Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

Dear Jakartass,

Do you have what it takes to be a ringleader? If you do, Lontar wants you!

To explain: in my January letter to you I noted a list of Lontar’s primary goals for the year, one of which is the publication of 20 or more books (including Menagerie 7, Di Balik Kaca, Antologi Drama Indonesia, The Lontar Anthology of Indonesian Drama, Menagerie 8, and at least ten or more books of prose work in Lontar’s new Modern Library of Indonesia series).

The production cost of these titles comes to an estimated Rp.1,160,348,050 (or, c.US$125,000).

Lontar titles generally sell for between Rp.125,000 and Rp.175,000 or, let’s say, US$15. Based on the formula that follows, this means we must sell 500 copies or more of each title to cover production costs: US$15/copy x 500 copies = US$ 7,500 x 20 titles = US$150,000 minus 20% discount (to buyers for direct sales) = US$120,000.

In order to ensure greater financial stability for Lontar, we would like to enlist, from our ‘Friends of Lontar’, 50 people who are willing to buy for resale 10 copies of each title we publish. In short, we’re looking for 50 ‘Ring Leaders’ to establish 50 ‘Circles of 10′ as a means of increasing our total number of regular customers to a minimum of 500.

Please consider becoming a Ringleader. Fifty Ringleaders will help to ensure the continued and regular production of Indonesian literary translations. If you are interested, please get back to me soon. In April, Lontar will release a number of titles. We hope to have our Ringleaders in place before that time.

(Unfortunately, until we have our new website up in the middle of the year and Lontar books can be ordered on line, we won’t be able to enlist friends from abroad as ringleaders.)

February’s letter to you concerned the start-up of an oral history project concerning ‘Old Hands’. i.e. non-Indonesian citizens or non-Indonesia-born citizens who have lived in Indonesia for a long period of time. As was mentioned therein, in this initial stage of the project, we are compiling a list of names of and basic information about persons who have resided in Indonesia for twenty years of more and have provided a positive contribution to Indonesia’s development as a nation. Since the time of that announcement, we have collected information on approximately 250 people. We are hoping to identify at least twice that number. If you know of anyone who fits the description, please ask him or her to fill in the form that is found under ‘Old Hands‘ at Lontar’s website.

On a final note today, another English-language publisher in Jakarta, Equinox Publishing (whose founder, Mark Hanusz, is on Lontar’s Board of Trustees), recently acquired the rights to all titles in the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project and has just reproduced all 65 as part of Equinox’s Classic Indonesia Series. Authors range from Ben Anderson and Ruth McVey to Heri Akhmadi and T.B. Simatupang – it’s quite a collection of out-of-print titles that are now brought back to life through the latest technology. Details can be found on the Equinox website or Amazon.com.

Yours sincerely,

John McGlynn

Jakarta, March 2010

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I would be happy to be a ‘ringleader’, but that depends on you.

I can’t afford to buy 10 books in the hope of reselling them without absolute commitments. If you are interested in joining my ring, or someone else’s, please leave a comment below or email me or John.