PART 3 of the interview series: RADITYA DIKA - THE POP STAR
I met Raditya in a busy restaurant at CITOS in what must have been his lunch break. Between slurping down noodles and sipping ice tea, he told me a lot about his early days as a blogger and what has changed now he's, so to speak, a teen idol.
Raditya is one of those young people that really baffle me with their energy and spirit. Still in his early twens, he is considered and A-blogger, has written several bestselling novels, owns the publishing house Bukune, and is now directing a movie - about blogging.
Raditya Dika (center)
First contact with blogging
I always kept a diary when I was young. When I got into the whole internet thing, I started making personal websites. This was about 1999 and at that point I didn’t know about the term blogging. There wasn’t such a name back then.
I stumbled on the website of an Indonesian girl living in Canada. This site was about her, her personal stuff. I thought it was sooo cheesy, but then the next day, I had my own blog up at blogspot.
I worte about my stories in high school, my friends and stuff. Then I started writing about my crush in high school. Eventually I told her I liked her, and she said I know, I read your blog! I started to feel how powerful blogs are. She googled my name, and she found my blog. After that I started to shift from writing about girls and highschool to my family. I bought the domain kambingjantan.com and eventually told my family and friends about it. And then day by day, there were more followers, they told me my writing was funny… I never intended to be funny, but I began to do it consciously, to write jokes about my family, ordinary Indonesian’s lives or celebrities. I got the best Indonesian blog award in 2003, that gave me the confidence to bring my kambingjantan manuscript to the publisher. (in 2004)
I graduated in Adelaide in finance, now I’m studying at the University of Indonesia in politics, while working at Bukune publishing house. Before that I was at Metro TV for ‘Metro this morning’. No I don´t want to be just a writer. It’s just a habit for me. I just did it learning by doing.
In the beginning I write really sporadically. It was really bad. I was trying to get more and more attention by saying: I got a blog! I used a scandal (two celebrities who had something like a porno video) and wrote their names in the metatext of my blog. So when people searched on google, they stumbled upon my blog. That got my like 2000 unique visitors on one day and some of them read my stuff and liked it. And I also wrote graffiti kambingjantan.com everywhere. I found unconventional ways to promote my blog.
I usually blog at work now. Back then when I started I did it at home. At the time when I was in Adelaide I did it from my apartment. I usually have my notepad and a cellphone so I can take notes and develop them at home.
I use wordpress for my blog. I had someone else to develop it, to put all things into place. Before I started to blog I had a personal website. There I developed my own HTML code too. I did this in my first year at high school. I taught myself to do HTML. My technical background – I get it from books.
From blog to book
My blog kambinjantan was published as a book at GAGAS media in 2005. They were some chick lit publishing house. Very ABG.
The publisher didn’t know about blogs so I explained it to him. He said, this really sounds different, it sounds unique. Long story short, the book was published in 2005 and it became a great success.
I told him the blog has ineffective sentences, many abbreviations, it is really not written in good Bahasa Indonesia. But the publisher said, no let’s not do any editing, let’s take it as it is. Because blogs are a very different culture from writing novels. This way it will keep the soul of your blog.
And that was a predecessor for the whole book industry. Normally we have all these people, who look at the language, the formulas for good Bahasa Indonesia. People saw my book and said wow, this is really a breakthrough to all those limitations before. I wrote some expressions which have never been used in Indonesian language before, like ‘dick’. These words the young people use in their daily language but it has never been in literature before.
There was this whole huge wave of chick lit, teen’s love stories, and then I came out with kambingjantan, with this do-what-you-want/I-don’t-care-what-you-think attitude and it really hit in.
Dealing with success
Of course I follow the statistics. After I became a writer I stopped writing the blog for a while. It all of a sudden was a different feeling, like I was not writing for myself anymore, like I was writing so that other people would like it.
And after the second book came out, I started to change my whole paradigm. I started to think, ah this is really my competitive advantage. So I started to use it to market my books. So very very long in advance, I starred writing, you know, I’m working on my third book… I started posting funny videos, to get the buzz going… and then I had a preorder thing for my third book, preorder it before it actually comes out.
