If you are a nerd like me and care about things like the inner workings of Japanese politics (Buddha help you!), don't forget that we operate a blog for Minoru Morita, one of the most quoted political analysts from Japan. He writes a weekly commentary (which we translate), and there are links to writings by our friend Takehiko Kambayashi (Kuhaku, Curing Japan's America Addiction), who recently started a very interesting column for The Diplomat.

When it comes to Japan, we offer all flavors.

Which reminds me: if you are attending Book Expo America, come by the Chin Music Press-Two Dollar Radio booth on Friday from 3-4 for a sake-tasting party. Come say kanpai! with us.

I enjoyed hanging out at Sakura Con a couple of weekends ago with Roland Kelts. I also enjoyed watching teenagers dressed up as anime characters and pulling out wads of bills to buy signed copies of Roland's Japanamerica and our very own Kuhaku. Check out Roland's article on the economic effects of anime fests to get a sense of what I'm talking about.

It seems to me that as anime conventions grow, the young participants naturally grow curious about the real Japan. They are CMP's future readers. And there are more and more of them every year.

On the other side of the world, we're getting ready to share a booth at Book Expo America with our good friends at $2 Radio. It will be a blast, for sure. Todd Shimoda will be flying in from Hawaii to hang out with us and talk about his new novel, Oh! Yet I can't help but think that BEA is a dinosaur. I mean, the exhibit wanted to charge us $120 to rent a stool for the weekend. (We're bringing lawn chairs instead.) Do they still live in an alternative universe where three-martini lunches and lavish expense accounts are the norm? I will enjoy reporting on that directly from the floor of the BEA at the end of May (that is, if I can afford the wifi connection).

In the meantime, as we charter Chin Music's course, I'm thinking more anime fests, fewer stodgy book affairs (FWIW, I had a great time at AWP, and I will probably have a blast at BEA -- but at some point a business has to follow the money).

So if you're about to pitch a book to Chin Music, consider that you may be hawking it dressed as Pikachu or Naruto. If you're cool with that, then we'd love to see what you've written.

The folks at Sakura Con have graciously allowed us to sell Kuhaku through the weekend-long anime and manga festival at the Washington Convention Center. You'll find it at the merchandise desk in front of the main stage and vendors' hall. We're offering the book for $18 including tax, which is a deep discount from the bookstore price of $28.50 before tax. It seemed to me yesterday that Kuhaku nicely fits the vibe of the festival -- colorful, energetic, but not without some darkness.

Finally, thanks to everyone who came to the panel on "Life in Tokyo as an American" that I co-hosted with Roland Kelts yesterday. We had a great turnout and plenty of questions. The main message we tried to impart is: Go! When in doubt, save up the money and check out Tokyo for yourself.

I'll be at Roland's panel on his book Japanamerica this afternoon. See some of you there!

Six and half years ago in the middle of a hot and balmy Tokyo summer, Bruce Rutledge and I sat down for lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Minami-Aoyama. “I’m planning on starting a publishing company,” he said.

Little did I know, that meal of mapo doufu was going to define the trajectory of my immediate post-undergrad life.

Almost all meaningful creative activity I’ve been involved with for these last six years has been directly connected with Chin Music Press. Starting with Kuhaku and building up to and past Art Space Tokyo, I’ve been able to work with some of the most inspiring, caring and intelligent people with whom I’ve had the pleasure of crossing paths.

I’ve connected with a vibrant, quirky (clearly it goes without saying all of us in indie publishing are undeniably quirky) and passionate community of writers, designers and publishers. And, unbelievably enough, I’ve been able to design books exactly how I thought they should be designed. An obvious dream come true for any designer out there.

My work with CMP has taken me deep into a post-Katrina New Orleans, New York, Seattle, Shanghai and, of course, Tokyo. It’s defined who I am — the type of person I want to be not only as a designer and creator but also as an individual. The sort of creative process and mindset that evokes a feeling of deep satisfaction is now clear and well illuminated thanks to my time with CMP. If you can say that about your work, then truly you’re doing the right thing.

So it’s with an odd mix of melancholy and excitement that I’m announcing my leave from Chin Music Press. Certain collaborations can only go on for so long and it feels like the time is right for me to move forward professionally in new directions.

Make no mistake, I’ll still be peripherally involved with the company — poking my nose into things every now and then and lavishing unsolicited design commentary onto some of the upcoming projects. But moving forward the majority of my time will be spent on (a neglected plethora of) personal projects and freelance work.

I plan on maintaining an intimate involvement with literature and (physical) books, but the greater part of my energy is going to be channeled into online projects and startups. If you want to stay up to date with what I’m doing, you can follow me on Twitter or subscribe to the RSS feed of my blog.

To everyone I worked with on things CMP related: thank you. I wish nothing but the best for Bruce and all fellow CMPers and will always look forward to whatever wondrous thing they produce next.

The digital shift and a broken publishing industry have converged to produce a lot of analysis about the future of the book. Four years ago, we used to feel like we were tilting at windmills when we talked about what makes a book worth its glue and paper, but now there is hardly a day that goes by without another piece on how to save the book. It's good to see the conversation growing more robust.

Earlier this week, Danny Groner over at Huffington Post brings a new twist to the argument. He's saying that more post-media information from authors might make the book more compelling:

I agree with one of the panelists who suggested that the first step toward revitalizing the book industry is through redefining the role of the author. Traditionally, once a book is released, the writer will do interviews and book readings to help promote the book. These provide access to the author. But part of our overall shift to the digital world has included a burgeoning appetite for increased access, to see what we've never seen before. The mainstream music industry, for one, now gives us unreleased tracks, film from the studio, uncensored material, raw cuts, handwritten lyrics with edit markings and more. The same could be true someday for books.

Four years ago, we tried a similar experiment with Kuhaku. We put up a ton of stuff related to the book on our website. It's still there -- just surf around our site, and you'll find interviews with artists, contributor biographies with links to their past work, detailed explanations on the books design and more. It's clear that this worked to a certain extent -- we sold about 400 copies over our website or directly to readers when they could have picked up the book at Amazon for much cheaper. But the truth is this sort of effort was hard to sustain. We've tried to do something like this with almost every book because we think it's necessary. We've built pretty spectacular sites for some of our books. Check out this one and this one. But it's draining. I hope the bigger presses begin to do this. It's a great idea; it's what readers want; and if they begin to do this, then our job will be complete. I see the role of small press being one of pushing good ideas/authors/artists into the cultural conversation (or the marketplace). Once they've become common currency, we don't get territorial or jealous; we just look for more eloquent voices to add to the fray.

