just minishorts.

Well. I always wanted to become an author, but my ideals of authoring for a royalty was equated with something far, far more glamourous. Never in my entire being on earth have I imagined writing books for students to study with.

I've been on a freelance job hunt, and in the process, I've been asked if I were interested in writing books for particular markets.

'If you don't want to use your name, you can use a pseudonym. Not a problem.'
'Urm.'
'I want eight sets of SPM model test papers from you. I'll pay you a proper sum for each set.'
'I don't want a lump sum can ah?'
'If you want a royalty, we don't do that.'
'Why don't we do this? I'll work on these existing titles first, and if you like what I do to the work, then we discuss the royalty division.'
'Okay. Let's see what happens.'

So much for quitting the job and looking to a life of freedom. Now what I've got to do is to empty out the heavy boxes, and then start off with the work. Eight tests, equals eight reading passages, and several other stuff that needs a lot of brain squeezing. Why was it that I'm doing educational publishing again?

Because it's the only serious publishing in the country that makes money.

Now that fact alone makes me wish that the country had the likes of Simon and Schuster or Bloomsbury in the picture—and the likes of these will accept our materials. However, being a professional in the business, I have my own views on why it is so difficult for South East Asian writers like us to break into the international market. We'll leave that for another day.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.