It became the number one bestseller of all time for GAGAS media and number two bestseller of all Indonesia (Kompas version). Since then I maintained my blog, but purely for that purpose. I get about 2000 unique readers a month. Page view itself, maybe 20 000. The sad thing is the more and more people read my blog, I have to pay more for maintenance… it passes beyond it’s bandwidth limits…
I don´t follow up all the comments anymore. I get so much feedback, also via email, it´s really too big for me too handle! and my friendster is really growing too. I pick one or two from the comments, to comment upon…
Some people buy my book because of the historical value of the book. You know, the first blog that was turned into a book in Indonesia! And you have people who say: oh I want to publish my blog like Raditya Dika did, and then others will ask, who is Radyita Dika?? And it just spreads from there…
Sometimes I write in my blog about my books, sometimes I take an idea from a blog. So it’s difficult to differentiate whether I’m a writer or a blogger. But people see me more as a writer, in the sense of someone who writes a book.
People who come to the tour, to the show of my book, are ABG people, mostly girls! I never thought my readers would be this young! On my blog it’s basically the same people. I don’t think there’s anyone over 30 who reads my book and blogs.
A whole new genre?
In a way I guess I’m inspiring people to blog, so I can get blogging to get bigger. I have been called upon to do seminars on blogging, that it can be profitable.
Gokil, Dr. Ngocol, Cacing Kepanasan, and there are two more blog books that I know of. It’s just business as usual. Especially Cacing Kepanasan, (also at Gagasmedia) also with an animal in the title, this was like ‘ do we have a Radit No. two here’? But I said ok, it’s good to have some competition. But after the book came out, it flopped.
And the same thing applies with other book blogs, the only thing that works was Dr. Ngocol. So they try the things that work and do it over again.
In my movie there are a couple of scenes which mention blogging. Some scenes where I’m writing a blog on the screen. It has one funny scene of a blogger’s gathering. Because the gatherings are a very popular thing for us to do.
My publishing company is trying to keep up with the pace of young people. I’m trying to integrate the whole young people hype into a much higher context. It’s called Bukune.
Indonesian blogging culture
Before my book got published, I spent more time reading others peoples’ blogs, commenting, but now not anymore… I feel like I’ve been left out a bit in the blogosphere these days. I don´t keep up with all the new stuff. When I go blogwalking I find really cool stuff. An elementary school kid writing about politics and stuff… a person writing from the perspective of his cat…
It is in our culture to exchange words. You can see people hanging out, we really like nongkrong, ngobrol, this is the basis of our culture, to be among other people. This is how blogs work, looking, leaving comments, interacting…
In Australia, people like to blog in live journal because they can keep it private.
In Indonesia, we really like chatting. Just passing information around. The mentality is: I write for other people.
I think blogging in other countries is not as much a hype as it is in Indonesia, I don’t know I really feel that way. I have been to Australia, and talked to friends from Singapore, from Malaysia, from Hong Kong, and it’s nothing like in Indonesia where you have these small groups of bloggers, alle connected. Here, when a bloggger says I’m coming to Yoygakarta, he will have a whole group of bloggers waiting for him at the airport. They will say, you’re my family now.
Mas Enda is my friend as well, he said he just forgot to invite me to Pesta Blogger!
I´m connected to BlogFam and Blogbugs. But I’m not much into Blogfam because Blogfam is more for mommies and dads. At one of their meetings I was like the youngest person there. Blogbug is a lot younger.
Ideas for the future
I think we have to get more space in traditional media. Maybe some columns based on blogs, some TV show based on blogs… I think we can exploit blogs in a much much more diverse way than just a person writing, and that’s it. Television could integrate Vlogs…
We should have international / Asian wide Blog gathering parties…
If Indonesian people write more in English, people from other countries can see Indonesia through our own eyes. This could eventually benefit Indonesia.
And also, blogging as a function of citizen journalism, could be a function of control to this already biased media. Like Metro TV, it is owned by Surya Palo who is big in Golkar, and TPI is owned by Suharto’s daughter… blogs are really the front line of citizen journalism, to control the news itself to create a second opinion.
