Manila International Book Fair First day

Remember I was at the MIBF during 2006? That photo with me and Rex above was taken back then. I wrote about my experience from an illustrator’s perspective.

This year, Fully Booked wasn’t part of the MIBF. Friend Blooey says they had invested their efforts in opening their branch in Fort Bonifacio . Hence book choices for the skill-seeking illustrator are kinda thin this year. Spectrum 13 was on sale but still price 2x higher than on Amazon. A book on Digital illustration copyright 2005 caught my eye at the Megatext booth. It was going for around 2,100Php and in cash 1,500Php. Only one copy though, I bet it’ll be gone. A shelf for graphic novels here, and one for manga there… The how-to manga books are now rare and there are very few replacements to them and their ilk. I think skill-seeking illustrators will save more time book-scouting in retail outlets of Fully Booked, Bestsellers, or even Powerbooks.

This is not to say however that inspirational or stylistic books are lacking – but generally I’m not too impressed with the selections this year. The children’s books are still there in force however. In fact, I got to sign some copies of Dalawang Bayani ng Bansa.

I also got to sit in the Speculative Fiction talk by Dean Alfar and friends. Interesting.

On a side note, you can tell things have changed between 2006 and 2007:

I have gained 25 pounds and Rex told me that my new weight looked good on me.