Folks in the Seattle area, come check out the Chin Music booth at this weekend's Aki Matsuri, a celebration of Japanese culture hosted by Bellevue Community College. The matsuri, or festival, features craftspeople, martial artists, Japanese food, a Japanese-style flea market, workshops on Japanese culture and, of course, the Pacific Northwest's finest purveyor of books on Japan, yours truly.

We're very excited to be included in this year's festival because the organizers, the folks at Eastside Nihon Matsuri, have made a point of keeping for-profit companies to a minimum to allow individual artists to shine. Either the good people at ENMA looked at our books and felt sorry for us or they felt that our books fit the mold of what they are trying to promote. Either way, we're proud and happy to be part of the festival.

The event is free as is the parking. Come by and say hi. Meet our new intern, Josh among others. Check out our latest titles. Perhaps even buy a limited edition Art Space Tokyo print cloth, a contemporary art gallery in Tokyo. No pressure. Just come by and let us know you're one of our readers. We'd love to meet you.

Want to get a sneak peek of our latest title, Art Space Tokyo? It's not officially in bookstores until September, but it's already creating a buzz in Tokyo, and rumor has it that Roland Kelts, who will be speaking at the Brooklyn Museum's Envisioning Japan event this Saturday, just may have a brand new copy of the book with him.

Roland's essay on Takashi Murakami is not to be missed. Also, this is the fifth book Craig Mod has designed for Chin Music Press, and I believe his goal of creating a literary object may have finally been realized to his satisfaction (he's a tough guy to please). The book is a gem, with extraordinary insight into Tokyo's contemporary art scene, so go have a look at the Brooklyn Museum this Saturday.

Of course, the book is available over our website, and pre-orders are going out this week and early next week (if you're in Tokyo, don't miss the party), but if you like to leaf through a book before buying, you'll have to wait until it appears in bookstores in Tokyo this May and in the US this late summer or go find Roland at the Brooklyn Museum this Saturday.

Roland, many of you will remember, is author of Japanamerica, a fascinating look at the transpacific mobius strip formed around Japanese pop culture, and contributor to the book that started us on this crazy venture, Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan.

We're not shy at CMP, so when Nik Mercer of Anthem magazine asked if he could interview us for the magazine's website, we said, "Hell yes," then proceeded to talk over each other until Nik had enough to emerge with this nifty little interview.. Anybody else want to chat?

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!

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 ...

To all you Tokyo livin', book and art lovin' folk out there, I'd like to announce that CMP titles are now carried by On Sundays (WARNING: Most horrible website ever.), the fantastic and long-running select bookshop in the basement of Watrium Museum. The quirky shop is wonderful and the proprietor loves all things books and whimsical (he's hosting a small exhibition on antique microscope sets and their hand-made boxes right now!).

If you've never been to either the museum or the bookshop, it's a great Sunday afternoon trip. You can get there from Gaien-mae station -- walk up Gaien Higashi Doori away from Roppongi Hills. Watarium is about five minutes away on the left just after the pedestrian footbridge.

One of the nice things about the museum component (besides it being a lovely space) is that tickets are valid for the length of the entire exhibition. Considering most good exhibitions should require more than one visit -- especially long-running ones -- this sort of generous rationality is a welcome breath of fresh air.

The bookshop and stationery goods shop are both accessible without having to see an exhibition. There's also a small cafe hanging over the book browsing area so you can sip a coffee and spy on book perverts, molesters, paper whores and literary deviants alike.

Rumor also has it that the family running the museum lives in the pod on the top of the building.

We went live with goodbyemadamebutterfly.com about 15 minutes ago. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Also, you'll find at the end, once you've clicked through several pages, a ridiculous deal: We're offering our latest title, Goodbye Madame Butterfly, which will be out in September, and our first title, Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan for twenty bucks. That's both books for a total of $20. Anyone who has seen one of our books knows what a deal this is. Sumie Kawakami, the author of Butterfly, was one of the main contributors to Kuhaku, so we felt it was time to get Kuhaku into the hands of readers once again.

I hope you'll click through the new site and have a look around. And if you want a shortcut to the purchase page, here it is.

Thanks, as always, for supporting small press publications!

Politics brings out the cynical in all of us, but every once in a while, when a particularly incompetent or malicious regime gets its head handed to it by the voters, you understand that the practice of politics can be a worthwhile calling. It is gratifying to see that yesterday, Japan's voters handed that country's ruling parties — the nationalistic and increasingly militaristic Liberal Democratic Party as well as its creepy quasi-religious partner, New Komeito (backed by Sokkai Gakkai) — the drubbing they both deserve. They lost their majority in the upper house, and Japan once again takes a tentative step toward real democracy — as opposed to the one-party rule that has been passing as democracy for most of the postwar era.

Here's Kuhaku contributor Takehiko Kambayashi in today's Christian Science Monitor on the teetering Shinzo Abe regime. All we need is one more good push...

Roland Kelts writes about how the cool Japan the world is getting to know via anime, video games and other entertainment exports is still being built by forty-somethings, while the country's youth seem too jaded to get involved. Check it out.

Tracey Slater's occasional literary salon in Osaka was featured in The Japan Times the other day. Friend and Kuhaku contributor Roland Kelts is pictured as well. Sounds like the kind of forum every city should have.

If you can't make it to one of Roland Kelts' two Pacific Northwest events this week, tune in to KUOW's The Beat on Thursday. It looks like there will be a segment with Roland talking about the Japanese community in Seattle, Sakura Con and the anime and manga boom.

Also, one reader of our blog already contacted me about getting an autographed copy of Japanamerica. Since Chin Music Press is selling the books at Roland's Japan America Society event on March 29, I'd be glad to set aside copies for those of you who contact me. In fact, if anyone would like a signed copy of Kuhaku (Roland's entry is the eloquent and disturbing "Father Hunters"), I imagine we could get Roland to sign a few of those too. if you're interested in either of these offers, send me a mail at bruce-at-mark-chinmusicpress-dot-com. This deal won't be in the CMP store, so I'll walk you through the ordering process.

Ladies and gents, you're going to hearing a lot more from this woman in the coming months because she's the author of our next title, Goodbye Madame Butterfly: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman. If you think you know Japanese women, think again. Sumie Kawakami's book will give you a whole new perspective.

