Steven Heller at The Design Observer starts a deeply important discussion about anonymity online and the building of responsibility and ownership. The comments raise interesting points — particularly about what it means to produce a "real" email address or "real" website URL. I think in the end Steven is arguing for continuity and responsibility of voice, namely that a "name" becomes real when you begin to use it both in online and offline professional contexts. I agree that the ability to anonymously comment on most blogs is unnecessary and that indeed, if you aren't willing to saddle up with an established "real" name, then your opinion is probably irrelevant.

The Tokyo bikers, professors, designers, typographers, voracious readers, writers, printers and translators were (to name but a few) out in full swing last Tuesday for our Goodbye Madame Butterfly Tokyo release event. It was by all means a successful and fun night, made possible by the generous and warm support of all our Tokyo compadres.

I want to say thank you to everyone who showed up and bought books from us, and drinks and food from The Pink Cow. We sold nearly 100 tomes — this was one of our most successful book evenings and we can't tell you how much it helps us to see this kind of support.

As usual, we didn't take any photos (note to self: pay someone to take photos next time) because, well, we never seem to remember to do that. We've managed to collect a small series of blurry images over the years which, when placed in succession, seem to indicate we have been putting on any number of poorly lit, sparsely populated gatherings which may or may not have had anything to do with books and seem more probably connected with bootlegging or snuff film making. So I make this appeal to those of you photographically inclined attendees of the ceremonies last week: if anyone has any photos from the GMB party, please send them to speak AT chinmusicpress.com. Thank You!

We have a couple of wild projects scheduled for 2008 and will hopefully be hosting more of these events. For now, mark January 29th on your calendars. Throw out all plans three days before and after because you're going to need both preparatory time and recovery time for the Hitotoki Tokyo HITOBAN Premiere Literary Reading Extraordinary Bonanza Super. That's right kids, Hitotoki is breaking free of the screen and getting all up in your Tokyo faces.

More on that later! For now, I hope everyone (who isn't employed by a Japanese company at least ... for those of you who are ... I hope your cigarette breaks are long and warm) is well into enjoying their holiday rests. Light up the Bunsen burners, crack open the egg nog, and snuggle up next to your space heater with a well-worn copy of Freakonomics on the Amazon Kindle.

Happy Holidays, and thanks again for everything.

I went into publishing for very idealistic reasons: I love discovering new writers, I love well-made books and I love the process of trying to turn a good story or set of stories into something great. But for every day I ponder a new manuscript or edit a writer's work, there is at least one matching day spent shuffling boxes around in the warehouse, paying bills, making offers to new writers, etc. etc. In fact, when I'm honest about it, I admit that more than half my time is spent on such busy work. No question.

It can be dangerously easy to lose your focus when you spend a day rifling through reports on all the books you had returned that month or trying to figure out if and when you can pay a bill. But then, almost without fail, something will happen to set you back on track.

This morning we got one of those somethings: A note from a reader. It read, in part:

After making it last as long as possible, I finally finished Kuhaku last night. Thank you for producing this fascinating little book. The stories, illustrations, binding, paper, fonts, just the feel of the book in my hand—all made the experience of reading Kuhaku one of life’s sweet joys ... How refreshing to find a small publisher such as Chin Music who is meticulous in producing a beautiful product, yet lively and offbeat. I wish you great success!

Now that warms the cockles! Thanks to everyone who has worked with us this year or supported us by buying our books. We know the world needs more, not less, small press, and we're excited to know that when we least expect it, we may be making a connection with someone we've never laid eyes on. That's magic!

If you're a casual Facebook member like me, you may find this piece on the social networking site from The Nation illuminating. It certainly made me think twice about what I plan to put on my page. But what I found most interesting was the evolving sense of privacy that the success of Facebook points to:

Growing up online, young people assume their inner circle knows their business. The "new privacy" is about controlling how many people know--not if anyone knows. "Information is not private because no one knows it; it is private because the knowing is limited and controlled," argues Danah Boyd, an anthropologist and social-networking expert at the University of California, Berkeley, who studied the feed controversy for a forthcoming article in the journal Convergence. Facebook's Kelly also contends that privacy is shifting from an "absolute right to be let alone" to an emphasis on control. "We don't think [users are] losing privacy as long as there's a control machine and access restrictions," he said in an interview.

The Nippon Foundation is coming out with a list of 100 books written in English that "help people abroad correctly understand Japan," the Yomiuri Shimbun reports. Warning, mini rant ahead: How can an organization as tainted as the Nippon Foundation in a country that can't even teach it's own people to "correctly understand Japan" be taken seriously? It's like Pat Buchanan coming out with his top 100 books on multiculturalism.

