Running a publishing house is no easy task; a flood of manuscripts and eager would-be authors, desperate to get their books on the shelf can be overwhelming to say the least. But for Sam Perera and Ameena Hussein it’s all in a day’s work. The duo run PH Publishers and they eat, sleep, live and breathe literature. They set up what they call a ‘small press’ in 2003, and have to date been involved in and collaborated on over 50 books, having published 40 and distributed many other self-published and small press works.

With three imprints, Ph (general fiction), Popsicle (for children) and Bay Owl (genre free) and over 30 active authors, this ‘small press’ has achieved much in such a short period. Not only have they nurtured young talent, they’ve given Sri Lankan (English) literature a look and feel it can be proud of thanks to quality writing and printing. They average nearly a book a month, and have flourished in a reach that’s strictly local and that gives local authors a platform on which they can shine.

They also plant a tree in the dry-zone for each book title published, reducing that title’s carbon imprint on the planet.

The Sunday Leader spoke to Sam Perera to find out more about what goes on in the world of words.

Q: What was the first spark that set PH Publishers alight?

A: When I met Ameena, she said she only wanted two things out of life. One was to have a world-class publishing house and the other to grow trees in a deforested area. We’re doing both seriously. We wanted to publish books that are written by Sri Lankan authors that looked and read as well as books that one gets in the West. This means that the story has to be told in an interesting way, as well as written well.

We also wanted the packaging to be of an international standard. We wanted Sri Lankans to read their own countrymen and to find their own fiction and literature as interesting as what you would find in the West. We dream of a day when you will be able to buy books written by Sri Lankan authors in other parts of the world.

A: We’ve certainly been called vain. We’re neither the biggest nor the best, but we’re the coolest. And yes, given that we could make a better living doing almost anything else, this is indeed a self-indulgent exercise.

Q: What’s the worst part of your job as a publisher?

A: Saying no to an author whose work is good but we think won’t appeal to the market or whom we cannot afford to publish. To put things in perspective, the cost of publishing a book in Sri Lanka is often greater than the prize money doled out for the Gratiaen Award. We aren’t funded. We’re small and independent. We have limited monetary resources. If a book sells well, we can use those profits to finance another book or author, but the reality is that we just can’t afford to do everything we like.

Q: Is vanity-publishing a good thing for Sri Lanka?

A: Writing is a creative venture. Publishing is a commercial one. When an author is paid for his manuscript, he tends to lose interest in promoting his work, leaving the onus on the publisher. However, if the author has a vested financial interest in the work, his level of participation as well as his monetary reward is proportional to his investment. So yes, from both a publisher’s and author’s point of view, it is a good thing.

However, if you think you are a good author, but are in your view impoverished and misunderstood by publishing companies, the government (Book Development Council or even the Ministry of Culture) will help you financially to publish your work.

A: More than 90% of the writers in our stable are stars. If they were unheard of before they were published, they are certainly basking in the limelight now. A word of caution though: we can’t turn Nobody into Somebody. (Kumari Jayawardene, thank you for that wonderful title!) Your writing has to speak for itself.

A: Yes, we do have some exciting work coming up but we would rather be hush-hush about it for now.

A: Finished, polished, edited and error-free stories that are coherent, exciting and push the boundaries of story telling. We’d like to see the type of stories that you would like to read (or would pay money and buy). If someone who wrote like Gautam Malkani or Aravind Adiga came my way, I would be deliriously happy.

A: We’ve participated in the Colombo Book Fair, where school teachers come looking for Jane Eyre, but are unwilling to read a Sri Lankan author. Without detracting from its merits, people would rather read what colonial administrators like Woolf wrote about Sri Lanka rather than contemporary authors like Yasmine Gooneratne for example, whose book The Sweet & Simple Kind was shortlisted for both the Commonwealth Writers Prize as well as the Dublin IMPAC Award. Very few contemporary international authors can claim as much.

Q: If there was one change you could see in the Sri Lankan publishing industry what would it be?

A: Access to international markets is still very difficult. Although the government helps the traditional manufacturing sector to send their products overseas, promoting intellectual property and its by-products is still not in their field of vision. It would be really helpful to the whole publishing sector if the state facilitated movement in this direction.

A: As long as we’re in it, I’d say the future looks bright (there goes the vanity thing again).

In August the Galle Film Festival is launching Sri Lanka’s first Children’s Film Camp in partnership with the American Embassy in Sri Lanka.  The camp will be led by Constance Tillotson, a well known Hollywood acting coach with Sri Lankan film makers Anoma Rajakaruna and Kasinathar Gnanadas in Sinhala and Tamil mediums respectively.

Fifty per cent of Sri Lanka’s population is comprised of a growing and ambitious youth. The residential film camp which will be held at Sarvodaya Educational Center in Bandaragama, is designed to benefit children from all over the island. The primary focus of this camp is to unite children of different geographical, social, cultural, ethnic and religious groups who have been affected by the civil war for most of their childhood.

The Galle Film Festival and the American Embassy are bringing these children together in an entertaining, creative and educative environment, to help them discover how to communicate their feelings artistically, using film as a medium — a positive form of self expression. The partners hope the camp will help children understand how to put aside their differences to learn about themselves and most importantly from each other.

The camp will take place over a period of 10 days, bringing together 40 children from Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Moneragala, Hambantota, Matara, Galle, Puttalam, Hatton, Bandarawela, Anuradhapura and Jaffna. The children will be working closely with Constance Tillotson, Anoma Rajakaruna and Kasinathar Gnanadas, who will lead workshops on various aspects of film making. This includes acting, story telling, writing, directing, videographying, lighting and editing.

Most of these children have never travelled outside of their villages, so as part of the programme they will be taken on a cultural tour of Colombo, visits to the MTV studios and  the University of Moratuwa. This will give them a hands-on experience of the local film and television industry. 

The final goal of this unique programme is for the children to create their own short films based on the skills they will have acquired over the 10 days. At the end of the camp, their films will be given a special Red Carpet screening at the Punchi Theatre, as well as première screening at the Galle Film Festival in October and island wide broadcast on MTV, Sirasa and Shakthi TV.

This camp has made possible by the Galle Film Festival and numerous partners including the American Embassy, Room to Read, the Maharaja Group, Cason Rent A Car, Gateway, APS, Galle Face Hotel, Deccan Air, Abbas Esufally, David Gilmour and Dr. Anula Jayasuriya giving children hope for a better tomorrow..