Some of you may remember Sumie's writing from our first book, Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan. She wrote the 'Floating Feeling' pieces about women cheating on their husbands. Goodbye Madame Butterfly expands on that theme and takes a broader look at women -- from young people in their 20s to the middle aged -- and their relationships with men.

The book will be in stores this fall, but stay tuned here for special offers and events beginning this summer.

Seattlite, this looks like fun: Ellis Avery is reading from her first novel, The Teahouse Fire, at 7:30 next Monday at Elliott Bay. Ellis tells us she will also be performing "a basic Japanese tea ceremony, modified for a western room." Should be interesting.

Ellis wrote an excellent review of Kuhaku in The Kyoto Journal last year. Now it's her turn to hit the road, promoting what sounds like a real page-turner. We wish her luck.

Happy New Year, all! Here's to a 2007 as exciting and entertaining as yesterday's Fiesta Bowl. Wow, what a game!

Here is this week's recommended reading:

Friend and Kuhaku contributor Roland Kelts is writing the Powell's Books blog this week to promote his new book, Japanamerica.

Also, we're translating the weekly columns of one of Japan's most astute political commentators, Minoru Morita, and the first one was posted on New Year's Day (scroll down a bit to see the English column). "Minoru Morita Unravels Japan" will be posted every Monday.

If you've completely sated yourself on our Chin Music holiday specials, allow me to guide you to some other great gift ideas on our sister site, Voices of New Orleans. Colleen Mondor has reviewed a dozen books for us since February — from Poppy Z. Brite's Soul Kitchen to the first four Neighborhood Story Project books — and any one of them would make a good gift idea. Check out all of Colleen's reviews here.

Guitar great Pete Townshend holds a copy of Japanamerica, a new book by Roland Kelts. Roland's friend, Kay, seems awful nonchalant about meeting one of rock and roll's all-time greats, don't you think?

I hear that the launch party for Roland's book on Wednesday in NYC was "crazy," with much imbibing at the open bar and more than 300 people in attendance. Craig was there to represent CMP.

Also pictured here is Roland with Gaijin a GoGo.

Now go buy the book.

We're invoking the spirit of Cleveland-area furniture retailers this holiday season by offering you crazy discounts on our beautiful, entertaining books. Trust us, the bibliophiles in your life will love the following:

The Chin Music Collection: All three titles for $40*
* A savings of $31.50 — crazy!

or, for the less fiscally endowed among you who still want to wow a book lover or two, we recommend:

Kuhaku for Kurisumasu
Our baby, Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan, for just $15, almost 50% off the $28.50 retail price.

These books make great gifts. And if you buy lots of them via our website, it will all but ensure that we can keep on making more. So, thank you, ahead of time, for supporting us!

If you're in New York City next week, check out Roland Kelts' launch party for his book Japanamerica at The Cutting Room. It sounds like a great bash — music from Gaijin å GoGo, anime installations and free manga. The party runs from 7 to 10 pm next Wednesday.

At least one of the Chin Music team will be there to help Roland celebrate. The book is beginning to get noticed. Here's a strong review that recently ran in the Village Voice.

I've long been fascinated with the way Japanese pop culture seeps into the West. And I can think of no better chronicler of this process than Roland Kelts, a gifted writer whose essay "Father Hunters" we plucked from the now defunct Doubletake magazine and resurrected in the pages of Kuhaku. Roland's new book, out later this month, is called Japanamerica, a provocative title that gets quickly to the point: Japanese pop culture has penetrated the American psyche to the point that, in many ways, America is following Japan.

Or so I suppose. I haven't read the book yet but have talked frequently with Roland about Japanese pop culture and its influences. This is a book whose time has come. Can't wait to get my copy.

Oh, and by the way, if you like the book's website, rumor has it that CMP art guru Craig Mod had a little something to do with its design.

The latest issue of the Kyoto Journal has a great review of Kuhaku by reviewer and novelist Ellis Avery. It's not online, so you'll have to pick it up at your local bookstore, which is easy to do if you live in Japan. Here are a couple of snippets:

What better way to invite a reader to explore the lavish surfaces and lonely depths of contemporary Japan than with a book so well-designed it whispers covet me from across the room?

OK, Craig is taking a cold shower to calm himself down. Note to Craig: Let's splash that across the Kuhaku page on our site, huh? More from the review:

Inconclusive in the best possible way, by turns pointed and generous, Kuhaku paints a shifting portrait of a shifting place ...

(Canned coffee is) a tender and lacerating catalogue by David Cady.

David now joins Craig in the shower. And finally, Ellis calls our glossary a "slyly digressive oddbox of delights."

Shower time.

Amazon's getting all geeky -- flexin' their data mining muscles and providing us with all sorts of useless (?) statistics.

For instance:

With Kuhaku you get 2.607 words per dollar or 3,851 words per ounce. This is out of a total of 265,483 characters or 46,825 words. She averages 19.1 words per sentence and only contains 10% complex words (non-native speakers rejoice!).

Some of the most common words in Kuhaku include husband, time, Japanese, day and Mike. (Mike?)

And perhaps the most fun statistic of all, "Statistically Improbable Phrases," of which, Kuhaku contains: pet pensions, rajio taiso, bilingual dog, canned coffee, feeling iii and father hunters.

Amazon is, by the way, selling Kuhaku for $17.96, which is almost cheaper than we get them for. So if you've yet to grab this easy read on pet pensions, rajio taiso and father hunters, now's never been better.

Mr. Pikatto has some nice things to say about Kuhaku, but he absolutely hates the obi or wrap:

The last gripe I have is with the paper wrap—the white portion in the photo— with the subtitle, ISBN number, and other related information on it. These things are common in Japan. If you’ve ever bought a CD,DVD, or manga in Japan you know what I’m talking about. I absolutely hate these things. It’s impossible to keep them on the book while you are reading it, and if you take it off it will most likely be lost. I would have much preferred that the book either had a standard dust jacket or nothing at all.

I'd respond directly on his blog but the comments are closed. Plus it's probably good to get this out in the open: We hate wraps too! Which is why we want you (as soon as the book passes through the scanner at the register) to rip that obi off and trash it. Please! The reason why we didn't use a cover on Kuhaku or DYK is because we like our books to feel like solid objects — without unnecessary paper to be snagged or fall off or become creased.

