JP/3/ERIC

JP/3/ERIC

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Publisher Eric Oey endures in RI poor reading habits

Lila Fitri Aly
Contributor
Jakarta

Eric Oey said there was no holiday for a real businessman. Night
or day and weekday or weekend are just the same. Meetings are
held any time and any place. An employee, on the other hand, can
forget his routine job once he gets home from the office.

"If a businessman can enjoy too much spare time, this means
his business is not successful. So, it will be better to make
your business a hobby as in this way you will never feel bored,"
said Eric Oey (48), the owner of Java Books, a distributor of
imported books, which is later distributed to major book stores
in Indonesia like Times, QB, Kinokuniya, Aksara, Maruzen,
Gramedia and Gunung Agung.

In 1985, Eric Oey set up Java Books in Jakarta and Bali. He
named his book stores after Java Engineering, a Cirebon-based
company owned by his father's family. At that time Java Books was
just a limited partnership run only by some friends and family
members.

Today Java Books employs 200 people and can be found in six
places: Medan, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Bandung, Bali and Jakarta.

At first, Eric sold travel guides published by Singapore-based
APA Productions such as Guide to Bali, Guide to Java or Guide to
Indonesia. (He is the author and editor of Guide to Indonesia).
He sold the books only to hotels as the market segment covered
only expatriates in Indonesia.

"In those days I was still studying Indonesian literature and
language at the University of California at Berkeley for my
master's and doctorate degrees," Eric said.

In the 1970s he used to work at APA Productions and therefore
knew the owner well. At that time he was asked to write a Guide
to Indonesia. As there was nobody to market the book in Jakarta,
Eric was assigned the job.

It was not until 1989 that he could finish his studies. Then
he moved to Singapore, where he has lived since then.

Apart from Java Books, he also owns Periplus Editions, a
publishing company. Periplus was first set up in the United
States, when he was still a student. Then he moved it to
Singapore as he began to live there (he began to live in
Singapore when, at 10-years old, his parents took him there). In
November 2002, he opened a book shop in Kemang, named after his
publishing company Periplus.

Eric also has another publishing company, Tuttle Publishing,
which was set up by his uncle Charles E. Tuttle in Japan in 1948.
Eric merged Periplus and Tuttle in 1996. With offices in Boston,
Rutland, Vermont, Singapore, Tokyo and Jakarta, Tuttle has become
the largest English-language book publishing and distribution
company in Asia.

As a publisher, he finds Singapore a suitable place for a
variety of reasons. In Indonesia the price of paper is too high.

Then the banking system, the shipping practices and the
quality of color separation are yet to be conducive to a
publishing business. Besides, Singapore is also noted as a
printing center.

"For the same paper quality, the price in Singapore is lower.
Besides, a paper mill in Singapore can allow three months for
credit purchases, while in Indonesia every transaction must be
paid in cash," said Eric, who has a father from Pekalongan and a
mother from the United States. He himself was born in
Chattoonooga, Tennessee.

Actually, Indonesia, which is rich in cheap labor resources,
can produce exportable printing products, he said.

A printing company in Indonesia finds it difficult to get
cheap paper because of monopolistic practices. Automatically, the
price of paper becomes unrealistic. Strangely, you can buy paper
from Indonesia at a lower price in Singapore. At first, the
Indonesian government sought to protect small paper mills to
allow them to develop. Later, a giant paper industry owned by
Sinar Mas bought these small paper mills and the group now
monopolizes the paper market in Indonesia.

"Import duties are also a problem. Unlike in Indonesia, in
Singapore or Thailand no duties are imposed on the import and
export of paper," he said. If the import duties on paper were
zero in Indonesia, he was sure the printing business in Indonesia
would develop.

Such problems have stifled the printing business in Indonesia.
High paper prices can make the price of books about 25 percent
higher, an extra cost that buyers will have to bear.

Meanwhile, to gain access to the international market, a
publisher must find a more efficient printing shop so that it can
compete, otherwise the books will be too expensive. It is
expected, though, that in the next few years all import duties
can be eliminated so that a printing shop or a publishing company
in Indonesia can make better progress.

It is still very difficult now to promote the business of
English books in Indonesia. Compared with Singapore and Malaysia,
for example, the market for such books in Indonesia is still
small.

In Indonesia, only the educated are in the habit of reading
but they are small in number and may not have enough money to buy
books. An interest in books is highly dependent on financial
capability, education and culture.

"The Indonesian market is very small. It may be comparable to
a grain of sand on the beach," said Eric, who can still find time
to check writing proposals from all over the world. As a result,
English books available in Indonesia are limited. Let's say there
are a thousand titles. Java Books must select them very carefully
to find those that will sell well in the Indonesian market.

"To avoid incurring losses, we must carefully consider the
taste of the Indonesian community," he said. In Singapore, you
may have a wider choice because the book market is very big. It
may be up to 100 times bigger than the English book market in
Indonesia. Understandably, you can have more titles in Singapore.

Of course, a reading interest is closely linked to the local
culture. The people with Confucianism as their cultural
background, such as those in Japan, Korea and China, like reading
very much. In their culture, people can get rich and become
respectable if they work for the government.

To get a job in the government is very difficult so there is a
saying that to get rich and respectable you must be educated. To
be an educated person, you must read and buy books. Clearly,
these people have been accustomed to reading since their
childhood.

Still, Eric maintains his optimism that the book business in
Indonesia will some day develop. In the 1980s, books on Indonesia
in English were very few but now there are quite a lot of them.

"Compared with the situation prior to the onset of the
monetary crisis, it is true that books on Indonesia were more
popular and more in demand than they are now," he said, adding
that all this depended on the image of the country. If a country
has a good image, books about this country will have a selling
point.

There was a time when Japan was at the peak of its glory and
books on Japan were in high demand in the world. Later, this
situation faced a reversal. Now, the focus is on China as it is
gaining popularity. Clearly, the situation of a country
influences the selling point of books about this country.

In this respect, Indonesian publishers must be patient to wait
for the economic and political recovery of the country.