Like I said, dude, don’t give in to cynicism. 
And if I wrote rolls, I meant rolls. Harumph!
Agreed, but I still do not think it is fair to say that all the magazines are “crappy”. Some are of lesser quality than others, and some do entertain more than they teach. You will find fewer errors, though, in the magazines than you’ll find in the EFL books!
Alien, was that directed at me? 
Yeah, I’ve come to grips with the situation and it is time for me to move on. (I’ll email you.)
But those “fresh ideas”? I dunno. Maybe things have changed over at the three-letter publishers, but from what I remember, they prefer solid, will-sell products over edgy and progressive. They kind of suck the energy out of a project…but that was then and maybe now is different.
Sandman, I’m not going to lie. Working in Taiwan’s publishing industry has been a step down for me. I’ve worked in publishing (trade, academic, law journal, etc; editorial, publicity, production, writing) off and on for the past decade; I understand its inner workings. I have been trained and worked alongside a number of excellent professionals, and I’ve seen how quality is achieved. But to continue in educational publishing on the editorial end, I needed this kind of job. I was told point blank by a manager at a well known and respected EFL publisher that I would need more experience working overseas to move forward in EFL publishing. Alien was there that night.
True, the stuff I’ve worked on here that bares my name isn’t all that great, but I’m proud of what I have accomplished, not necessarily what is on bookshelves. Almas John is 100% correct, probably closer to 1000% correct, about the Taiwan Business Model. However, working within it has exposed me to a new system of bookmaking and book selling. For me, my adventure in Taiwan publishing has been rewarding, and it isn’t over yet.
There is room for improvement in the books area. A lot. And it is not going to happen if (edit) Taiwan’s ELL publishing continues to be managed and produced by people who do not comprehend English and who value quantity over quality; and improvement will definitely not happen if good native speakers aren’t hired into editorial and writing positions.
You can call out the faults in Taiwan publishing all you want—heaven knows I do, and often. Going to the bookstore is depressing for someone who treasures the printed word as much as I do. But, we should aim at improving it than simply bashing it.
So Icon, no, publishing is not a “no-go”. For people who can actually edit and have a strong grasp of the language, publishing is definitely a go.
Yup, yup. :+)
Jenny, I did not say it was a no-go, at least not explicitly. I’ve been there, I’ve done it, I am doing something similar but not commercial. The evils are evident, and I always warn any star-eyed naive newbie who says “there is a huge market for good quality materials” -which obviously you or Alien or Almas are not, so this statement is not for you- who unfortunately abound that it is a treacherous road. The supposed “market needs” -actually, standards set by a mafia of “publishers”, engaged in very dodgy practices- rule over real learning, which will cause ulcers or other severe psychosomatic reactions in any editor with half a concience -or a brain- until some kind of compromise is reached. Nevertheless, as you’ve found out, it is also full of personal rewards. One rises to the challenge, to say the least.
As you can see, Icon is a hopeless cynic, but even I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
oh. :+) i thought that was you.
I’ve got several useful chunks of work because people have googled on the subject they want written about, seen my name, and then hunted me down. But even then contacts do help, in the sense that when editor A in HK or somewhere asks his friend in Taipei, photographer B, do you know this writer Cook/Cooke/Crookes/Croke (amazing how many editors can’t spell my humble, 5-letter Anglo-Saxon surname), B is more likely to answer “yes” - but it wasn’t contacts that led them to seek me out in the first place.
Perhaps it’s different for me because I seem to write about a wider range of subjects than you.
And you had that little book published a few years back and spent a few years doing the South magazine thing. I’m sure you built up quite a few contacts with that (and google hits! ). When you were still doing the magazine I used to see you around in Tainan from time to time. Where are you these days? Saw an article you did in the Taiwan Review a while back. 
The book helped in the sense that it showed I could actually finish a longish project. How many people here in Taiwan have told you they’re writing a book, and how few have actually completed one?
Yes, I made lots of contacts working for FYI SOUTH magazine. They’ve been useful when writing articles (i.e. sources of information) but of no use when it comes to selling articles.
I’m still in Tainan County, but over the last year I haven’t been getting into the city much because a book project kept me very busy until March.
pm me for coffee sometime.
