Saw this on the Shelf Awareness newsletter and wanted to pass it on. It's from a newsletter by the independent bookstore Diesel, in the Oakland, CA, area:

With Independence Day celebrations beginning it seems as good a time as any to celebrate our independents. With the closing of several prominent, internationally-recognized bookstores in the last couple of months--Dutton's in Brentwood, Cody's Books and the Graduate Theological Bookstore in Berkeley--it seems important to take stock of where independent bookselling stands, what it stands for, and what stands against it. Simply put, many stores like ours are doing well, supported by dedicated, intelligent communities of readers who understand the pleasures, virtues, and vital services neighborhood bookstores offer. The closures of these stores should not be misread as some fateful indication of the inevitable decline of independent businesses. However, they do reveal the risks threatening independent businesses these days: escalating overhead costs including rent; reader choices gravitating toward media-encouraged internet purchasing; publisher accommodation to the pressures from increasingly consolidated clients (Amazon, Costco, Walmart, chains) leveraging their power to secure preferential terms. All of these forces work against the greater health of the culture and combine to threaten neighborhood bookstores. Most of them can be alleviated through very simple acts: do not heed the media's predictions and recommendations for 'consumer' behavior; do not increase, through your purchases, the centralised power of large internet and chain companies which distort the markets of cultural goods; and support your local stores. (For more on independent bookstores, check out IndieBound.) Please excuse the rant, but it just has to be said. We hope you enjoy our recommendations and have a summer full of wonderful books.

Well put. Happy 4th all you Americanos!

Here's a great story on Book Expo America and the constant hand-wringing of large book publishers by Paul Constant. His argument pretty much boils down to this: Large publishers are cowardly crowd-followers; readers are as hungry as ever for good literature and tired of being talked down to by the cowardly large publishers; and this has created a huge opportunity for small presses and indie bookstores.

It's funny, but in this ecosystem, the "small" publishers he refers to are the very ones we look up to: Akashic, Small Beer, McSweeney's, Soft Skull. We're saving up to someday be able to afford a booth at BEA, so I guess that puts us in the teeny-weeny press category, a garage band of sorts. But all the same, I think his argument holds true. The old venues for reviews and publicity are becoming less and less relevant, and today's small press has to be nimble enough to get its books talked about in other venues. Readers will respond, as we've found in our tiny slice of the publishing world. And the good thing is we're still being discovered.

Constant made me laugh out loud several times in this piece, like when he contemplates facing the apocalypse at Larry King's house:

I grab a beer and slip back inside the house. Unsurprisingly, there are some books by Larry King on the bookshelves—I resist the urge to see if they are lovingly inscribed from Larry to Larry. Though the shelves probably cost more than my father made in six months at his job in a paper mill, the collection of books is roughly identical to my parents'. There are some mysteries, a couple of inspirational-type books, a dictionary. There's a People Magazine Almanac from 2006. I imagine what would happen if, like in the TV show 24, an atomic bomb went off in Los Angeles and all these people and I wound up duct-taped into Larry King's house, waiting out the fallout. We wouldn't suffer for food, of course. There's enough bison and cheese for everyone, so the class struggle wouldn't turn to violent cannibalism or anything like that. There's enough booze to keep us insensate through the apocalypse, too. But the books. The few times in my life when I've been deprived of books, I've become monstrous and depressed, as though going through physical withdrawal. What would I read if I wound up trapped in here for a few weeks? I look at Larry King's shelves. There is nothing that interests me. It is a barren wasteland, and if I had to subsist on it, I'd die.

Thanks to Akira at Design Kompany for bringing the article to my attention.

Borders recently launched its new website, which features the Magic Shelf, the latest riff on online book shopping. I haven't had time to poke around yet, but it's clear that Borders is taking a decidedly simpler, less statistic-cluttered approach than Amazon.

The Magic Shelf has some interesting features that might play better with a large indie like Powell's. For example, the Staff Recommend shelf seems like a good idea; that's the first section I go to when visiting a good indie store. But at Borders, who really knows who the staff is? On the Magic Shelf, you pass your cursor over the recommended titles and you only get typical publisher blurbs on the books — no staff reviews. But still, it's interesting to see a new twist in online selling.

