When you’re a writer anywhere, the kind that was not served publishing contracts or writing gigs on a silver platter, one of the first things you learn about is power. And not so much that you don’t have any of it—that seems normal enough for when you’re young and new in any industry–as it is how power (and opportunity, cultural capital, funding, etc. etc.) is in the hands of a very small group of people. In the Philippine writing and publishing sector, this surfaces simply as an exclusive clique, a cabal, a mafia (take your pick) that is called the literary establishment. This is your big publishing houses, putting out work by mainstream writers, who are also the leaders/consultants on the payroll of your national and local government agencies, teaching in your schools and creating syllabi and required readings, and founders/members of your writing organizations. It all ties together into a neat little package called power, and as a by-product of that, money. At the very least, undeniable cultural capital.

But as with politicos denying they have power and wealth and want more of it, so does the literary establishment deny that this cliquishness and exclusivity is something they nurture—sharing the few seats on that table with those outside their circle is not an option, and generosity is an illusion. As with the most corrupt politicos insisting that the work they do is about “nation” and “constituency”, so do the worst of the literary establishment claim that this is about “writing” and “literature” and “book development”. And as with politicos always denying their unethical and unjust practices, so does the literary establishment pretend the cabal doesn’t exist.

Sometimes though, it is surfaced for all to see. Ladies and gentlemen, the Philippine Book Festival.

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Organized by the National Book Development Board (NBDB), the The Philippine Book Festival (PBF) was problematic from the get-go, i.e., the moment they released it to the wild wild world of the org’s (then) official Viber group chat. This was last year, and screencaps exist where memory might not hold. The NBDB announced they were doing a book fair, an alternative to the privately-run Manila International Book Fair, purportedly to serve the publishing and writing industry better. It seemed promising.

Until it wasn’t. The NBDB decided that the way to do this book fair was to do it with four publisher-organizations: the Book Development Association of the Philippines (BDAP), the Philippine Board of Books for Young People (PBBY), the Philippine Educational Publishers Association (PEPA), and Komiket. At the start, it seemed simple enough: have these organizations “curate” the presses and sellers that would be part of the PBF—a questionable but expected, because easier, decision for the NBDB; this would mean the government agency can evade the responsibility of deciding which presses and sellers should be part of the book fair.

Two things make this problematic. First, these organizations are by nature exclusive. As each one is choosing among its members, this government-run book fair automatically excludes all presses and publishers that are not members of any of these organizations. Second, in order to be “chosen” at all, presses and publishing houses needed to shell out some good hard-earned cash for a booth, with this year’s price range purportedly at P25,000 to P30,000 pesos.

Any amount is absurd given a government-run fair—why should any of us pay for booths to a fair our taxes pay for? But what makes it cross that line between absurdity and what-looks-like-corruption is that this cash goes straight to the four chosen organizations hand-picked by NBDB. 

This is how the literary establishment ensures not just the movement of power among few players, but just as important, the distribution of large cash flows not based on who deserves space and resources, but on friendship and patronage and alliances.  

Think your city mayor, spending taxpayers’ money to mount a tiangge in the city hall, and making vendors pay rent for booths. Rent that goes to the vendor’s association, headed by the mayor’s political ally.

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It gets worse. The heads of the four organizations purportedly get paid for doing the work of curating the PBF for the NBDB. So they get money for their orgs and they get paid extra, too! It’s the mayor’s political ally, head of an association that receives the rent for a government tiangge, getting paid for even receiving the rent. It smells like a double-dip, if you know what I mean.

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Government agencies are not allowed to earn from any of its projects—this is our laws working in our favour, ensuring that government offices cannot be run like businesses. Until it is.

Ask the NBDB, BDAP, PBBY, PEPA, and Komiket how.

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The NBDB could rationalize this project and insist that organizations “represent” the publishing sector, and in relation to that, the writers and makers of books. That would be about as big a lie as capitalists saying they represent workers.

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Late last year, for Design Week, we were invited to do a pop-up called Design Sari-Sari, a Purveyr curated fair of creatives. It was organized for DTI’s Design Center of the Philippines. Government-funded but privately curated, we paid zero to be a participant, and there was no cut from our sales. The booths were set-up before we got there, with tables and chairs for our use, and signage with our shop name that we could take home.

This is how to run a fair that taxpayers’ money pays for. This is DTI taking responsibility for having chosen Purveyr, and the latter not needing to earn out of the exercise of curating the participants to a publicly-funded fair. Plain, simple, fair.

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The Philippine Book Festival is many things. But it is neither fair nor just. It is not representative of the current landscape of writing and publishing in the country given the exclusionary practices of its partner-organizations. It is not for Filipino readers, who could actually get better and cheaper books if the presses were well-chosen and weren’t required to spend thousands for a booth. It cannot stand for book development, not if all that means is the literary establishment’s mafia staying in power and keeping the few seats at the table and the largest sums of cash only for themselves.

As with politics, so much of this looks and sounds good. And as with so much of our politics, it is the biggest displays of pomp and pageantry that reveal the worst in our institutions. In the case of the literary and publishing world, the pageantry of the Philippine Book Festival displays the worst of the literary cliquishness and patronage politics, the corruption, and the publishing mafia.

Burn, baby burn. ***