal. They should realize
however that we are very busy and it may take some weeks before
they hear from us.
Writers should also bear in mind that our specialization is
not just Indonesia but all of Asia - Japan, China, Vietnam,
India, Sri Lanka, Korea. That's another misconception. People
think we publish books just on Indonesia. That's our soft
spot, yes.
We publish serious non-fiction as well as popular titles like
cookbooks and maps. We do lots of little books for tourists
also, for example our Handy Pocket nature guides - Tropical
Gemstones, Tropical Flowers of Southeast Asia, Tropical Fishes
of Indonesia, etc.
If you'd like to learn more about Periplus, check out their
websites: www.periplus.com <http://www.periplus.com/»
or www.tuttlepublishing.com <http://www.tuttlepublishing.com/».
For anyone interested in being considered for Siapa, please
contact : pakbill2003@yahoo.com
Copyright@2005 Al Hickey
You can read all past articles of Siapa at www.BaliAdvertiser.biz