A lot of the publishing industry newsletters I get in my inbox these days are either geared toward companies many, many times bigger and more profitable than Chin Music or stuck in the Old World of publishing, only acknowledging the digital shift we're in by mentioning the Kindle or some other Amazon item. Bookhitch.com's newsletter is different. It is very relevant to the Chin Musics of the world and anyone else who is trying to grasp just where this industry is headed.

Consider this brief wrap up of the latest newsletter: The opening piece contained a smattering of opinions on Amazon's controversial move to demand that publishers use its on-demand printer. The responses ranged from outraged to resigned. but nobody felt this was a smart move on Mr. Bezos' part. This kind of strong-arming is going to come back to bite him. Here's one comment:

"“I have asked my assistant to delete all my Amazon affiliate links on my nine websites, and have asked Amazon to pay any outstanding commissions because I am terminating my affiliate relationship after 12 years. And I'm trying to figure out how to notify the 70+ people in my list of Facebook friends who are marketers that if they want me to participate in best-seller campaigns, they have to offer a non-Amazon alternative (I did one the other day that offered a choice of Amazon, BN, or Powell's; I went through Powell's and it felt great)."

The piece is comprehensive and timely.

The next thing that caught my eye was one that focused on Harper Collins' plan to start an imprint that offers writers no royalties but also accepts no returns from bookstores. Fascinating. The newsletter contained an interview with an industry insider that said the idea was preposterous and a terrible way to go if you're a writer because you will end up making a lot less: "How’s zero sound? Because that’s what most authors make on royalties…even authors who are strong mid-list producers, even those who have name cache and a dozen titles in print. Publishers are good at either pushing a book into the market or leaving it to languish. One of the primary signals they send can be measured by how many zeroes are in the advance."

The rest of the newsletter talked about JK Rowlings' copyright case, what will happen if Barnes & Noble buys Borders (answer: not much), selling books for charity and the prospect of book rentals (like a Netflix for books). All interesting and well-written. And free, I might add.

Sumie Kawakami's quickie North American book tour (two stops: Get Lost Travel in San Francisco and Elliott Bay Books in Seattle) went extremely well. These were her first readings in North America, and of course, they were done in English, her second language. Sumie actually didn't read from the book; she gave a spirited talk about how the project came together and then fielded a slew of questions (in both cities) from people in the audience. In Seattle, Yuko Enomoto, who translated most of Butterfly, opened the evening with a dramatic reading of the climactic scene in "Red Circles."

The tour marked a first for Sumie, and also a first for Chin Music, because it was our premiere event at Elliott Bay Books, one of America's great indie bookstores. What follows are a few snaps of Sumie and Yuko in action (From the top: Yuko & Sumie in front of Elliott Bay Books; Sumie talks at Elliott Bay; Yuko reads from "Red Circles"; Sumie talks at Get Lost Travel).

It's a big week for Chin Music Press. On a week when the absurd and dismal Iraq War turns five and spring officially arrives, we're siding with spring by offering a whole lot of good stuff for your soul. We've got two readings in San Francisco, a reading in Seattle and our fifth title, Art Space Tokyo, goes to the printer. We're going for it!

Tomorrow, Dave Rutledge, currently stuck in the Houston airport and sending me text messages likening it to hell, will be in a little slice of heaven along San Francisco's Market Street called Get Lost Travel Books. The travel gear/bookstore is a beacon in the neighborhood with a big glass window emitting warm light on the street, and up in the loft is a cozy little reading area where Dave will update us on all things New Orleans and read a bit of Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? This will be the last event for the first edition of Do You Know because the book is all but out of print. But Get Lost has copies, so come get 'em. The reading starts at 7.

The following night, 3/20, at the same cozy loft in Get Lost Travel Books at the same time (7 pm), Sumie Kawakami makes her North American debut as she does a reading and talk about Goodbye Madame Butterfly. I will have a flask of bourbon on hand should she get a little nervous (and who wouldn't, giving a reading in one's second language?), and I'll make sure to bring something for her to drink too.

