On Histories & Indie Publishing Nodes

Hello Faction readers, Happy New Year!

For our last post for the year, we thought we'd do some stock-taking and reflecting.

A summary of our journey so far: One mission + two years on = we've published three authors, participated in nine events, created one Faction totebag (!), and met many (many) new readers and Faction friends ✌🏼

A big thank you to everyone in 2024 who has supported us, cheered us on, and recommended us to writers, publishers, libraries, literary agents, printers, booksellers, and readers. Faction Press could not exist without this strong community of publishing nodes, and we are so very grateful to be a small part of this global independent publishing network ✨

A quick walk down memory lane for 2024: We started off the year by celebrating the launch of Ooi Kee Beng's Signals in The Noise at Book Bar in January!

Listening to Ooi Kee Beng chat about the art of empathetic writing during the launch of Signals in the Noise at Book Bar on 5 January.

This was followed by Lio Mangubat's debut collection of Philippine colonial history tales, Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves. We're so pleased Lio's book was so widely received by Philippine media outlets (Esquire! Spot PH! Business World!), the Asian Review of Books, Ex Libris Philippines and Koji Reads.

We also launched Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves at Singapore's Book Bar in July, and at the wonderful Everything's Fine in Manila in August. A highlight was seeing Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves to be number 2 on the Straits Times' Bestsellers List for 27 July 2024 🎉

Everything was more than fine at Everything's Fine during the launch of Lio Mangubat's Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves on 31 August.

We ended the year on a high note with Dina Zaman's Malayland. A co-publication with fellow independent publisher Ethos Books, Dina's reflections draw on her life-long fascination with identity, race, and religion as she processes Malaysia’s contradictions as a nation and her home country. And boy did we have a busy month of November promoting Malayland in both Malaysia (in Kuala Lumpur and Penang) and Singapore (at the National Library and Book Bar)!

We had such a batik-ful crowd at the launch of Dina Zaman's Malayland at Mountbatten Cafe in KL on 2 November.

Between both books, we had events in October that got us thinking a lot about Southeast non-fiction and history. These included our publisher's interactions with students at the National Institute of Education, and the many, many people who stopped by our humble booth (which we shared with our book designer, SWELL) at the Singapore Art Book Fair.

It was our first time at the Singapore Art Book Fair and we had a ton of fun!

Our focus this year was, indeed, history through our publication of Lio Mangubat's Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves, and our co-publication of Dina Zaman's Malayland with Ethos Books. Both books reflect a slower and thoughtful process behind our collective processing of history and its consequences in Southeast Asia. History is, after all, not just one event happening after another —  it's fundamentally about people, power dynamics and systems that are at the consequential end of such events; the ripple effects of which can go on and on and on. The endless processing of such events is what motivates us to publish histories —  both big and small. We look forward to publishing more of such hi/stories in 2025, where we'll be publishing writers that touch on other themes that are dear to us, such as grief, memory- and place-making, and longing and belonging ✨

If you aren't already following us on Instagram, X and Facebook (we're working on getting a Bluesky account set up), please do! And thank you to those who have purchased our titles via our web store (shout-outs to Faction friends who have ordered books from Spain, Scotland, and even Hawaii)! Our faith in the global postal system remains unshakeable.