PH Book Festival 2025 | Meeting Tablay Creators

This year’s Philippine Book Festival has made changes, and not only the venue, but the way the floor plan is getting used to. The last day was bustling with last-minute activities, book sales, and something you’d expect in a book expo or anything that a large event would do during its last few minutes before everyone had packed their stuff and dismantled their booth. Heading to the venue, my initial thoughts were just to pick up the preview comic book of Tablay and just go as planned. I didn’t expect that the author and artist would still be there. I’ve been supportive of Komiket from afar and have been to their last event in February. But this was just too good to see both Kat Olan and Paul Medalla.

PH Book Festival 2024 | The Last Day

The Philippine Book Festival is slowly becoming a staple event for those who have an affinity to still have the time to pick up a physical book instead of a Kindle or digital copy that doesn’t have the tactile feel of flipping through pages. This year’s event has immensely grown to expand some of the exhibitors divided into four genres, and it’s interesting to see new things from the local komiks community. Filipino Komiks were under-represented in the past years before the first book festival last year, it was given quite a spotlight to see independent comics and other related things that would get some eyeballs looking forward to some titles and graphic novels that some haven’t heard of. It’s something worth exploring through some of these new publishers that bring new talent and stories to the wider audience.

Philippine Book Festival 2023 | The Book Experience

In the age of digital and streaming, the one thing that is still relevant from the analog age is books. Reading is essential despite there are digital versions of physical books and other print material. But you can’t replace the tactile feel of flipping pages and the smell of a newly printed material in a physical format that continues to allure readers. Recently, the National Book Development Board (NBDB) organized its first-ever event that invites not only local authors, creators, and publishers. But also, inviting foreigners from all over the world to let them know that books in the Philippines and reading is very much relevant in the industry.