New Orleanians: There's a panel on Do You Know tomorrow at 1pm as part of the Tennessee Williams Festival. Jason Berry, Toni McGee Causey, Sarah Inman and David Rutledge will be on hand to talk about the book and sign them. And I'll be skulking around in the audience, too. Here's the lowdown:

April 1, 1pm, The Cabildo, Jackson Square in the French Quarter
Two days after Katrina hit New Orleans, David Rutledge headed to Seattle to stay with his family. His brother and sister-in-law, who run Chin Music Press, were deeply troubled by what they were watching on TV and proposed that David help them create a book on New Orleans — something that would both capture the rage and impotence of the moment and look beyond it to grasp some small truths about the city. Panelists, all contributors to the anthology, talk about the book and how Katrina has affected striving writers.

Hope to see you there.

(We bring you Music Fridays on Wednesday this week so our friends in L.A. will have a chance to catch this show at the Knitting Factory tonight.)

At Neumos, March 26, 2006

Seems that the Japanophile boom in the US is still going strong. SXSW this year featured 22 bands from Japan altogether, including another installment of "Japan Nite" presented by Benten, an independent Tokyo label, and Denko Secca (a label setup by Austin's Australian Cattle God Records). The six-band lineup is currently on tour, and I caught their Seattle date on Sunday.

I arrived a tad late as the third band, Ellegarden (pronounced "L-A-garden") took the stage to very enthusiastic applause. Looked like the band had a big fan base here (are they featured in any anime soundtrack?), and they were emphatically thrusting their fists in the air throughout the show. The music is a predictable mix of West Coast punk mixed with J-pop melodies, but the playing was very tight. To my surprise, many of the songs were sung in English, and the vocalist commanded a good stage banter in confident, fluent English. Perhaps it's time that a truly bilingual band appeared from Japan.

I've been meaning to write about 37 Signal's latest book, Getting Real, for a while now. It's being discussed in a number of places as a prime example of why traditional publishing deals should be heading out the door. I agree with some of these public sentiments, but there are a few critical points people seem to be missing.

First of all, what is this book? According to their site:

Getting Real details the business, design, programming, and marketing principles of 37 Signals. The book is packed with keep-it-simple insights, contrarian points of view and unconventional approaches to software design. This is not a technical book or a design tutorial; it's a book of ideas.

The numbers: The book sells for $19. It's packaged in PDF form and distributed via download from their website. In this format, direct distribution from writer to consumer becomes trivial and basically free (it's a small, mainly text-based PDF so bandwidth is not an issue). And since 37 Signals handled the writing, design, "packaging" and production, 100% of every sale goes directly into their pockets.

According to their blog, they sold 1,750 copies in the first 24 hours. Which works out to about $33,250 — a sequence of numbers any publisher would love to have in their books. Even the 1,750 copies is impressive — something like 98% of all books published don't break the 1,000 sales mark.

I think it's wonderful that 37 Signals clearly did the right thing for this project — subvert the mainstream publishing routes and push the product out on their own. There are a couple of reasons why this worked particularly well for the Getting Real book but perhaps wouldn't work as well (yet) for a more traditional novel. Getting Real is structured as a manifesto of sorts — built to be read quickly and intensely, to have with you for power-reading on a train (via PDA) or to tear through during a weekend afternoon. It's not meant to be a leisurely cafe read. It's written to engage the reader and get them pumped up to start, one assumes, Getting Real and writing simple, useful applications. But all of this is tangential to the real reason this project did so well: They have 20,880 subscribers to their blog as of March 26. That's 20,000+ opt-in *regular* readers of their material. Add to that the thousands — if not tens of thousands — who read the blog without subscription, and the big picture begins to emerge: 37 Signals has a following of over 30,000 people actively interested in what they're saying. And Getting Real is a compendium of their hitherto blog-bound thoughts.

Jorge Silver decodes the longest canned coffee name known to man this week.

This much I know about my can of coffee. It was purchased for 120 yen from a convenience store in a part of Tokyo called Ebisu. Or so I was told. It was covered in bubble wrap and placed in a white cardboard box that also contained crumpled pieces of newspaper, eight dried plum blossoms, a small watercolor by a five-year-old boy, a horrible necktie that smelled of incense, and plastic sushi that smelled of a factory. The inner flaps of the box were decorated with crude drawings of flying horses. When I was thirteen, I was bitten on the shoulder by a chubby old mare named Miss Piggy. I learned the hard way that it is not wise to throw pebbles into a horse’s gaping, wet nostril. Seeing these winged, grinning creatures, potbellied each and every one, reminded me of Miss Piggy, the biggest asshole of a horse there ever was.

Continue reading Jorge's review here.

Had to share this with you: According to the latest BookScan statistics, Do You Know was the sixth best-selling book in New Orleans for the week through March 19. We debuted on the list at No. 17 the week before, and jumped to No. 6 with sales of 156 copies for the week. For the whole top 10, check out Voices of New Orleans. Meanwhile, I'll be lighting up a Cohiba.

So what happens when a mammoth bookstore chain takes an interest in a tiny publisher's product? Stay tuned to this blog, and you'll find out.