However, we have to include basic book information for sales purposes. As such we use wraps, like on Kuhaku. But please, don't feel obligated to keep them on. We printed them on the cheapest paper in the most boring way possible for a reason — so you can happily trash it without guilt once you own it!

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.

This September, the Christian Science Monitor published a skeptical piece on lit blogs and their relevance to the publishing industry. Lit bloggers seem to only talk to themselves, the reporter wrote, and it's doubtful whether all their writings amount to book sales for publishers.

Well, Colleen Mondor has written a response to that piece today on a very interesting, new site, Metaxucafe. She relates how she went from getting rude rejections from literary magazines to reviewing for Bookslut, then being published in our soon-to-be-released book, Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans and having her novel read by agents and publishing houses. Colleen is one of the trailblazers on this new career path, but soon, the path will be well worn, I bet.

From a publisher's perspective, do lit blogs help? When we launched Kuhaku with our distributor in April, we were a complete unknown on the literary blog scene. We made some waves on design sites and in the Japan blogosphere, but we were clueless about lit blogs. Sometime during this summer, Colleen found Kuhaku in a local bookstore, contacted us and wrote a glowing review of our press. While we can't give you an exact number, we can say with confidence that the review gave us a lift. The eight or so online sales we received were directly from the review, but we also saw sales through Amazon jump from a paltry two copies in August to 14 in September (the review was posted on Bookslut just after Labor Day). The president at our distribution company sent us a congratulatory note, and the review is now part of our sales kit for Do You Know.

Lit blogs are now a central part of our marketing plans for Do You Know and future books. And when we're feeling pretty satisfied with ourselves (which, mind you, is not often), we like to think of Chin Music Press as a trailblazer in using the web to build an independent publishing house. So, at least for this publisher, lit blogs have created a new avenue for media exposure, helped us sell books and, by the way, introduced us to five of the 14 contributors in our new volume, Do You Know. I'd say that's pretty relevant.

Kuhaku is having quite a September. After trudging through the dog days of summer, when we experienced our first month of returns outnumbering sales, we've been buoyed recently by two fine reviews. One, which we keep mentioning because it is so damn good, is on bookslut.com. The other, also extremely well-written and thoughtful, doesn't appear online. It's in the Sept/Oct. edition of The Bloomsbury Review, a respected and fun to read publication on books. Here are a few snippets from the review:

The surrealistic take on Japanese streets by Kozyndan gives a whimsical glimpse at Japanese life. The art perfectly matches the Western perception of a Japan that is as fascinating as it is foreign.

And one more for good measure:

Chin Music Press should be proud of their first work. A collection of essays like this is no small feat, and they should be commended for offering a more intimate look at a nation where the mysterious bends any real factual perceptions held in Western minds.

Thanks, Bloomsbury, for noticing us.

Bookslut is one of the most interesting voices on the literary scene these days, we think. And it turns out the feeling is mutual.

This is by far the best review Kuhaku has received. It is gratifying to be taken seriously and to be reviewed by someone who loves books (as opposed to being constantly reviewed by Japan "experts"). Colleen Mondor, thank you!

In the right corner of this blog, just below the masthead, is a section that says "Total Kuhakus in the Wild." That's the number of books we have sold to readers and distributed to media contacts, reviewers, et al.

Today the TKITW index sits squarely at 1,000. That means there are 1,000 copies of Kuhaku in readers' hands, bookshelves, backpacks, on the tops of toilet tanks, on bedside tables and in reviewers' in-boxes. In the spirit of full disclosure, and because this blog is first andd foremost about helping people understand the publishing business, we've provided a more detailed breakdown of those sales figures:

I was interviewed on WCPN, the NPR affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio. Well, actually, it was this spring, but it feels like a million years ago. Some of you were interested in hearing the interview, so here you go! FYI, it's almost 15 minutes long.

(Todd Shimoda's novels, The Fourth Treasure and 365 Views of Mt. Fuji, offer edgy insider views of modern Japan. So it's natural that he would pick up our book, Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan. An expanded version of this review of Kuhaku is slated to be published in The Asian Review of Books in the near future.)

At the heart of K�haku, an elegantly produced collection of essays, stories and art from Japan, is a horizontal brushstroke that traverses roughly the center of four pages. On either side of the brushstroke are names of businesses and public buildings printed vertically. Turning the book sideways, the combination becomes a roadmap of some four or five blocks. And like zenga, the works of brush art and words used as meditative aids by Zen practitioners, the reader is left to ponder what stories, conundrums, tragic-comedies have played out along the street and in the buildings.

K�haku (which means blank, void or empty space) offers a look at these lives, real and imagined, through its sixteen essays and stories, written by Japanese and non-Japanese (known as gaijin). If you have lived in Japan as I have, you will recognize in many of the essays the usual gaijin complaints: the military precision of the garbage collection schedule, the lack of comprehension of perfectly fluent Japanese coming out a non-Japanese mouth, the groping on jam-packed trains. Readers familiar with these complaints may find themselves skimming over some essays (been there, done that), or they may find themselves musing over their time in Japan. I found myself doing more of the latter.

A while back, we offered to send a free copy of Kuhaku to anyone headed to Japan. Well, the only person to respond to this offer was actually headed back to the US after an extended stay in Japan. Today we feature his review. And by the way, the offer of a free book for someone headed to Japan (in exchange for a review) still stands. OK, Joshua Clayton, take it away.

Some of the very same things that initially drew me to Japan attracted me to the literary endeavor Chin Music Press has put forth in Kuhaku. It�s a country that gets the details right. Everything from delicately wrapped sweets to audio toilet systems takes into account the user experience at a different level of attentiveness. Kuhaku doesn't make flushing sounds but it is designed quite beautifully and the contents range intriguingly from the vulgar to the transcendent.

You can�t help but appreciate the tactile presence when holding a copy of this book. You feel good about carrying it around, reading it in a caf� or just leaving it on the table. I suppose the experience of living in Japan might be treated similarly in conversation. Many people are intrigued by the idea and have formed various ideas of what it might be like. Some have taken up an opportunity to live on the East side and while their experiences in Japan may differ greatly, perhaps all expat attempts at it might be described as unexpected.

I'm sad to announce that Caravan Books of Ikebukuro has passed away.

