IT’S an old story, but still worrisome because it doesn’t go away. Some publishers in the country lament the inadequate support the book-publishing industry gets from the government, particularly in promoting their products abroad, despite the incentives set by the National Book Development Board (NBDB).  Since the enactment of the Book Publishing Industry Development Act in 1995, which provides for the tax- and duty-free importation of paper and raw materials, not all in the book-publishing industry have availed themselves of the incentives. And it’s not necessarily their fault, as will be explained later.

Thus says Karina Bolasco, publishing manager of Anvil Publishing Inc., the most progressive tradebook publisher in the Philippines.

The government still imposes certain taxes on imported paper for nonbook publishers to guard the domestic paper industry, lifting the cost of production of printing in the country and making other countries more appealing in terms of price—not to say quality.

Printing, freight costs rising

Incentives for the book industry alone won’t solve the pain. Lirio Sandoval, president of Book Development Association of the Philippines Inc., says printing presses face high cost of raw materials, such as paper and ink.

Which effectively shoots up the cost of production not only of printing presses but of book publishers, too.

Sandoval has more bad news:  The high cost of postage and freight affects the delivery efforts of wholesalers of books and, as a result, controls the access of publishers to their projected markets.

These things may weaken the case for companies that offer commercial and job-printing services to invest a hefty amount for the upgrade of printing equipment—primarily, to enable them to provide premium service comparable with printing companies in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. 

At any rate, the brisk pace of technological change could prove to be too fast for some printers to keep abreast of the latest advancements—if they work together with other companies in order to offer a more advanced range of publishing and printing services to clients without having to invest in all these equipment on an individual-firm basis.

Left behind by neighbors

The industry’s lack of enthusiasm for investing in new technology is one of the many reasons why the country has failed to take advantage of the opportunities currently enjoyed by the likes of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and even Malaysia.

These have gotten a significant percentage of business from the United States, the United Kingdom and other Western publishers.

Instead, most local printers seem contented with the domestic market and, therefore, restrict their profitability. Since they cannot raise their prices too much, they endure ever-thinning margins, preventing them from upgrading their technological capabilities. 

“One such industry currently caters primarily to the domestic market, but is slowly discovering a potential market abroad. We should export our books,” says Sandoval.

Still, Filipino firms have fallen flat in efforts to hit the market abroad because of, again, constraints in terms of investing in state-of-the-art technologies.

Numbers are growing

STILL, amid such difficult times for the book industry, local publishers keep their bodies and souls together by redesigning their strategies based on the demands of the market.

The numbers are precisely most telling. NBDB showed a 51-percent increase to 130 book publishers in the country now, from just 86 publishers in 2003.

Likewise, the number of imported books increased by 18 percent to 51,577 in 2007 from 43,569 in 2006. Exported books, on the other hand, slightly grew by 3 percent from 1,161 to 1,453 copies.

Although there was a drop in the numbers of International Standard Book Numbers, or ISBN, it is not so alarming. The Bibliographic Services Division of the Philippine National Library reported that there were 5,518 ISBNs—a numerical book identifier—issued in 2007, from 5,713 ISBNs issued a year earlier.

Bookfair people: Industry fledgling

According to Irene Lloren, president of Primetrade Asia Inc., the organizer of the annual Manila International Book Fair (MIBF) since 1979, the book industry in the Philippines is considered fledgling compared with other countries.

The MIBF, which will run until September 16, is the only internationally renowned book event in the country. The exhibit brags of at least 300 local and foreign exhibitors that showcase thousands of books and more than 50,000 in attendance in a week.

The number of titles the country is producing annually is about 5,000. In the UK 115,000 titles were released in 2007. For the past 20 years, China has printed at least 50 million books with at least 72,000 booksellers.

Major publishing houses, such as Random House, Simon and Schuster, Bantam Doubleday Dell and Time-Warner, lead the publishing business worldwide.

Literary books unnoticed

Literary books seem to be unnoticed now. Emerlinda Roman, president of the University of the Philippines, says “rather than simply accept[ing] the situation for what it is—that readers have no interest in literature written by the country’s most creative minds, and that publishers which undertake to publish it must do so at a loss—there is a need to change the situation.”

Roman says Bolasco has herself cited the trend to publish the essays of the finest and most important journalists, whose work is more reader-friendly for several reasons—among them, their own high degree of visibility, their familiarity with what readers want, their awareness both of what is timely and what is timeless, and their high degree of professionalism.

“Tony Hidalgo of Milflores Publishing has written of writers building benign intersections of life between intellectuals and the large numbers of potential readers who come from the masses, intersections that are mutually beneficial through books about them, which seek to inform and educate rather than turn a quick profit by formulaic writing that panders and stunts the intellectual growth,” says Roman. 

Adds Roman: “Esther Pacheco, formerly of the Ateneo University Press, has written of commercial publishers who normally have other profitable lines like elementary-and secondary-school books and general books, and who use part of the returns from those lines to subsidize scholarly and literary books.”

In a study done by UP Center for Policy and Administrative Development, 43 percent of respondents said lack of time hinders them from reading; and only 15 percent considered money as barrier.

Also, the study showed that 24 percent of Filipinos read three or more books within a six-month duration, while another 24 percent read two in the same period.

These numbers mirror the lack of reading culture in the country. “This is a bane for book publishers, who depend largely on a population that reads. As it is, the growth in the printing and publishing industry is driven by the production and distribution of textbooks—and not of trade books,” says Dominador Buhain, the president of Asean Book Publishers Association and the owner of Rex Bookstore Inc.

At present, the Philippines has 861 public libraries nationwide and 14 book mobiles, which, according to the National Library of the Philippines, confront the need to provide free knowledge and information in communities throughout the country.

Few developments

THE NBDB has now come up with mechanisms by which to exercise an effective form of moral authority over book publishers registered with it. Andrea Pasion-Flores, executive director of NBDB, says these mechanisms have led to the revision and improvement of several textbooks that were found to have errors.

One is through the NBDB’s Quality Seal Award, launched in 2007. The government agency solicited nominations from private schools on the best books in Math for elementary and high school. It evaluated a total of 19 Math textbooks, which have been judged on the basis of content and physical features.

For this year, the NBDB is on the lookout for the best books in English and Math for elementary and high school. “We are expecting the solicited nominations to double this time,” says Flores.

The NBDB, Flores adds, has made the content development of textbooks part of the government’s Investment Priority Plan. “This means that incentives, like income-tax holidays, are available to those publishers who [give priority to] the improvement of the quality of their outputs and invest in research and development. We hope that the end result of this effort is the production of superior textbooks at affordable prices,” she says.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are also firming up the local publishing industry. Sens. Edgardo Angara, Jinggoy Estrada and Alan Peter Cayetano filed the National Book Development Trust Fund Act sometime in July. The law, when enacted, will provide writers the financial resources to devote more time and attention to research and writing.

Sandoval says a growing number of Filipinos who write and of publishers who publish them are harmonizing with each other.

“What is helping the industry now is the idea that local authors are now conspicuous. The distinct and creative way of looking at things and of telling them make the local authors get noticed,” he says.

Same problems, new worries

IT’S an old story, but still worrisome because it doesn’t go away. Some publishers in the country lament the inadequate support the book-publishing industry gets from the government, particularly in promoting their products abroad, despite the incentives set by the National Book Development Board (NBDB).