The whacking persecution prosecution of Jovolan Wham (Jolovan Wham: Money talks, BS Walks do-gooders),has the ang moh tua kees, cybernuts, progressives and social activists sullen and despondent despite Christmas being the time to be jolly.
So I tot I’d cheer them up with the story of a quiet activist and progressive who by annoying the PAPpies is laughing all the way to the bank. Better still he double annoys the PAPpies because they know that he’s making money by annoying them
Edmund Wee is a very quiet warrior. Via some of the books he publishes, he walks the walk, not talk the talk, of a progressive S’pore unlike Lim Tean (Remind Lim Tean, it’s December).
Readers of this blog will know that Edmund Wee’s firm had to refund a National Arts Council (NAC) grant Charlie and Edmund, a graphic novel about the Schoolings pls. Note the the ST headline (a month or so ago) “Very few arts projects for which official funding is withdrawn: Baey Yam Keng”.
What readers are unlikely to know is that he’s making serious money from Charlie Chan: the book has sold 24,000+ copies here and 9,000 copies in the US/UK. And is being translated into other languages including Real Chinese (not simplified Chinese).
He shows that there is money to be made from propagating progressive tots here.
What regular readers may not know is that Edmund also published Jeremy Tiang’s “State of Emergency” after the NAC withdrew a grant from the Singaporean author because the content of his book changed from his original proposal, said Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Grace Fu.
In a written response to Parliament earlier this year, she said that in Tiang’s case, “the project did not meet the funding requirements mutually agreed upon as the content in the book deviated from the original proposal”. ST
Jeremy Tiang’s “State of Emergency,” which follows a family caught up in the Communist insurgency in Malaysia after World War II, and Singapore’s often brutal crackdown on suspected leftists during the Cold War.
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Tiang, an established writer and translator, was initially given an Arts Council grant but had his funding withdrawn after submitting a draft, ostensibly because he had deviated from his original proposal.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Life-Arts/Life/Singapore-s-rebel-bookseller-seeks-new-narrative
Sadly this book’s sales are so-so: the best outcome for locally published books. The usual fate of books (example M Ravi’s Kampong Boy, not by Epigram) is to remain largely unsold.
But Edmund has another winner. Edmund is also behind “The Phantom of Oxley Castle” which sold 800 odd copies (Print run of 2,000) before its launch because of a TOC story that got the anti-PAP mob rushing to buy the book online. And then feeling cheated when TOC had to retract the claim that PM was going to sue the publisher. Read the twists in the plot at https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2017/11/13/tocs-account-on-the-potential-legal-actions-surrounding-the-phantom-of-oxley-castle/
One cybernut even threatened to make a police report against Edmund Wee, saying he cheated said nut and his friends. As though, the police would take the word of TOC, no friend of the police.
But lest Edmund Wee be tot to be anti-PAP, as distinct from having progressive views, he’s also published a kids’ book based on an adult book praising Philip Yeo. Philip Yeo attended the kids’ book launch which also doubled as a charity do.
He’s also published a kids’ book on
How did a boy who was kicked out of school (twice!) and ran away from home end up being the President of Singapore?
Find out in The Runaway Who Became President, taken from our Prominent Singaporeans series
There was once in the US, a black civil rights activist who went into publishing. He became very rich and was accused of selling out. He said something to the effect that his magazines (which targeted a black audience) entertained while educating and mobilising his audience.
While Edmund is not that rich (yet) he’s entertaining, educating and, hopefully, mobilising S’poreans especially the young.
Thoughts of a Cynical Investor 