One of a kind, nestled away (cause of death?) in a quiet neighborhood near Ikebukuro station. Tastefully lit (take note all fluorescent-bathed Ebisu-based foreign bookstores), looking more like an old English country house than a Tokyo dwelling. Reasonably priced. Oh Caravan. I only visited you once to drop off Kuhaku, but how I dreamed of visiting you again and again. Alas, you were in that crook of Ikebukuro � everyone spoke so fondly of you but no one had the energy to venture all the way out there. Even women in Kyoto, when asked about Tokyo bookstores, whispered the words, "Caravanu," as if you were a ghost of an old Arab man, swilling Arab whiskey while plodding your way through the Arab desert. And plod you did Caravan. You plodded until your legs gave out and your whiskey ran dry and the desert took you and your sack of books and swallowed you whole. Au revoir, old steed.

If Green E Books is a newcomer in the indie bookshop world of Kyoto, Keibunsya is her older, sexified sister.

Everything paneled in a beautiful dark stained wood with perfect accent lighting, laid out in well-thought-out proportions, Keibunsya is probably one of Kyoto's prettiest bookshops. It's large enough to be impressive but still small enough to maintain intimacy.

Keibunsya specializes in art and design oriented books and carries titles from around the world. The majority of their books, however, are in Japanese.

Walk around the inside walls and you'll notice little galleries embedded in the bookshelves � precious handmade leather books behind glass and lit from above. Move to the back of the store and you'll find a stationery section � pens, papers, envelopes � with a full-sized art gallery. At the time they were exhibiting the covers from old German pulp novels.

In the middle of Kyoto, along Kamo river, next to Marutamachi station, there is a small, cozy, well-lit bookshop bathed in tastefully hip Latin and jazz. Green E Books just turned one last Saturday and celebrated with a party. If you wore something green you got a discount.

Yuko-san studied up before starting Green E. She told me about her trip across Japan visiting small bookstores all over Tokyo � many of them carriers of Kuhaku. She is soft-spoken but energetic and clearly in love with literature.

Green E, being smack near the center of Kyoto � just a quick five-minute bike ride from the old Imperial Palace � is worth checking out even if you're in the city for a quick tour. Everything is reasonably priced. Green E has both straight-forward literature as well as titles erring on the side of artsy. I also noticed some French tomes thrown in the mix. And as an Australian woman illustrated, dumping a bag of old paperbacks on the floor next to me, Book E also buys your leftovers.

Ummm. Very sorry. The NPR interview mentioned below will air on WCPN 90.3 in Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday, May 10th, not today. Cletus had a software glitch.

Mooshiwake arimasen (there is no excuse).

Kuhaku editor Bruce Rutledge talks with the folks at WCPN 90.3 FM, the NPR affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, tomorrow on the Around Noon show. We'll provide a link to the interview, but if you want to hear it live, check in between noon and 1pm East Coast time tomorrow.

Thank you for your time. Cletus deshita.

Martin Amis is a smart man.

I recently picked up his The War Against Clich� � a collection of his literary critiques of everything from books on chess grandmasters to Don Quixote to the Guinness Book of World Records. Having not been a reader of critiques, it was much to my surprise to find they need not bear down on the source material to be effective. Amis certainly proves this as he punches holes through classics and knocks down only to knock back up a moment later modern authors all the while dancing � fluttering � on the periphery of the literature he's critiquing. It's like watching a master of anything � they make it seem easy, obvious, artful and engaging.

He's sharp. And by sharp I mean dangerous.

When you put out something like Kuhaku, you're placing a little bit of your soul in the hands of dangerous men. In his introduction, Amis summarizes his evolution as a critic quite well:

"You hope to get more relaxed and confident over time; and you should certainly get (or seem to get) kinder, simply by avoiding the stuff you are unlikely to warm to. Enjoying being insulting is a youthful corruption of power. You lose your taste for it when you realize how hard people try, how much they mind and how long they remember."

As someone who's been involved in producing things that get reviewed, I can attest (and perhaps Bruce can chime in here) that for all the great and positive things people say, the stuff that sticks in the craw, as it were, are the superficially negative and vitriolic statements; the shards of glass hurled by smug, territorial and insecure critics. Even though we know they are smug, territorial and insecure, they irritate all the same.

That said, if you want to read some painfully well-written, witty, hilarious and insightful reviews by someone who has figured out what his role as a reviewer is, hurry up and push that 1-click order button.

Kevin Guilfoile, author of Cast of Shadows gives us an inside peek at his current book tour. It goes to show that book tours and readings aren't easy, even if you do get great write-ups:

At 6:55 p.m. the three of us return to the Book Stall to find it, well, deserted. Despite the rave review in yesterday�s New York Times, not a single person who is not my friend has shown up for the reading.

Not a single person. Thank God.

I sign stock for the unnecessarily apologetic booksellers and John, Steve, and I walk down the street to a local tavern. Except for us, the bar is empty as well.

He also makes good note of just how unexceptional the idea of being an author is to bookstore people:

If you have a personality disorder and want to know what it�s like to be a novelist on tour, just walk into a random bookstore, claim you are the author of such-and-such semi-obscure book and when they bring you the stack, start signing your name. People who work in bookstores meet so many writers they won�t be the slightest bit impressed by you, but if you are an extremely bored crazy person and want to pretend that you are an author it�s possible you could get some satisfaction from the exercise.

Bruce is embarking on a mini-Kuhaku tour at this very moment. Check our news page for more info.

We received a very positive write-up of Kuhaku on a Canadian expat's blog, Blue Lotus. I like the image of her riding a bus in suburban Tokyo, flipping through her new copy and finding a photograph of a can of coffee, admiring the rice-paper jacket, examining the sewn-in ribbon. It made my day.

At my bus stop in Seattle, I was reading On Familiar Terms, an autobiography by Donald Keene, whose anthologies on Japanese literature shepherded many of us into a fascinating world before Haruki Murakami came on the scene. This is a man who has written and translated some of the most important English books on Japan. If we achieve half -- no, a quarter -- of what Keene has done during his career, Chin Music Press will have been a success. And yet, his feelings about getting reviewed mirror mine. I read the following passage at the bus stop and thought, OK, if he feels this way after publishing dozens of books, then there's hope for me:

I have never learned to take reviews in my stride. An unfavorable review wounds me as much as it would a beginner, and an ungenerous review, the kind that displays the knowledge of the reviewer at the expense of the author, arouses latent misanthropy. But a (positive) review ... can give a young scholar the courage to pursue the lonely path ahead.