Lately, things are moving forward in ways that one could not have conceived as early as 2 years ago. I’m afraid Asia may actually lag behind the advancements, even with the mounds of technology at people’s fingertips.
Just don’t allow yourself to be too resolute that print publications will continue to be the centerpiece of language learning.
Even before, back when I used to work for one of those radio/magazine combo outfits, the magazines were not the point. They were sort of a loss leader. The point was to sell the whole package to the schools – which unfortunately included dog-and-pony shows by the friendly (?) on-air personalities at the schools. And the purchase decision-makers at schools are not exactly Shakespeare in the English area (or maybe they are, which is another problem…)
Oh well, at least I got a 14 year old Taiwanese female stalker out of it. 
I’ve worked at some of those magazines, and I liked it. It partly depends on your personality - I’d rather spend 12 hours proofreading than 6 hours teaching, for example, but I’m guessing that most people wouldn’t.
I noticed, though, that most of my foreign coworkers hated it. One was always drunk after lunch; one got fired because he couldn’t stand the boss, even though he was the best writer that mag had ever had. Pretty well all of my coworkers, including the Taiwanese, complained constantly about how idiotic our superiors were.
Just saw this. Funny thing actually. Besides you, I’ve known two other guys who were writing books and got them published. Both guys have actually published three or more books and are still at it. I have another friend in Tainan who’s busy writing his first book and he’s about 3/4 of the way through it. Oddly enough, including you, all of them lived in Tainan.
A plague of waiguoren writers in Tainan? What kind of books are we talking about? Any that you’d recommend?
Might be a good idea to organize a liter…a litra… a writer’s piss up… I mean a writer’s festival.
Well, I think everyone here is familiar with Steven’s writing, but in case someone doesn’t know, he wrote Keeping Up with the War God.
I picked up a copy at Eslite bookstore some years ago and quite enjoyed it.
Another guy I became friends with and worked with that has published a few books is Antonio Graceffo aka The Brooklyn Monk taken from his first book. He has written mostly on Martial Arts, traveling and a combination of the two. His writer’s Bio can be seen here.
One of my Saffa mates, Marion Erskine, has now gotten his third book published. The first, Afro-Dizzy-Act: A potent adventure of a foreigner in Taiwan, was an English-Chinese book published in Taiwan Not sure where you could find it, perhaps Caves, Eslite or Page One. I got my copy at Eslite when it first came out. Since then he wrote Oos (East in Afrikaans) in Afrikaans for which he won second prize in a young writer’s competition in South Africa. The book was well received in SA. His third book, Donatello & Volksie, is also in Afrikaans and just came out recently. Marion left Taiwan for the Middle East about a year ago and is currently working on a series of children’s books themed around African folk stories.
The third guy is still in process of writing his first book which is a travelogue about his cycle trip from Kentucky, through Central and South America to Argentina. We also work together and he’s making good progress. Done around 300 pages or so, so far.
I have great respect for anyone who has trudged down that road and managed to get a book published. :bravo:
Thanks Bismarck.
I’ve read some of Antonio’s stuff - he posted some articles on Taiwan Ho a few years back. His writing was not really my cup of tea. I found the self-publicity very off-putting. It’s standard practice to beef up an author’s byline but he really stretched things. In his articles, he constantly referred to himself as a “travel adventure writer” when in fact he was (still is?) teaching in a buxiban. 
As for Marion’s book on Taiwan, that one slipped under the radar.
Gravedigging this 14 year old thread. Does anyone have any current info to add about the EFL publishing business, such as how to find a job in it? Not necessarily writing for a magazine and not necessarily for the Taiwan market (I’m in the U.S. currently). Does anyone here have any experience working in the industry they’d like to share?
I think all the schools in Taiwan use either 康軒，翰林，or 南一 (those are all publishers) for textbooks and then sometimes use the supplementary materials when they are gifted to them for free or have a budget that needs to be wasted on useless crap before the end of the fiscal year.
As far as English materials go, some are better than others but all of them are worse than anything that is made by major US/UK textbook publishers as far as introducing usable English is concerned.
I say this as someone who has learned to know better than to try to convince schools to use textbooks or any materials that might actually help students learn English, not as a writer myself