Capital isn't everything for 'leftist' publishers

JAKARTA (JP): A visitor to Kalam bookstore in the Utan Kayu area of East Jakarta was amazed by the number of new books of good taste flooding the store every week.

The Utan Kayu bookstore is famous for selling books with a perceived "communist"-leaning, which has won it the reputation of being a "leftist bookshop".

Aside from leftist materials, the store also offers books banned by Soeharto's New Order regime either because they were written by his critics or condemned as "leftist" which he feared would undermined the state ideology Pancasila.

"Gosh ... I have yet to finish the books I bought some time ago and new ones have already come. Almost all of the books are interesting, but I can't afford to buy them all," said the student of Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Central Jakarta.

The book' covers are well-designed, conveying an impression that they were published by major publishers. The names of some publishing companies are unfamiliar.

A lot of these new generation publishers emerged shortly after the fall of Soeharto in May 1998. Their numbers are unknown because they did not register themselves with the Association of Indonesian Publishers (IKAPI), a legacy of the New Order bureaucracy.

Most of the "alternative" publishers are in Yogyakarta, where 20 of them have sprung up since Soeharto's fall, according to Amirudin, a director of LKIS (Institute of Islamic and Social Studies.

Most of the publishers focus on the left-leaning books about Marxism, Leninism, communism or those critical of the Soeharto regime.

"The business is running well because people are curious to read the books that the past regime banned," said book author and observer Veven Sp. Wardhana from the Institute for the Study of Flow of Information (ISAI).

Some books have been reprinted several times, such as Demokrasi Untuk Indonesia (Democracy for Indonesia) by self- exiled Acehnese rebel leader Hasan Tiro (reprinted five times), Madilog by Tan Malaka (three times), Karl Marx's Das Kapital (three times) and Revolusi Rakyat (People's Revolution) by Che Guevara (twice).

Andri E. Martias from CV Adipura, a book distributor in Yogyakarta, said that some books had been reprinted only a month after their release.

"Usually, the first edition consists of 2,000 copies," Andri said.

Although their books may become best sellers, many of the "alternative" publishing houses have their "offices" at students' boarding houses along narrow alleys in Yogyakarta.

"Publishing ventures (mostly in Yogyakarta) have become like 'home industries'," said Stanley Adi Prasetyo from ISAI and also a founder of Garba Budaya, an alternative publisher in Jakarta.

"Our capital is people's trust: we started the business with money borrowed from friends without interest," said Stanley who established Garba Budaya in 1997 with six friends, aiming at publishing books the mainstream publishers would not dare print.

Agus Edy Santoso, founder of Jakarta-based Teplok Press, said that distributors played a key role in the alternative publishing business.

"A computer will do to start the business and all other work will be handled by the distributor," Agus said.

The publisher only serves as the "material supplier" namely selecting the materials, working on the translation -- for books in foreign languages -- and doing the editing.

"It is the distributor who will finance all aspects of the production up until printing," Agus said. The production cost is about Rp 10 million for 2,000 copies of a 100-page book.

Andri from Adipura, a distributor, has linked up with several small-scale publishers.

"If we are sure that the book will be marketable, we won't hesitate to finance the project," he said, saying that the distributor received 10 percent of profits.

He said that between 1997 and 2000 Adipura linked up with about 20 publishers, but the number has declined to only 10 because the rest have become financially independent.

A general criticism of the alternative publishers is that they tend to ignore rules of the publishing business and their books are poorly edited.

However, Buldanul Khuri the owner of Yayasan Bentang Budaya, a publisher in Yogyakarta, said that no alternative publishers would survive if they were obliged to follow the copyright laws, for instance.

"How can a small publishing company pay the copyright royalties to an author which usually amounts to about US$500 to $1,000 per title?" he said.

Buldanul admitted that sometimes to keep the production costs down, publishers selected cheap, unprofessional translators.

"I don't know how they translate difficult books like Das Kapital. It seems that they just translate them word for word," said Stanley. Many believe that unprofessional alternative publishers would eventually go bankrupt in the future because the market would seek better quality books.

Andri and Buldanul agreed that the market for leftist books was now declining. "The market seems to be too saturated with leftist books. That's why we are now no longer concentrating on them," said Buldanul.

But it does not mean the end of alternative publishers. They plan to form an association to strengthen themselves.

"The (future) organization is not aimed at competing with IKAPI. We'll learn from IKAPI's weaknesses, for instance that it is doing nothing against the banning of books, doing little about the hefty taxes on books and paper and lacking the initiative to fight for higher shares of profit for publishers," said Agus.