Aletheia Publishing is a Davao-based independent publishing house
that opened in 2015 as a response to the endemic difficulties faced by authors
in Mindanao, and from other regions in the Philippines located outside
the publishing capital.
Although there are numerous publishers in the country, relatively few take a chance on new or unestablished authors who lack a substantial audience that can generate book sales. Even on the rare instance when a publisher is willing, the majority are based in NCR, and at the very end of the line are authors situated outside Manila who are geographically (and culturally) disadvantaged from accessing these publishing opportunities.
When Aletheia Publishing started, it encountered several authors, both new and established, with outstanding manuscripts, translations, research outputs, and other collections of works that have remained unpublished due to the bureaucratic and financial challenges in having their works considered by commercial and university-based publishers. This is particularly because the industry is inclined towards genres or subjects that can explode to mainstream popularity or be selected as required reading in schools – both are ideal situations that catapult a book to bestseller status and drive huge sales. While this makes economic sense, less lucrative and niche subjects such as history, philosophy, and literary fiction are therefore given less publication budget.
Aletheia Philosophy Series and Aletheia Literary Series are new initiatives that were launched last year to achieve these interrelated goals:
(1) To establish an alternative venue, other than university presses and journals, that is dedicated to shining a spotlight on peer-reviewed works in philosophy and literary fiction.
(2) To promote the philosophical and literary outputs of our own Filipino philosophers and writers, especially (though not exclusively) those whose voices are outside the capital city of Manila.
(3) To cultivate national readership and appreciation of these genres, and most importantly, advance the internationalization of these local and regional works.
Last December, the first volume under the Aletheia Literary Series was released – a coming-of-age novel in Cebuano Bisaya entitled Mga Dagayday sa Panahong Nanglabay by Melchor M. Morante.
Meanwhile, this January marks the release of the first volume under the Aletheia Philosophy Series, which is a collection of essays entitled Thought-Pieces: Nietzschean Reflections on Anti-foundationalism, Ethics, and Politics by Paolo A. Bolaños, PhD.
Aletheia Publishing has high hopes to expand these series with more thought-provoking titles by emerging voices from all throughout the country. For those interested in submitting a manuscript for review, you may contact the publisher here.