In the past couple of weeks, Borders has ordered more than 1,000 copies of Do You Know. Our total print run was going to be 3,000, but now we're expanding it to feed demand. Other bookstores and distributors, especially in the South, have been placing big orders too. This is the stuff young publishers like us dream about, but for every dream, we also wake in the middle of the night, sweating and breathlessly repeating the dreaded "R" word: returns.

For those of you not clear on how the publishing world works, stores can order large numbers of books with no commitment. If they sell, we make money. If they don't, they send them back.

Large chains are notorious for over-ordering books they like because ... well ... they can. There is nothing in the system set up to punish bookstores for ordering too much. But then again, we're hoping that 1,000 books isn't too much — that they'll sell those and order more. Publishing veterans are rolling their eyes as they read this, but we still dream.

It was pouring rain last Thursday — teeming down in sheets — as we stuck our three kids into Andy and Harue's van. Kenzo was crying so hard he had a bloody nose; that's what we get for trying to mix family and business.

But it all turned out well. Our friends took their three kids and our three kids to a pizza joint near Union Square — these are parents who know no fear — while Yuko and I zipped off to Get Lost Travel Books to meet Bob Juppe and do our Kuhaku reading.

The crowd was small — about seven people, not including us and the store's staff — but the event was very fun. For me, the highlight was listening to bookstore owner Lee praise our book up and down. He talked about how most books leave him cold these days, but Kuhaku grabbed him because of its beauty and its wide range of stories. He said, "This is one book that can be judged by its cover." It is humbling when someone gets what you're trying to do. In the words of Stephen Colbert, Lee "gets it."

After offering the crowd some plum wine, Pocky sticks and crackers, I talked about Chin Music briefly then let Yuko and Bob, the night's main readers, take over the show. They made a great combination for showing off the book's breadth — from cheating housewives to bilingual dogs in just two readings. I finished off by reading a few glossary entries. I had planned to start off with butoh but after sizing up the crowd went with a lineup of gaijin, hanabi, rajio taiso and yukata instead.

Get Lost Travel Books is a gem. It's pristine, well lit and has a dirigible hanging from the ceiling. The mix of travel gear and literature works well, and the second-floor space creates an intimate stage for readings. I talked to Lee about doing an event for DYK, and it sounds like all we have to do is set the date.

Jenny Cady drinks canned coffee at ten below Fahrenheit this week.

The little can of Asahi Soft Drinks’ Wonda Next Stage such and such coffee, which I drank during the waxing of the moon, at ten below, listening to Johnny Cash’s great “Unchained” (driving down the grey road in broad daylight), was my third ever coffee from a can, so if an academic appraisal of it is what you seek, best to consult a trade journal, Dove.

Read the rest of Jenny's review on cannedcoffee.com.

Folks in the Bay Area, come on out to Get Lost Travel Books at 1825 Market Street tomorrow at 7pm for our reading of Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan. Yuko Enomoto will be reading from "Floating Feeling I," Robert Juppe will read from "Life with a Bilingual Dog" and talk about life in Japan (he's flying to the US today for the reading), and I'll read from the glossary. Plus, of course, we'll have snacks. Hope to see you.

And for people in the New Orleans area, check out Voices of New Orleans about an event in the Garden District tomorrow.

Enrico Casarosa's illustrated masterpiece is complete!

Spring is here again.

Four years ago at this time, I sat by my ailing mother's bedside and told her that she was free to go. That she could just let go. That it was time to meet her favorite relatives and her mother and father on the other side of The River.

The ventilator attached crudely to my mother's mouth hissed and clicked, puncturing the silence in this small and cluttered hospital room. I had lowered my voice to a whisper as I told her things I had never said to her before: "I love you...Thank you for being a great mom...I hope to be as strong as you someday," each short phrase followed by an awkward silence. I whispered because I was embarrassed to say these things even though she was already brain dead. We don't readily heap words of adoration on family, dead of alive, in my culture. I was also afraid that anybody in this life-affirming Christian hospital who heard me would think of me as pure evil, a breacher of a silent contract when I said, "Goodbye Mom, it's time to go."

Just a few weeks earlier, my mother appeared to be responding well to the treatment. Her stomach cancer, while aggressive, seemed to have stalled. Color returned to her gaunt cheeks and she was excited about the new cellphone I had bought her so we could text message each other.

But we all knew her odds — one in a million, her doctor told us. We understood that this was a temporal moment of peace before her final struggle. We all tacitly agreed that we would only speak in terms of "when" she recovers and not "if." My mother was an eternal optimist and hope was all she had. One time she asked the doctor how soon he thought she could leave the hospital. Without any hesitation, he said to her that she should be "turning the corner" in spring. I knew exactly what he meant. What he didn't tell her was where that corner turned on to. Nobody, including myself, had the courage to level with her.

Fortune has a decent article on the history of the cubicle. However, they have a much more fascinating sidebar on how people work. It's nice to read how many of these super-busy types inject a healthy dose of exercise into their routines. Some of these people having had the same routine for 25+ years.

