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How actual physical books are thriving, even in the age of social media
With most young people today spending a lot of time online for school, work, and socials, how does reading real physical books sound to Pinoys?
Well, we're happy to report reading physical books is still very much cool, even among — or is that especially with? — millennials.
At the recently concluded 10th Philippine International Literary Festival (PILF), bloggers Honey De Peralta, KB Meniado, Life Ocampo, and Beverly “Bebang” Siy said they have each used social media to establish and build communities of book lovers on the Internet, blogging, bookstagramming, and posting on YouTube and Facebook to the delight of many.
Meniado put up Bookbed in 2010 as an online bookstore. “Four years later, we transitioned into a bigger community. We talk about books and art, provide platforms for creators, and support similar advocacies and causes,” she told GMA News Online.
Bookbed is also like a book club on steroids: It posts book reviews, holds chat groups for book discussions, organizes book drives and writing workshops, and features bookish projects such as journaling, where netizens can create their own artworks based on the current books they are reading.
Its latest book drive called "A Reader Every Day" will benefit residents in Pilar, Sorsogon.
Ocampo, meanwhile, is active on Instagram as a #bookstagrammer, regularly posting creative photo shoots of books she likes. “It was easy to adopt and join the various activities in Bookstagram, like the bookish tags where we share trivial challenges with each other. In bookstagramming, all you need is to have a photo shoot with your books, and let your creativity do the job,” she told GMA News Online.
Readers can just join in the fun on bookstagram, and participate in book tags such as #lastfivebooks, #mylifeinbooks, #5thingsilovedoing, #spelldayinbooks, and #qotd (quote of the day), Ocampo shared.
She also is on YouTube as booktube. “My booktube started with the usual book haul, but I've been working on something more meaningful. I've always wanted to share my thoughts about how books related to our mundane lives. Through videos, I want to share the lessons from the books that we can apply in real life. I want my channel to be more informative and inspirational; to encourage people, to do more than read,” Ocampo added.
De Peralta on the other hand started a book blog called Coffeespoons in 2009, posting book reviews and connecting with fellow book lovers. She also put up a book club called Flips Flipping Pages and its members would meet up monthly to discuss the latest book they agreed to digest.
Later, De Peralta became one of those who organized the Filipino Reader Conference (Filipino ReaderCon), a big book fair and conference wherein they also gave out the Filipino Readers' Choice Awards.
Her passion for reading turned into an advocacy, and she was later offered a job by Penguin Random House where she is now sales manager for Southeast Asia.
“The Filipino is a reader,” De Peralta said in her talk at PILF.
“No one outside the Philippines believes that Filipinos are not readers,” she added, saying that there were so many people at the Manila International Book Fair last year that organizers had to close the doors to manage the crowd.
She encouraged readers to join a book club because “it is worth it.”
Siy was actually one of the first Filipino ReaderCon People's Choice awardees and she won it for her humorous book of essays entitled “It's a Mens World.” In her blog, she promotes literary events and tells stories of her life working in the lit circle.
She joined the Pinoy Reads Pinoy Books Book Club organized in 2012 on goodreads.com by Jalandoni Oliveros and Jayson Vega.
The book club would meet once a month and discuss a Filipino book or invite an author to give a talk. One time they retraced the steps of the lead character in the book they were discussing, going on a road trip together.
“Book clubbing is about respect for diversity. It will teach us to be better humans,” she said during her talk at PILF.
Siy, who works for the Cultural Center of the Philippines' Intertextual Division, recently did a readership survey among 100 respondents aged 13-19 years old in Mega Manila, Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.
Survey results showed that majority of the respondents indeed read real books, mostly prose or fiction in English. Fantasy and romance are popular genres, and Wattpad and manga books are interesting to them.
The good news is that in each age group, there are respondents reading Filipinina books. And who do they read? The likes of Bob Ong, F. Sionil Jose, Ricky Lee, and Eros Atalia, among others.
All four of them believe book communities and social media contribute to one's best reading life. Jump right in and join the fun! — LA, GMA News
