I frequently hear from TNPS readers that they wish they’d known about a particular book fair, festival or other literary event and its background in advance so they could have attended, or organised something on social media to mark the occasion.
So this will be the first of an occasional series looking at events well in advance, with some background information to help authors, publishers and other professionals in the field make an informed decision about which future events to focus on.
40th Manila International Book Fair – 11-15 September 2019. Philippines.
Turnout is typically about 150,000.
Follow the event on Facebook: @manilabookfair
Twitter: @manilabookfair, but the twitter account has been neglected
Website: click here.
The Philippines is only at 62% internet penetration so a complete wast of time for ebooks.
No, rewind that.
The Philippines is only at 62% penetration, but as the country has 108 million people that means there are 67 million people online, making it the 12th largest country in the world by internet users..
That not only means there are more people online in the Philippines than there are in the UK, France or Italy. It means there are more people online in the Philippines than the entire population of the UK.
Want to connect with them? There are over 10 million Filipinos on twitter, and, wait for it, 66 million Filipinos on Facebook.
Last year Big Bad Wolf debuted in the Philippines, taking 2 million English language books to Manila. It was so successful Big Bad Wolf went back twice more, taking a further 1 million books each time.
Amazon and Apple aren’t there but Kobo and Google Play are.
The Philippines is also big on Wattpad
Thanks for that, Mark. As a Brit author living in the Philippines, it was timely as I was wondering when the next Manila Book Fair was due.
I must make a point about what you wrote about internet usage here. Though the numbers are huge, you must bear in mind most of those users are using pre-paid cell phones and Facebook comes free with all the main telecoms providers.
The e-book market is still a relative ‘waste of time’ here as most users don’t use their load (local term for pay-as-you-go) to set up Amazon accounts or download books.
There is a healthy market for physical books but dominated by the likes of National Book Store and Big Bad Wolf who seem to specialize in discounted consignments of ‘returns’ from what I gather.
Wattpad is definitely popular especially with the YA market.
I would also add there is a lot of young writing talent here. I know as I taught a creative writing class here in 2017.
Thanks for the updates.
I can’t find any info on exhibition costs. Can anyone let me know what a basic shell scheme would cost on the exhibition floor? Something like 1 x 2 m?
Thanks!