Hong Kong, March 19
By 2030, the average
citizen of planet Earth will be an Indian man in his mid-20s. But few
people in the international creative industries realize this and so are
still creating books, movies and music for the shrinking, over-saturated
Western market. To help fix the problem, authors in Asia are setting up
a new book prize - and creative people in India are tipped to be big
winners.
Each year, the winner of the World Readers' Award will
get $10,000 and a golden egg trophy presented to them in an
extraordinary building in Hong Kong shaped like a giant golden egg.
How will a book prize change the mindset of creative people around the world?
"Books
are the basis of the main global forms of entertainment. Not only is it
a huge industry by itself, but the main properties in the movie and
game industry - think of Harry Potter or The Hunger Games or The Hobbit -
are based on books," said organizer Nury Vittachi, a Sri Lankan author
and an IANS columnist based here.
To prompt creative people
around the world to write stories set in under-used locations, such as
Asia, Africa, Latin America and so on, the World Readers' Award will be
open to all nationalities, and will favour books with a global
perspective rather than the Western focus which is currently common.
Writers in places such as India, which has a high standard of English and a long literary tradition, have an advantage.
Judging will be coordinated by the Asia Pacific Writers and Translators, an international authors' organization.
"In
practice, what this means is that stories featuring stereotypical James
Bond-style heroes working from offices in MI5 are less likely to find
favour with the judges than tales set in more interesting locations with
more original ideas," said Vittachi.
Literary editors around the
world have responded favourably. "Mr. Vittachi and his co-conspirators
have served notice on the literary prize world. In the golden age of the
reader, Pulitzer, Booker, Costa and the rest will have to acknowledge
that the borders of the literary world can no longer be policed in the
traditional way," said Robert McCrum, one of Britain's best known
literary editors.
International publishers and authors are also
getting excited, as the book business is struggling on the Western side
of the planet, but still growing in the east.
"The ultimate aim
will be to solve a big mystery: when readers outside the western world
tire of reading translations of Harry Potter, what will they want to
read?" asked Xu Xi, a novelist based in Hong Kong.
The answer is a
seriously big deal. The value of the global book industry has been
estimated at $130 billion a year, larger than any other creative
industry sector except television. The global entertainment and media
industry will become a $2 trillion industry in 2016, according to
PricewaterhouseCoopers' research.
The 2015 World Readers' Award
will go to the best published book with a global perspective, and the
2016 award will go to an unpublished manuscript. The award is being
coordinated through a website:
www.worldreadersaward.com.
"The
world is filled with geopolitical thrillers set in Washington and
noirish crime novels set in Sweden," said Isagani Cruz, a Manila-based
author, and one of the organizers, adding: "But that's not the world as
it actually is."
The "typical" human being is a Chinese male aged
28, according to research by National Geographic. In 2030, the typical
human will be an Indian man. What these individuals find entertaining
will underpin the entertainment industry of the future, creating
valuable entertainment franchises.
The prize will be presented at the Hong Kong Science Park, which can seat almost 300 people in a giant egg-shaped building.
The
Park's CEO, Allen Ma, said: "Humanity's greatest scientific resources
are not test tubes and silicon chips, but the incredible power of the
human mind. As Einstein loved to say, imagination is more important than
knowledge."
