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Published on January 30, 2008

When Airky posted a fictional story on Pantip.com in mid-2006, she was "just testing the water. I figured that if it was well accepted I'd start writing a real novel."

Presented in a series of posts, "Cheewit Rantod - Ruangjing Phan Comp" ("The Melancholic Life - A True Story Through the Computer") was an immediate hit, No 1 on the search parade for weeks and weeks.

Eighteen months on, Airky is the author of two published books, and the TV series "Songkhram Nang Fah" that's based on one of them has everyone talking. The title of the tale that began as "Melancholic Life" is usually translated as "Air Hostess War", but "War of the Angels" catches the spirit better.

It was, to begin with, a simple but engaging true-life account posted on Pantip's Lumpini Forum, and then it was moved to the Library Forum, the usual stage for rookie writers. Print publishers and TV and film producers are always among the readers there.

Three more titles are on the way from 45-year-old former airline attendant Airky, who now goes by just the one name. Yet she'd never considered herself a serious writer, even if her grandfather was the renowned novelist Por Intapalit.

Her sudden success via cyberspace suggests that the days are gone when aspiring writers laboured at the keyboard, submitted a completed story to a publisher and crossed their fingers - often all in vain.

The technology is a lot faster now, and so are the results, beginning with immediate feedback from online readers. If your tale causes a buzz, a publisher or producer is going to know about it instantaneously.

"The Internet is now the biggest channel for finding good stories," says Anit Osathanugrah, whose Anit Group churns out books, a lot of which still originate in hard-copy submissions that Anit and his team of freelancers sift through. They get about 1,000 stories submitted each year, he says, but only around 2 per cent are up to standard.

The team is constantly monitoring different websites, though. In the case of Airky's yarn about airborne hijinks, Anit says, they just weren't fast enough, and had to settle for her promise to write them another one. As a result of that pledge, Anit Publishing has just released "Baan Nangfah".

Within weeks of its posting online, Airky's original drew bids from several book publishers and three different TV channels. Blue Bell Press got the book deal and Exact & Scenario the TV rights.

Meanwhile Seng Ped's gay-love story, a personal journal, also found a big following in the Library Forum, and Anit recently brought out the book version of that.

As well as Pantip, Dekdee.com, Jamsai.com and other websites have paved the way for dozens of newcomers. They don't have to write about adultery in exotic locales - among the most popular topics are tips on raising pets, and findingthe best restaurants.

Sirilux Srisukon, the executive producer at Exact & Scenario, also spends hours on the Net as well as scanning the usual hard-copy submissions. In "War of the Angels" she found something far beyond the clichéd puppy-love tales that young online writers offer - a woman's real-life experiences over the course of years of marriage.

Sirilux soon learned that thousands of other people had been just as touched by Airky's well-crafted writing. "If people were that moved reading the story," she says, "I knew there would be a much bigger impact on TV."

Too often, says Sirilux, the stories posted online are loosely plotted and laden with inconsistencies. Most of the rookie writers are "too young" and their tales too simplistic for television.

Amarin Printing and Publishing deputy editor Jatupol Boonrad thinks these shortcomings are so prevalent online that his firm much prefers to screen formal story submissions. Amarin has in recent years found just three or four worthwhile pieces on the Web, he says. Instead, its books come primarily from veteran authors or the winners of its Nai-in writing competition.

While acknowledging that quality is usually low among the online yarns, Anit recognises merit in the number of views a story gets online. Even given the fact that click counts can be manipulated, the big numbers will translate into big sales for the printed version.

If the click count is high, Anit studies the story in detail. If the writer's got style but the plot is weak, the writer can be assigned someone else's plot to work up as a new book.

And the sky, as Airky has discovered, is the limit.

Sirinya Wattanasukchai

The Nation