There's a brief review of Kuhaku up on Junglecity.com, a popular Japanese website in Seattle. Kuhaku is the second book reviewed.

The writer, Takumi Ono, a Japanese expat who hasn't lived in Japan in 17 years, says � and I'm paraphrasing � that the book shows a raw side of Japan that can't be seen in statistics and facts. She says she felt the difference between those of us who "live" (seikatsu suru) in Japan and those of us who "stay" (taizai suru) and become part of the soil. Finally, she said that reading an English book like this about her home country made her feel like she was reading about a place she had yet to visit. A new side of Japan had been revealed to her. Nice.

More online suicide pacts in the news, I'm afraid. This time, the youngest to take her life was fourteen. The details in this news item are eerily close to the details in Cal Ranson's San Man Down: The car on the lonely road, the charcoal stove, the promises made in Internet chatrooms.

Japan has more than thirty-thousand suicides a year, and though these online suicide pacts are just a fraction of the total, they are indicative of a country where many young people are searching for anything to belong to, even a suicide club. Morris Dees once wrote that if there were more bowling leagues in the disenfranchised communities across America, the Ku Klux Klan would have trouble recruiting members. In Japan, lonely young people who have nowhere to go turn their hate inward, I suppose.

We made a rookie mistake that is delaying our official launch in North America: We put the wrong barcode on our bellyband. When Michael Cashin of Consortium called me to tell me this, it was like getting hit in the solar plexus. The rest of the day, I was in a deep, deep funk.

But then some good things happened, and we turned this problem into an opportunity. First of all, designer Bob Garlick in Vancouver offered to make our EAN Bookland barcode for a case of beer. Then he helped us find a printer in Seattle that would do the job without draining our triple-digit bank account.

Our current bellyband (the wrapper around the base of the book) has a blurb from us describing Kuhaku. That's because we didn't go out and get reviews and blurbs while the book was printing like normal publishers. We decided to publish the book first, then show it around to distributors, reviewers, etc. That's largely been a good strategy for us because people take us seriously when they see the book.

But now, with this barcode mistake, we had a chance to do two things: create a super-cheap throwaway bellyband like we envisioned in the beginning but could not quite convey to our printers in Iceland (thus the high-quality off-white paper used for our current bellyband); and include some blurbs from reviews.

This led to a discussion at CMP HQ about the cover. It's a beautiful cover, we believe. But the one thing it doesn't convey is Kuhaku's humor. Cletus in the U (who incidentally is being reprimanded for his rogue blog-post the other day) hints at the book's touches of whimsy, but nowhere is it apparent that inside there are many moments of silliness. Now, with these blurbs on the new bellyband, we think the astute reader will pick up on the humor within:

Just popped over to Cassina to try and wrangle a big discount on a little leather garbage can. Or actually, not a garbage can, but an "object," which I guess you're simply supposed to put in your corner and feel meditative about. Well, dammit, I was going to use it as a garbage can. But as I haggled with my friend who works there, I realized I really didn't need this thing. I resigned myself to buying it if I could get 25% off, but not a penny less. Feeling like I was back in a sweaty fish-smelling hut in Cambodia, vying with a 12-year-old over a six cent discount on a hand carved opium pipe, back and forth we went until she finally agreed to ask her manager if giving me, her friend, a big discount was OK. Well, it wasn't, and I left without the garbage-can-cum-object, thanking her for her efforts and promising to return soon to buy an overpriced, but very stylish frying pan.

As before, I made the requisite stop by Book and Cafe 246 to check on the shipment I sent a week ago. Amazingly, they had almost completely sold out � only three copies remained. Me, leaving for Europe next week, immediately called Haba-san to arrange a shipment before I left on my trip. Haba-san, answering with a weak voice, bed-stricken with the flu (like so many people in Tokyo now � SARS facemasks abound; I spend my days dodging old-man coughs and little-girl sneezes) couldn't defend against my now polished push for people to purchase our paper product. So the Gods of bookstores are clearly shining their wobbly light on Book 246, helping us sell Kuhaku with a hearty, "Umph."

Just got a call from Libro, a hip little bookshop sponsored (I think) by Parco. They're located in various places across the city � most notably in Shibuya underneath Parco. They house a wide range of magazines and art books. On my way to Kichijoji a week and a half ago, I stopped by Libro and threw down the sales pitch to the book buyer. She was a small, young woman, physically frail but with a sandpaper-like gaze capable of vigorously shaving off your skin and muscle. I fumbled a bit in the pitch, but she seemed interested, her in her tiny but thick-rimmed black-glasses, me in my winter-black Philadelphia working class knit hat, heavy brown suit jacket and cashmere (first cashmere thing I've ever owned � got it cheap in a post-winter department store sale) turtleneck, trying my hardest to project Art Director like qualities. She handled the book with a light grip, flipping through, nodding. She said it would take a while, but she'd ask the floor managers about picking it up.

I left feeling the worse for wear. Maybe they're interested, but they don't want to buy books directly from some random foreign guy, I thought. At best, Kuhaku might occupy some desk space before being thrown in a box of old sandwiches in the corner.

But as it turns out, they are excited and serious. I misread the hardened gaze as antipathy, whereas I should have seen it to clearly mean serious business. Goes to show you: Tower, which intimated stronger interest than almost any other store I've pitched the book to, is taking its time jumping through the hoops of large-store bureaucracy; Libro is on the ball and pushing the sale forward.

Today was invoice day. I dropped in on Nadiff and Book 246, but first I went to Shinjuku to get my shoes shined. For �500 you can get one of the cutest old ladies in the world to shine your shoes. These women in front of the west exit of Shinjuku station are wonderful, weather-worn workers of a different time, clearly cut from a cloth of tenacity not found these days. There are three of them � all cute, wrinkly and smiley. They're incredibly polite to one another � formally asking each other to watch over their things while they go to the bathroom. They're also all in their 70s or 80s. The woman who shined my shoes today had been doing this work, in this spot (save for when they were building Shinjuku station, and she had to move across the street) for the last 55 years.

While I was sitting there, a girl came up and asked if she could photograph us. The woman shining my shoes vehemently denied her request. Despite the girl being incredibly polite and persistent, the old woman wouldn't budge. I asked her why afterwards, and she said she's had her photo appear in contexts that have caused her problems before and doesn't want to risk giving random people the right to capture her image. Nevertheless, the girl, egged on no doubt by me winking and making "photo" gestures, backed up and took a snap without the woman knowing (she was intensely focused on my shoes).

