Towards overall book development in the Phl

Dear National Artist F. Sionil Jose,

Thank you for your kind mention of the National Book Development Board (NBDB) in your column. We recognize the veracity of your many observations, including the problems involved with textbooks, such as those publishers who corner contracts from both the public and private sectors through unethical means. Like you, we wish that the NBDB be given more teeth to be able to help in the development of our nation even more, sadly Republic Act 8047 or the “Book Publishing Industry Development Act” does not grant us regulatory powers to appropriately penalize erring publishers. However, you might be happy to know that we have many efforts to raise the quality of textbooks in the country. Recently, we have just put together a list called the NBDB Highly Recommended List of Supplementary Materials the country has to offer, so that the educational system may be provided with a list of titles and materials they may want to recommend to students. Aside from the award-winning titles and works, we are recommending the works of national artists and scientists in the list.

As to your suggestion that the NBDB publish two monthly literary magazines, one in Filipino and another in English, we do think that would be a wonderful idea. However, our budget does not allow that much flexibility to print and pay the fees of contributors and a staff for such an undertaking. We do have our newsletter

Bookwatch, which we are providing you copies for your reference. As you will observe, we have tried to provide an avenue through this newsletter for thoughts on literature and publishing. Bookwatch is given to libraries, publishers, authors, government officials, school administrators and other relevant entities and individuals. There are literary journals published by the different universities, such as the Likhaan of the UP Institute of Creative Writing as well as many online literary journals. We hope that literary magazines/journals published by a university serve the purpose of providing a venue for writers to publish their works.

We thank you as well for your suggestion that the National Book Awards be turned over to an institution, given your example that the Pulitzer Prize is administered by Columbia University. We’d like to respectfully inform you that the National Book Awards in the US is administered by the National Book Awards Foundation, an organization that is not connected to a university but made up of private entities such as the American Book Publishers’ Council, the Book Manufacturers’ Institute, and the American Booksellers’ Association. In the Philippines, there is no broader network of publishers, book sellers, and authors other than that of the NBDB. We hope you have noticed that the National Book Awards, as administered by the NBDB since 2008, has been transparent in that we announce all the judges, especially the NBDB’s representative judges. We make sure to include judge- representatives from all the major universities, including fellows from the writing centers such as the UP’s Institute of Creative Writing, the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings, and DLSU’s Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center not to mention judges whose expertise span across genres, regions, professions, and languages. We must assure you that under the NBDB’s watch the National Book Awards of the Philippines has been systematic in its dissemination in the call for entries, representative in its choice of judges, and fair as any judging process can be in its upholding of the rules. For example, last year, we have included in the literary division of the NBA Cebuano- language books; this year, Ilokano. We hope to go through all the major regional languages and, budget permitting, hope to expand the categories to the non-literary division as well. But the effort is slow-going given the lack of works submitted in these languages though we assure you the effort to be inclusive and to develop the literatures of the different regions is there.

And, yes, we do hope to award more lifetime achievement awards and are very happy about the opportunity to recognize Gilda Cordero Fernando for the exemplary work she has done.

We hope this response has met your observations. We should very much like to continue this dialogue with you should you feel it necessary to do so. You can get in touch with us by e-mail nenisrcruz@gmail.com or apltflores@nbdb.gov.ph. — FLOR MARIE STA. ROMANA-CRUZ, Chair, ANDREA PASION-FLORES, Executive Director, National Book Development Board (NBDB)