Thanks Radit! Good luck with the shoot in Australia...
Raditya is one of those young people that really baffle me with their energy and spirit. Still in his early twens, he is considered and A-blogger, has written several bestselling novels, owns the publishing house Bukune, and is now directing a movie - about blogging.
Raditya Dika (center)
First contact with blogging
I always kept a diary when I was young. When I got into the whole internet thing, I started making personal websites. This was about 1999 and at that point I didn’t know about the term blogging. There wasn’t such a name back then.
I stumbled on the website of an Indonesian girl living in Canada. This site was about her, her personal stuff. I thought it was sooo cheesy, but then the next day, I had my own blog up at blogspot.
I worte about my stories in high school, my friends and stuff. Then I started writing about my crush in high school. Eventually I told her I liked her, and she said I know, I read your blog! I started to feel how powerful blogs are. She googled my name, and she found my blog. After that I started to shift from writing about girls and highschool to my family. I bought the domain kambingjantan.com and eventually told my family and friends about it. And then day by day, there were more followers, they told me my writing was funny… I never intended to be funny, but I began to do it consciously, to write jokes about my family, ordinary Indonesian’s lives or celebrities. I got the best Indonesian blog award in 2003, that gave me the confidence to bring my kambingjantan manuscript to the publisher. (in 2004)
I graduated in Adelaide in finance, now I’m studying at the University of Indonesia in politics, while working at Bukune publishing house. Before that I was at Metro TV for ‘Metro this morning’. No I don´t want to be just a writer. It’s just a habit for me. I just did it learning by doing.
In the beginning I write really sporadically. It was really bad. I was trying to get more and more attention by saying: I got a blog! I used a scandal (two celebrities who had something like a porno video) and wrote their names in the metatext of my blog. So when people searched on google, they stumbled upon my blog. That got my like 2000 unique visitors on one day and some of them read my stuff and liked it. And I also wrote graffiti kambingjantan.com everywhere. I found unconventional ways to promote my blog.
I usually blog at work now. Back then when I started I did it at home. At the time when I was in Adelaide I did it from my apartment. I usually have my notepad and a cellphone so I can take notes and develop them at home.
I use wordpress for my blog. I had someone else to develop it, to put all things into place. Before I started to blog I had a personal website. There I developed my own HTML code too. I did this in my first year at high school. I taught myself to do HTML. My technical background – I get it from books.
From blog to book
My blog kambinjantan was published as a book at GAGAS media in 2005. They were some chick lit publishing house. Very ABG.
The publisher didn’t know about blogs so I explained it to him. He said, this really sounds different, it sounds unique. Long story short, the book was published in 2005 and it became a great success.
I told him the blog has ineffective sentences, many abbreviations, it is really not written in good Bahasa Indonesia. But the publisher said, no let’s not do any editing, let’s take it as it is. Because blogs are a very different culture from writing novels. This way it will keep the soul of your blog.
And that was a predecessor for the whole book industry. Normally we have all these people, who look at the language, the formulas for good Bahasa Indonesia. People saw my book and said wow, this is really a breakthrough to all those limitations before. I wrote some expressions which have never been used in Indonesian language before, like ‘dick’. These words the young people use in their daily language but it has never been in literature before.
There was this whole huge wave of chick lit, teen’s love stories, and then I came out with kambingjantan, with this do-what-you-want/I-don’t-care-what-you-think attitude and it really hit in.
Dealing with success
Of course I follow the statistics. After I became a writer I stopped writing the blog for a while. It all of a sudden was a different feeling, like I was not writing for myself anymore, like I was writing so that other people would like it.
And after the second book came out, I started to change my whole paradigm. I started to think, ah this is really my competitive advantage. So I started to use it to market my books. So very very long in advance, I starred writing, you know, I’m working on my third book… I started posting funny videos, to get the buzz going… and then I had a preorder thing for my third book, preorder it before it actually comes out.