We're well into the new year by now, so I figured I'd make the rounds to our Tokyo bookstores and see how things are going. I think I must have walked 10 kilometers this past Wednesday. Good thing I got those bouncy soles in my shoes.

First stop was Aoyama 1-Chome. At Cafe 246 I had a pretty tasty but little too oily falafel sandwich. Really good seasoned potatoes on the side. Then I moved onto the bookstore, Book 246, next door. They were sold out of Kuhaku. As was Tsutaya Roppongi Hills. I've been trying to get in contact with the book buyer for some time now, but it has been slow going. Once you start trying to sell books to stores, you find out how slow and labored almost everything is � having the manager make time to meet you, getting the books displayed, finding out when the books have sold out, getting paid for books that have sold.

It was definitely good to hear they were sold out. The girl working at the shop said people were coming in and asking for it by name. This is good. And surprising, since we don't really do any promotions.

We just received a nice review on JapanVisitor.com. The reviewer, Will Yong, called Kuhaku "popular literature for the JET generation," which is interesting because 20 years ago I was on the program, or its precursor, the Monbusho English Fellow program. Two other contributors were on the program as well.

I often picture Kuhaku being read by new Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) recruits as they fly to Japan for a year or more of adventure. I picture them reading the book as their life in Japan begins. The book is sort of like a mental training manual for the things they're about to face.

Twenty years ago, I was reading two books on the plane to Japan: James Clavell's Shogun, which had almost nothing to do with the Japan I was about to see (although a woman gave me the nickname Anjin-san at one of the first schools I visited), and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, which had far more to do with my host country than I would have ever thought. (James Mason as Humbert Humbert and Sue Lyon as Lolita in the 1962 Stanley Kubrick film are pictured here.)

Is anyone going to Japan for the first time in the near future? I'll send one person a free copy of Kuhaku in exchange for a promise to read the book on the plane and during the trip, and write to us about how the book fit into the trip. Was it enlightening, misleading? Did it make you laugh, cry? Did you see a different Japan than we did? If you're up for the assignment, let me know.

Roland Kelts and Roberto Christen report from NYC.

Roland write: "A copy of Kuhaku featured amid portions of the Upper West Side Thanksgiving Day spread last month."

And Rob chimes in with: "I told you I'd send this, so here it is." He spotted Kuhaku on the shelves of Zakka in SOHO, right in front of the "lucky cats."

There's a new review of Kuhaku on Amazon from Nathan Schreiber of Brooklyn.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the level of the reviews on Amazon. I had never been a big reader of these reviews until Kuhaku came along. I'm one of those people who will use any excuse to spend time (and money) in a bookstore, so I never really paid much attention to Amazon. I had wrongly assumed that the reviews would be trite and often unfairly negative or positive. Not the case. The three reviews on our Amazon page are all more insightful and better written than a "positive" review we received in a major daily newspaper. That review didn't even mention the look and feel of Kuhaku, the artwork or the glossary, all integral parts of the book as a whole. I'm not saying the reviewer didn't like these things; he didn't even mention them.

Online culture doesn't demand a resume, an advanced degree or three letters of reference. And while that means a lot of the dialogue online is just cyber-crap, an eloquence is emerging that should scare writers, reviewers and other so-called experts into working a little harder. And that's a very good thing, IMHO.

I recently received a note from a reader in Wisconsin whose grandparents came from Iceland: "I noted with interest that you had Kuhaku printed in Iceland, and at your 'suggestion,' I'm reading Independent People."

She found our five-word review of Halldor Laxness' novel in very small print near the bottom of the Kuhaku copyright page. Independent People is an incredibly moving and humorous book that puts you deep into the Icelandic landscape and culture from beginning to end, mining the rich details of the country to find the universal. If you've never read Laxness, you're in for a treat. The main character of this novel, Bjartur of Summerhouses, is one of the most frustrating characters you'll ever meet on the printed page. I wanted to throttle him repeatedly for being so stubborn, but I also found myself slowly drawn into his world. Thank you, Judy, for reading the fine print!

Public readings were introduced to the US by Charles Dickens in 1867, or so says, Mark Twain, a pretty reliable source. Dickens was said to read with emotion. "He read with great force and animation, in the lively passages, and with stirring effect," Twain writes in On Writing and Publishing, a book that has a special place on my bedstand.

When Twain first tried his hand at reading -- after years of lecturing -- he flopped. "It was ghastly! At least in the beginning," he writes. "I had selected my readings well enough, but had not studied them. I supposed it would only be necessary to do like Dickens -- and made a botch of it."

Kozyndan, the wonderful LA-based duo who turned my Shimotakaido photographs into works of edgy art have just released a poster: Takadanobaba on Acid. I've e-mailed them to let them know that the street isn't actually Takadanobaba (it's Shimotakaido), but lame semantics aside, it's a cool poster and you can buy it here.

Here are some photos from the event. A bunch of snaps by Brian and myself. Strangely enough, nobody took a photo of the crowd. But trust us, the place was overflowing.

Brucer and Yumeko.

Three nights of eight-plus hours of sleep later, I think Bruce and I are finally returning to normal.

As I mentioned before, we think the release party went really well -- especially for a couple of guys who've never thrown a release party before. The place was packed with friends, friends of friends, artists and writers, people connected with the publishing industry directly and those hanging on the periphery. The outright goal for this event was to erect something to bring together all the people involved with the book. That and, of course, to sell books and get our name out.

Last night was a complete success! I want to thank everyone who came and supported the event -- especially the readers, people behind the scenes and the Pink Cow for providing the wonderful space. We're still a bit dazed from everything so don't expect a full write-up / photos before the weekend's over. ;-)

Thanks again -- we all had a blast!

Off to Voices, hope to see you all there!

As of 12:33am JST, October 25th, we've exploded in a torrent of paper and cloth and ink through the million mark barrier at Amazon.com. Officially, if for only a fleeting Internet moment, we ranked 159,056th out of all of their books. We certainly aren't selling like mad on Amazon, which only confirms that there must be a lot of books that simply aren't selling at all. Thankfully, all of you kind readers/supporters are graciously ordering from us -- an act that means we see more of a return to funnel into our upcoming projects. FYI: Amazon sucks up 55% (!) of the cover price, a fairly standard percentage for the American book market.

