Rocket Kapre – Fantastic Filipino Speculative Fiction

Flipside Digital, my publisher for “High Society“, has just launched what I think is the first dedicated digital bookstore in the country. You can now buy a copy of “High Society” in ePUB format or screen-optimized PDF e-book format at Flipreads.com, as well as other Flipside Digital titles from the likes of Manix Abrera, Tweet Sering, Carljoe Javier, Ian Rosales Casocot, and Charlson Ong. Here’s the press release from the event:

Filipinos can now have easier access to eBooks through the online eBookstore,  Flipreads.com. Likewise, authors and publishers can now distribute their eBooks more widely and securely through the same website, which was launched on November 11 2011 from 4-7PM at the Celebrity Sports Club Grand Ballroom.

Flipreads.com is owned and developed by Flipside Publishing Services, a sister company of Flipside Digital Content. Flipside Digital Content, previously just a conversion house catering to four of the top six international publishers, is responsible for publishing and co-publishing more than 70 Filipino and Asian eBooks on Amazon, Apple iBookstore, and Barnes and Noble just in its first six months of operation. Most of these international eBookstores, however, are not available to the local populace. Filipinos can only buy from Amazon, albeit with an added cost of $2 per book.

Now, Flipside is making eBooks more accessible especially for Filipinos through Flipreads.com. Readers can download eBooks onto their Apple or Android devices. They can even download it onto their PCs or Macs. Whereas before, Filipinos could only buy eBooks legitimately if they had credit cards, but with Flipreads, they may use other payment gateways such as CashSense and, in the near future, Globe GCash, and Smart Money. Flipreads also serves as a secure distribution platform for Filipino publishers, authors, and other
content providers. Therefore, publishers can now sell their eBooks securely through Flipreads.com.

Authors can also opt to independently publish their titles through the site. Other institutions and entities can also distribute their digital materials safely through Flipreads. eBooks distributed through Flipreads can be made secure through the use of Adobe Content Server’s DRM. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and is the means by which eBooks are protected from casual piracy. Alternatively, authors and publishers may choose to distribute their eBooks for free through the Flipreads site.Flipreads also hopes to provide a venue to publishers and authors to bring previously out-of-print titles back into circulation. Since everything is online, these titles will also be available to an international market.

For more information, email business@flipreads.com or call +632-5709255 or +63917-6206244

OCTOBER 3, 2011 UPDATE: I’m amending this post to reflect that video recordings from the 1st Filipino Reader Con have been uploaded to the official site. For the benefit of those who’d like to see the audio-visual presentations (or, you know, what we were wearing that day).

The first Filipino Reader Conference took place last Wednesday at the SMX, Mall of Asia, and it was a resounding success. For those who weren’t able to attend in-person, or for attendees who want to relive the event, Charles Tan has uploaded audio recordings of the talks and panels. You can find them here. As mentioned, you can also find video recordings here.

Here’s a list of the speakers/panelists and participants, with links to their blogs/sites as well:

• Keynote Speech: No Line on the Horizon: The Merging of Readers and Writers through Social Media by Carljoe Javier
• Putting Up and Running a Book Club–For the Fun of It! by Gege Sugue, Jason Vega, and Tata Francisco
• The Why and How of Book Blogging by Tarie Sabido (Blog 1, Blog 2, Blog 3), Charles Tan, Chachic Fernandez, Aldrin Calimlim, and Sasha Martinez.

Estranghero Press has revealed the table of contents and cover art (by Oscar Alvarez) for its Science Fiction anthology “Diaspora Ad Astra”. The digital anthology is scheduled to be released this month. Here’s what you can look forward to reading:

1. War Zone Angel, by Professor Emil Flores
2. The Day the Sexbomb Dancers Invaded Our Brains, by Carljoe Javier
3. The Malaya, by Dean Francis Alfar
4. The Cost of Living, by Vince Torres
5. Ina Dolor’s Last Stand, by Raymond P. Reyes
6. Oplan Sanction, by Alex Osias
7. The Keeper, by Audrey Villacorta
8. Ashes Ember, by Dannah Ruth S. Ballesteros
9. Rizal, Eliza Victoria
10. Gene Rx, Katya Oliva-Llego
11. Robots and a Slice of Pizza, Raydon Reyes
12. Lucky, Raven Guerrero
13. A List of Things We Know, Isabel Yap
14. Taking Gaia, Celestine Trinidad
15. Space Enough and Time, Anne Lagamayo