It became the number one bestseller of all time for GAGAS media and number two bestseller of all Indonesia (Kompas version). Since then I maintained my blog, but purely for that purpose. I get about 2000 unique readers a month. Page view itself, maybe 20 000. The sad thing is the more and more people read my blog, I have to pay more for maintenance… it passes beyond it’s bandwidth limits…
I don´t follow up all the comments anymore. I get so much feedback, also via email, it´s really too big for me too handle! and my friendster is really growing too. I pick one or two from the comments, to comment upon…
Some people buy my book because of the historical value of the book. You know, the first blog that was turned into a book in Indonesia! And you have people who say: oh I want to publish my blog like Raditya Dika did, and then others will ask, who is Radyita Dika?? And it just spreads from there…
Sometimes I write in my blog about my books, sometimes I take an idea from a blog. So it’s difficult to differentiate whether I’m a writer or a blogger. But people see me more as a writer, in the sense of someone who writes a book.
People who come to the tour, to the show of my book, are ABG people, mostly girls! I never thought my readers would be this young! On my blog it’s basically the same people. I don’t think there’s anyone over 30 who reads my book and blogs.
A whole new genre?
In a way I guess I’m inspiring people to blog, so I can get blogging to get bigger. I have been called upon to do seminars on blogging, that it can be profitable.
Gokil, Dr. Ngocol, Cacing Kepanasan, and there are two more blog books that I know of. It’s just business as usual. Especially Cacing Kepanasan, (also at Gagasmedia) also with an animal in the title, this was like ‘ do we have a Radit No. two here’? But I said ok, it’s good to have some competition. But after the book came out, it flopped.
And the same thing applies with other book blogs, the only thing that works was Dr. Ngocol. So they try the things that work and do it over again.
In my movie there are a couple of scenes which mention blogging. Some scenes where I’m writing a blog on the screen. It has one funny scene of a blogger’s gathering. Because the gatherings are a very popular thing for us to do.
My publishing company is trying to keep up with the pace of young people. I’m trying to integrate the whole young people hype into a much higher context. It’s called Bukune.
Indonesian blogging culture
Before my book got published, I spent more time reading others peoples’ blogs, commenting, but now not anymore… I feel like I’ve been left out a bit in the blogosphere these days. I don´t keep up with all the new stuff. When I go blogwalking I find really cool stuff. An elementary school kid writing about politics and stuff… a person writing from the perspective of his cat…
It is in our culture to exchange words. You can see people hanging out, we really like nongkrong, ngobrol, this is the basis of our culture, to be among other people. This is how blogs work, looking, leaving comments, interacting…
In Australia, people like to blog in live journal because they can keep it private.
In Indonesia, we really like chatting. Just passing information around. The mentality is: I write for other people.
I think blogging in other countries is not as much a hype as it is in Indonesia, I don’t know I really feel that way. I have been to Australia, and talked to friends from Singapore, from Malaysia, from Hong Kong, and it’s nothing like in Indonesia where you have these small groups of bloggers, alle connected. Here, when a bloggger says I’m coming to Yoygakarta, he will have a whole group of bloggers waiting for him at the airport. They will say, you’re my family now.
Mas Enda is my friend as well, he said he just forgot to invite me to Pesta Blogger!
I´m connected to BlogFam and Blogbugs. But I’m not much into Blogfam because Blogfam is more for mommies and dads. At one of their meetings I was like the youngest person there. Blogbug is a lot younger.
Ideas for the future
I think we have to get more space in traditional media. Maybe some columns based on blogs, some TV show based on blogs… I think we can exploit blogs in a much much more diverse way than just a person writing, and that’s it. Television could integrate Vlogs…
We should have international / Asian wide Blog gathering parties…
If Indonesian people write more in English, people from other countries can see Indonesia through our own eyes. This could eventually benefit Indonesia.
And also, blogging as a function of citizen journalism, could be a function of control to this already biased media. Like Metro TV, it is owned by Surya Palo who is big in Golkar, and TPI is owned by Suharto’s daughter… blogs are really the front line of citizen journalism, to control the news itself to create a second opinion.
Thanks Radit! Good luck with the shoot in Australia...
texastee - 28. Jun, 22:23
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