THE publication of books in this country should be cause for celebration. Why not, especially when a survey tell us that in 2010, Indonesia only published around 15,000 books. This is better than four years ago, when only about 10,000 books were published.

Data from UNESCO shows that at the same time Japan published approximately 60,000 books, and Britain 110,115 titles. Although it is not fair to compare Indonesia with these two developed natio