Carljoe Javier–friend of the site, head honcho of UST Publishing House and all around uber-geek–will be having a simultaneous launch of the print and digital editions of his newest book “Geek Tragedies”.  You can read a sample here and pre-order the book for the Kindle at a discount. Here’s the announcement:

Geek Tragedies will be officially launched on July 1! The launch of the print version will be held at the UP Press MegaLaunch at 5pm in the GT-Toyota Hall of Wisdom at the Asian Center. But if you want a digital version (care of Flipside Digital), you can pre-order it from Amazon! The full version will download to your Kindle or other reading device July 1, but you can start reading the book now. If you download it, please also rate it on Amazon to help other readers find the book. iPad version’s to follow.

I’m very excited about Geek Tragedies, as I think it’s a really fun book with a good variety of stories. It’s also the first Filipino book, as far as I know, that will have simultaneous print and digital launches. Please check it out in whatever format you like, and pass the word around, repost, etc etc. thanks everybody for helping out.

This year’s Taboan Literary Festival will be held from February 10-12, 2011 at the Royal Mandaya Hotel in Davao City. The festival is open to the public and will feature panels, a book bazaar, and film screenings. Speculative fiction writer Dominique Cimafranca is the conference coordinator, and here are a few delegates who will be familiar to readers of Philippine speculative fiction: Carljoe Javier, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Sarge Lacuesta, and Vlad Gonzales.

For those who are in the Davao area (or who can manage to make the trip) this looks like a great event for readers and authors. For those who can’t make it, you can still get a taste of the works of the delegates on the Literary Works page  of the Tabaoan 2011 site. Carljoe Javier’s piece on “the “Post-Apocalyptic as the Neo-Western” seems like it could be of interest to genre readers.

Adam David, winner of the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award, has always been an outspoken advocate for independent publishing and self-publishing. This December 3, 2010, at 7pm, Adam is putting together a fair/exhibition/forum/networking-type celebration of the literary equivalent of the do-it-yourself ethic. He’s calling it BETTER LIVING THROUGH XEROXOGRAPHY (Facebook link), and it will be held at Ilyong’s, Kalantiaw street, Project Four,  Cubao. The products will range from poetry zines and self-published creative non-fiction to indie komiks and t-shirts. Content of interest to spec fic fans could include the Quarterly Bathroom Companion Comics Compendium, several of Macoy Tang’s komiks, and Carljoe Javier’s The Kobayashi Maru of Love. Other participants according to Adam:

Thomasian Writers Guild! Aklat Kurimaw! Ink Elephant! Tilde Acuna! Gelo Suarez! Macoy! Papermonster! Cavite Young Writers Association! Mark Angeles! Quarterly Bathroom Companion Comics Compendium! the Youth & Beauty Brigade! Mike David! UP UGAT! UP Writers Club! Heights! High Chair! And maybe some other peeps who might decide to drop in unannounced!

Oh, and the first one hundred bottles of beer (in total, not for each person obviously) are free. What else do you need to know? Directions? Click here for a larger map of the route from Cubao, and here for the route from Katipunan. Poster image was created by Macoy Tang.

The first Future of the Book conference was held last week at the UP-Ayala Technohub in Quezon City (here’s a great overview of the conference at Coffeespoons), which brought together publishers, writers, teachers, readers – and yes, even lawyers – to discuss the changing aspects of publishing throughout the world, and in the Philippines in particular. I was there on the second day, to talk about how independent publishers can thrive in the digital age, and I managed to take videos of a few of the other speakers as well.

A few caveats though: First, the latter half of the footage of Charles Tan’s talk has atrocious video quality – my Vado is quirky that way apparently – but the audio is still good, so I uploaded it because it was a great talk, and you can at least still listen to it (or indulge in Max Headroom nostalgia by watching it).

The second caveat is that because of time constraints, a few of the speeches had to be rushed or cut short. After the videos, I’ll have the full text of my speech and links to a few others.

I’d like to congratulate the conference organizers for a successful conference, and I hope we can all work together to maximize the benefits of this new world of publishing for all interested parties. But I swear to God, the next time I hear someone say Filipinos don’t have a reading culture, I’m shoving a textbook up his ass…

And now, the videos!

