singapore = africa?

from Elizabeth Costello, by J.M. Coetzee:

'In Africa, a book must offer you a return for the money you spend on it. What do I stand to learn by reading this story, the African will ask? How will it advance me? ...

We do of course make books in Africa. But the books we make are for children, teaching-books in the simplest sense. If you want to make money publishing books in Africa, you must put out books that will be prescribed for schools, that will be bought in quantity by the education system to be read and studied in the classroom. It does not pay to publish writers with serious ambitions, writers who write about adults and matters that concern adults. Such writers must look elsewhere for their salvation. ...

Of course you will find publishers in Africa, one here, one there, who will support local writers even if they will never make money. But in the broad picture, storytelling provides a livelihood neither for publishers nor for writers.'

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Of course, we know that Singapore isn't Africa. But the analysis of the writing and publishing industry in Africa (which isn't Coetzee's, strictly speaking - this comes from the mouth of one of his characters, a literary/political activist novelist) does show up some similarities between the continent and the city-state. The best-selling books here, after all, are self-help books, business manuals and assessment books. Anyone looking to work in the book-publishing industry here either has to content themselves with working in these 'genres', or be willing to work in tiny loss-making outfits that are cross-subsidised by their owners' other, more profitable businesses.

At least, that is what I've observed. I'd be glad if anyone could prove me wrong.
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