One thing we do need is more reviews. So if any of y'all happy Kuhaku readers want to help us -- the unknown independent publishing company with the lofty ideals -- please hop on over to Amazon and post a review.

Next stop, under 100k!

In connection with the story "San Man Down" in Kuhaku, here's a NY Times piece from the 18th on the topic of Internet suicide groups in Japan.

From the Article:

Strangers in life, the seven found a bond in death. Working methodically, they parked a rented van at dusk on a mountain park road west of Tokyo, wrote an email message with their precise location and programmed a cellphone to send it after they were dead. They sealed the van from the inside, took sleeping pills, lit charcoal braziers, and tied their wrists and torsos together.

Off to sell some books to this wonderful little bookstore in Omotesando, Tokyo:

We sold out of books at Book 246 in Aoyama within a week of dropping them off. This is great news. They've placed an order for more books, so here's hoping they sell fast too. This last batch also contained a stack for Tsutaya at Roppongi Hills. They should be available there starting late next week.

I attended the Donald Richie talk on the art of the short story at Good Day Books in Ebisu Sunday night. Mr. Richie read four of his stories from his most recent self-published collection called A View from the Chuo Line. His reading was animated and extremely polished -- one of those delightfully rare people who can really read a story.

Good Day Books took a copy of Kuhaku to test-sell.

This week we're working on getting the book into Intelligent Idiot and hopefully Nadif.

It's up! The Kuhaku sub-site has been up for a little over two weeks, so I figured I'd explain a few things going on over there.

The Kuhaku site is the largest site I've ever developed in terms of content -- there's a ton of information up there. The site is serving the dual purpose of being the company home page and also the Kuhaku main site for now.

Kuhaku's first in-store display:

This is the first store in what we hope will be a series of booksellers in Japan willing to carry Kuhaku. This great little travel-focused bookstore is right outside of the Aoyama 1-Chome station in Tokyo. Book 246 is small, really cozy and has very helpful staff.

I'm in America right now running around with Brucer meeting distributors and trying to get the books into a couple of great little booksellers on the East Coast. (I'm also sweating my arse off doing Bikram Yoga in hundred-degree rooms.)

Back in Tokyo on the 24th of September. First order of business once I'm back in town is to get the books over to the half dozen or so art and design shops on our list of hot-spots.

More photos of book 246 inside ...

Five thousand books is a lot. I understand we are the spring chicken of the publishing world and our initial order of 5,000 copies is miniscule by comparison. But when I actually saw big stacks of them sitting in our garage -- however tightly and neatly boxed -- and knowing that they are also packed into a 5' by 10' rented warehouse space with climate control, I began to feel that familiar surge of anxiety.

We would like to thank Dawn, the truck driver who hauled our books from Boston to Seattle, for putting up with one hell of a day yesterday. She was thrown from her seat on one of those steep Seattle hills, but like a rodeo star, she got back in the saddle and kept the sixty-seven-foot truck from backing up into unsuspecting passenger cars. Then she was hit in the face with an iron bar while opening the truck and visited by the Seattle police. And all along, she thought she was delivering boxes of candy.

We just secured our first bookstore in Tokyo!

The bookstore, Book 246 (sorry, they only have a Japanese site) is a very cool little shop operating under the theme of "travel." It's a cozy store that offers not only interesting new and used books from all over the world, but also bizarre travel objects including bags and clocks and clothing.

We've been a bit delinquent in our posting lately, but with (sort of ) good reason: we're insanely busy preparing for the arrival of five thousand copies of Kuhaku from Iceland. They made it to Boston sometime last week and are apparently snaking their way through America two hours at a time (due to trucker union rules). They were due to arrive yesterday (the 26th) but didn't. We're expecting them any minute now.

So what does our press kit contain? You can see in the photos below that the books come wrapped in some sort of translucent paper with a little note card and a sheet of A4.

Now for topic two -- Other people's impressions.

In the last two weeks, I have shown the book to about half of Tokyo. People who see the book fall into one of three categories:

• 1) People who love books.
• 2) People who do not love books.
• 3) People who sort of like books but aren't too fused.

We've had the book for about two weeks now and haven't really related our impressions of it. We've shown you pictures of press kits (without explanation -- we'll explain more in the next entry) and made some updates to the front page of the website, but we haven't really *said* anything. Well, here's a short list of topics I'm going to touch on in the next few entries:

• 1) Impressions of the book
• 2) Other people's impressions of the book so far
• 3) Our marketing & PR strategy

Let me start with my impressions (Bruce can chime in with his too).

Four more out the door to a few publications around Japan!

Our first copy of Kuhaku to be reviewed is out the door!

9:00 am JST, a man carrying this arrived. I think I can hear Bruce crying tears of joy across the Pacific. ;-)

19 Kuhakus, wrapped and ready for your lap.

A few days ago a letter accompanying a final Inproof arrived at my place (our "office") in Tokyo. Our buddy Bjorn apparently forgot to proof it before sending it off. Here's to hoping they're more careful with the final run of the books. ;-)

The old dummy:

This was the dummy I commented on a couple months ago (has it already been that long?). The color wasn't what we were looking for. Nor was the type of cardboard used to produce the cover. So I burned it but photographed it right before.

We don't have a national distributor yet, which may strike you as crazy. But we're taking a grass-roots approach to distribution because we feel that connecting with smaller independent bookstores will help Kuhaku more than hobnobbing with the small press division of Barnes & Noble.

We expect to be on Amazon, which will give us reach on the Net. We'll sell the book over our own site, of course, and so far, we have a network of nine independent bookstores in the US and Japan (San Francisco, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, New Orleans and Tokyo) as well as a British pub in Tokyo. We expect to have at least 20 outlets to sell the book by mid August.

We plan to visit these bookstores, do signings, slide shows on Japan, what have you. We also will write a brief history of each store on our website. And we hope to get these stores interested in the books that will follow Kuhaku under the CMP brand. Small bookstores tend to be more open to our ideas (although we've had plenty of rejections and unreturned calls, mind you). We believe that there is something in the average indie bookstore owner that wants to buck the system, and of course, so do we.

We're out to sell 5,000 copies of Kuhaku, not 50,000 or 500,000. We believe strongly that if we work our butts off promoting Kuhaku over the Net and at these small stores, we can sell that many copies. Stay tuned.