Bill Gross, CIO from Pimco injects his take on yoga:

The most important part of my day isn't on the trading floor. Every day at 8:30 A.M., I get up from my desk and walk to a health club across the street. I do yoga and work out for probably an hour and a half, between 8:30 and 10. There's only been two or three times in the past 30 years when someone has come across the street and told me I should get back to the office. One of them was the 1987 market crash.

I'm always fascinated by routines and getting peeks into the lives of highly efficient people. Having just moved into an office space, my hitherto uninterrupted routine of working from home has been shaken up, and I'm looking for ways to make sure I don't skimp on gym visits.

At the very least, as soon as this nasty Tokyo weather of late clears up, I'll be getting at least an hour of biking in a day.

It's official, we have a Tokyo office. Well, close enough — a 2.5x2m space in an office located in Tokyo.

Co-lab is an Idee sponsored collaborative workspace. They've rented out four floors in a building in the center of Tokyo (Kudanshita) and have created enough space for about 50 teams, or 100 creators, to work in. There's also several large areas for holding client meetings as well as communal workspaces.

It's open 24/7 and the range of people participating is inspiring. The entire first floor is an atelier with about 10 resident artists ranging from industrial designers to large format painters, media artists and fashion designers. The other three floors are filled with architects, designers and artists.

It's nice to finally get out of my small room and have daily interaction with other humans besides the cashiers from my neighborhood convenience stores.

The commute is almost nothing — barely 30 minutes door to door. And once it warms up over here, it should be an easy 30-minute bike ride. Right now both David and I are pretty excited about this development, if only for the potential for collaboration and inspiration a move like this brings. For now we're giving it a three month go, and if things feel good and productivity is up, we'll probably stick with it for a while longer. After all, the location is good and the price is reasonable.

For now, anyone who wants to drop by, feel free:

Chin Music Press
Co-lab Sanbancho, #516 (5th floor)
Tokyo, Chiyoda-Ku, Sanbancho, 2-8-7

Today's little update is some new photography of the Do You Know book. Check out the goods here.

And we've got plenty of copies left, so hurry and grab those early Easter presents!

Day two of Enrico Casarosa's illustrated coffee review is here. Enjoy.

Here's a quickie on a recent update to our Voices blog. I just added a full archive for the news sidebar section, which Bruce has been populating with fervor.

More updates on the way.

Enrico Casarosa, Pixar storyboard artist by day and comic and artbook creator by night, graces us with an illustrated review this week. Day 1 is here for your perusal. We'll be running new illustrations all week, so pour yourself a cup of joe each morning, make sure the boss is nowhere to be seen and check them out.

The Chin Music road show will experience a first two weeks from today: two events on two different sides of the US for two different books. OK, so it's not like winning a Pulitzer, but it's still a significant step for a company as small as ours.

On March 16 at 6 pm, we'll be in Octavia Books (pictured here) in the Garden District of New Orleans for a reading of Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans? There will be five contributors reading: Jason Berry, Toni McGee Causey, Sarah Inman, David Rutledge and Dar Wolnik. Depending on how the evening goes, brother Dave may act more as an emcee. Octavia is a handsome, bright store in a corner building shared with a yoga studio, a martial arts studio and a coffee shop — made me feel like I was back in Seattle. Owner Tom Lowenburg told us books about New Orleans have been selling like mad recently as locals have a newfound devotion to their much-impugned city. We're hopeful for a good turnout.

On the same day at 7pm, all the way across the country on Market Street in San Francisco, me, Yuko and Bob Juppe will be appearing at Get Lost Travel Books to read from and talk about Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan. I've never been to this store — it's at 1825 Market, which the locals call mid-Market, I believe — but it sounds like a cool space dedicated to both books and travel gear in an up-and-coming part of San Francisco. The store's owner, Lee Azus, is a big Kuhaku fan (and obviously a man of good taste) who invited us down. We're also hoping to hold a reading for Do You Know there someday soon.

So watch out Nan Talese. On March 16, Chin Music's going nationwide.

The latest review of Do You Know... appears in the just-released spring edition of Internationalist magazine. It's short but good. Here's a snippet:

[The book] is a literary tempest that assaults the reader with detailed, unpredictable, and unique happenings that a superficial spring-breaker might otherwise miss.

We'll link to the review once it's online because you won't find this magazine at your local newstand. It is a student-run publication that has recently teamed up with the Roosevelt Institution, a student think tank begun at Stanford. The magazine is run by a nonprofit group, distributed to more than 150 colleges and universities and is published quarterly (the website updates weekly). It has offices right near the Puget Sound in downtown Seattle, which is why I knew about it. The editorial is a wide-ranging mix of international stories from students all over the globe. It's an ambitious, interesting magazine, dedicated to bringing new, progressive ideas to the fore. The design is inspired too. All in all, it's a much better read than most of the stuff on the newstand today.

The advertising is international too. The inside back cover features a geisha in an ad for Nova. Yes, that Nova, the one that warped our friend over at this site so badly that he has obviously never recovered. But I digress. Check out the Internationalist's website (and doesn't that opening graphic remind you of buzztracker?).