Sound of scuffle, children's cries, angry whispers: Apologies. The skeptic in me overtook the publisher. But my wife just showed me the balance in our checking account and set me straight. What I meant to say was: Please, Nippon Foundation, please, pick Kuhaku or Butterfly ...

The Los Angeles Times wraps up the year in book publishing in a piece it ran yesterday. While the news seems bleak at first, the digital shift is also presenting lots of opportunities. The news is full of thought-provoking contradictions. For example, literacy is on the decline, yet writers like Denis Johnson and Cormac McCarthy have had break-out years. Scary, exciting times ahead for all of us.

Mark in Seattle passes along a hilarious and timely rant by Harlan Ellison to jump-start your Monday (or Tuesday in Asia).

Just a friendly reminder the Goodbye Madame Butterfly Tokyo release party is next Tuesday, December 18th, at The Pink Cow. Doors open at 7pm. Entrance is free. Excellent food and drinks will be available at the bar.

We'll have tons of copies of GMB on hand for those of you who haven't picked it up yet. And Sumie will be around answering questions and giving a reading!

Hope to see all you lit-loving Tokyoites there!

The FCC's Kevin Martin is this year's Scrooge, pushing to make big media bigger in a Dec. 18 vote that he has hastily slapped together despite widespread opposition (even Congress has told him to slow down). Free Press has been fighting his move to loosen cross-ownership rules, and now they've come out with a little video that equates the kind of news Big Media gives us with those lovely golden French fries. Check it out behind the cut:

Roland Kelts, contributor to our first book Kuhaku, has some ideas for that otaku in your life in his regular Daily Yomiuri column. We suggest the book mentioned in the 15th paragraph ...

Just had a chance to read an interesting piece from the Los Angeles Times about Powell's City of Books in Portland and how it's coping with the digital shift. It seems that the shifts in the industry are happening faster and cutting deeper than just a couple of years ago. I think change is going to continue to be rapid-fire and unsettling for the short term.

The LA Times piece does a good job of framing the challenges ahead for Powell's. It also offers some interesting tidbits: Powell's was selling books online in 1994, before Amazon. And 90% of Powell's book sales take place outside the Pacific Northwest.

Of course, Powell's City of Books holds a special place in our hearts here at CMP — its rare books room iis even mentioned in our mission statement. While for my money, Elliott Bay Book Co. in Seattle has more charm, Powell's City of Books has the power to inspire. It's the mecca of bibliophiles. We watch its next moves with both great expectations and a hint of trepidation.

I just returned from the Consortium sales conference in New York — where I saw Craig for the first time in 2007 — to find this excellent review of Goodbye Madame Butterfly on Bookslut today. Positive reviews are like a half hour of long, deep pranayama — they invigorate the soul of this impoverished publisher. Here are couple of my favorite bits:

In a lot of ways it is this sameness of attitude and circumstance that transforms the title from an exploration of the exotic to a refreshingly intense look at the mundane. These are the stories of Japanese women struggling to find themselves in the 21st century; by reading them westerners will likely see themselves reflected through a prism of shared hopes and disappointments.

(and)

Somewhere in America a woman is going to read about Misa and then leave to pick her own child up from school and she will know she is not alone in all her frustrations, dissatisfactions and questions about the future.

For those of you who own the book, Misa is the heroine of "Red Circles."

Our second book, and so far, our best-seller, Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? just got a very positive review in the Midwest Book Review, an online review service that publishes its reviews on Amazon and in other forums. Here's a snippet:

(A) collection of heartfelt true stories told by survivors, evacuees, and natives of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the lethal city flooding. A handful of black-and-white illustrations grace this collection of brief reminiscences of New Orleans as it once was, the hardship of survival, attempts to return to the city, the hope of rebuilding despite the overwhelming challenges, and much more. A dollop of humor here and there intersperse the at times harsh true stories, in this highly recommended tribute.

I don't have the exact count on me right now, but our first run of DYK will probably be sold out in a few months. If you'd like to get a copy of the first edition, or send it to a friend, consider ordering it over our site. From now until Fat Tuesday, Chin Music Press is contributing $5 for every copy of DYK and Last of the Red Hot Poppas bought over our site to help displaced writers in southern Louisiana. We'll be donating the proceeds to KARES, a group that has been helping writers in various ways since soon after the levees broke in New Orleans.