First up is Charles Tan, (Bibliophile Stalker) prolific blogger and Philippine Spec Fic advocate, on the topic of the consumer experience in the age of ebooks.

More after the cut

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Master scribe of all things geek related, Carljoe Javier (author of “And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth”), is set to launch his new book – The Kobayashi Maru of Love – on September 6, 2010. 8 pm @ Ilyong’s. Project 4. Kalantiaw St., Cubao, Q.C. For those who don’t recognize the Star Trek reference (and yes, there are geeks who don’t know their Trek, like me), here’s s link to an explanation of what Kobayashi Maru usually refers to.

Guess who has a new day job? With Carljoe taking over the reigns at Metakritiko, the Philippine Online Chronicles decided to give me an entirely new section to edit, which just launched today. It’s called Pinoy Pop, and while I could try to explain what that means here (or what I’ve decided it means at least), that’d be a waste of the handy introductory column I made. Suffice it to say it’ll be covering a lot of stuff that Rocket Kapre readers will find interesting – for instance,would you like a rundown of the promotions and freebies for today’s Free Comic Book Day? You can find that here.

Also, with the release of Iron Man 2 yesterday, Free Comic Book Day today, and I-will-be-your-hero-if-you-vote-for-me Day next week, we’ll be doing a lot of superhero focused articles in the coming week (let’s call it Spandex Week), with articles about their origins, rationale, and how Filipinos relate to them. We’ve also got some thoughts on the use of armor in science fiction and fantasy, as well as a review of superhero komik Bayan Knights.

I’ve got a few familiar Spec Fic writers on the team as well -  Eliza Victoria will be contributing an article on her introduction (initiation?) into tabletop gaming, Carljoe will be contributing articles on comics and an Iron Man 2 review, and Adam David will be doing komiks reviews. Speaking of komiks, I’ll also have an interview with the much respected Mr. Gerry Alanguilan, on the need for komiks criticism, while komiks creator Macoy gives us a perspective of life at the indie tables during the Summer Komikon.

I’m excited to be working with these wonderful individuals, and covering the fantastic, fun, geeky stuff we all know and love. I hope you can make us a part of your daily reading habit. ^_^ And please, if you have a story you think we should be covering, do let us know!

Carljoe Javier is the author of “And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth“ (he also did a recent guest post for the site), and an avowed geek whose particular background and history gives him a unique view of life and geekdom in the Philippines. We published the first part of the interview a while back–here’s part two, where we talk about his life as a writer and a critic.

Let’s talk about your own writing now. How did “And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth” come about?

The first essays I wrote in the book were written for MA classes in nonfiction that I was taking under Prof. Jing Hidalgo. Based on that output, she asked me if I could submit a manuscript to Milfores, which is owned and run by her husband, Antonio Hidalgo. It took me a while to piece it together, but as I was writing it became clear that the things I was writing about all had to do with some type or other of geekiness. So that’s when I had a unifying element, and I came up with the title after I finished the manuscript.

You had a prior draft of the book that was lost due to a computer virus. How did you cope? What were the essays that were lost?

How did I cope? Well, first off I switched to Mac (Hello, Apple Marketing execs, are you out there? I’m endorsing you right now. please give me free stuff. Please.) Then I kind of avoided the book for a while. Some of the finished essays had been presented in classes, or sent out, so I was able to recover those. But I lost a lot and I felt bad about it so I wrote some other stuff or a while. I don’t know what it is thought, maybe selective memory, but at the moment I can’t remember what those essays were about anymore. Then, since I’d promised Milflores a manuscript I had to get back to it, so I finished by writing lots of new material. It’s kind of a blessing in that I think that the essays in the book are better than the ones that I lost.

What was it like, the first time you entered a bookshop and saw your book on the shelf?

The first time I got a copy of my book I was in the middle of the shooting of a webseries that I was trying to make. It didn’t really mean too much at the time, since I was focused on directing and stuff. But a few weeks later, we had a launch, and that’s when it really sank in. And I’d go to bookstores and see my book on the same rack as Nick Joaquin and F. Sionil Jose, Stevan Javellana and I thought, wow, I was just goofing when I was writing, but this is something really meaningful.

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