Then on 3/22, Sumie takes on the Seattle crowd at Elliott Bay Book Co. in Pioneer Square. She'll be on from 7:30. Translator Yuko Enomoto will be in the crowd too.

Join us at one of these events if you can. They should be fun.

And just to top it off, we're sending our fifth title to the printers this week. Art Space Tokyo is shaping up to be a true literary object. If you want your book hot (or at least warm, depending on where you live) off the presses, we still have a ridiculously good offer of $22 for the book and worldwide shipping through March 31. After that, the book will retail for $30. Get it now!

I love my hometown but am ambivalent about the new trend of its largest retailers — Starbucks, Amazon and Costco — being the arbiters of literary taste. In case you missed it, The New York Times just ran a long piece on this trend.

Amazon is amazing. Its return rate is minuscule compared to the chains and it is very good at selling niche books. But the trend toward selling books at Starbucks and Costco helps the middle while hurting the fringes — the indie bookstores, the ... gulp ... Chin Music Presses. So we get more middling stuff. Not to say that the books Starbucks or Costco sells are bad — far from it — but they always feel like they've gone through one too many corporate tests to get on the shelves.

Take this quote from the NYT piece, for instance:

“We wanted to find extraordinary books that would encourage people to discuss compelling issues” like war, hope, faith and family, said Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that, I suppose, but I'm betting there is going to be a sameness to the way those issues are discussed. It's all so NPR-ish. So friggin' safe. What I like about a good bookstore is the democracy of it. You can pick up the latest by Michael Savage or Howard Zinn. Your choice. It's all there. When Starbucks presents one "compelling" title for three months, I'm reminded why I avoid the chain whenever I can. Read a Starbucks novel, listen to All Things Considered and drive a hybrid... Oh Seattle!

But then again, Seattle is home to this and this. I wonder if it's all connected.

Since the JT review came out, we've been contacted by 4 international journalists and our Amazon ranking for GMB has been stellar: as of this morning 910 for foreign books, #1 in Gender Studies, #1 in Women, and #1 in Sexuality > Human. (As you can see above.)

Granted, yes, this is Amazon Japan, but still. Were this Amazon US, well, we'd probably be drunk and in a gutter off of some Macallan Fine and Rare Collection, 1926.

One of the great indie bookstores in all of Texas (or all of the US for that matter), BookPeople in Austin, has been featuring our little babe Do You Know ... at the front of the store. We heard this from contributor Jette Kernion, who took the snap featured here. Jette writes:

Tons of copies of that fabulous book, Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans, perhaps because one of the BookPeople book clubs is supposedly reading it soon. That doesn't mean you can't go buy a copy if you haven't already. It's a beautiful little book with some excellent essays in it (including mine). These books were available on the stand at the entrance to the store.

Why is this significant? Way back in early 2006 when we were planning events for the book, we called BookPeople and they were extremely polite and nice but not interested in the least. We were an unknown quantity and no reviews had appeared, so who could blame them? But it is gratifying to see that now they are giving us prominent play. Persistence, people, persistence.

A sidenote: After being rejected by BookPeople, we held a really nice event at BookWoman, which we thought was a sister store until we were set straight. Thus we now have two good homes in Austin.

Just got wind of a new bookshop / publishing company having an opening on Friday the 25th in the Shibuya Kamiyacho neighborhood. Kamiyacho is basically the ultra-posh area behind Bunkamura. Here's a PDF with map and information. Sorry, no English version. Easy enough to find though: Go up past Bunkamura to the right and keep walking straight. The shop will be on the left about six or seven minutes past Bunkamura. Party from 18:00 - 22:00. I have plans from 19:00 so I'll be there from the opening for about a half and hour.

They also have a website here.

Here's a list from the Guardian of some of the world's greatest bookstores. Some of these stores look amazing. They're like temples to books.

For bonus points, see if you can find the link that leads back to our blog.

My own list would include Powell's in Portland (boxy but so fun to get lost in), the Seattle Public Library (not a store, but still, a temple to books), Open Books in Seattle, Faulkner House Books in the French Quarter and the Kenyon College bookstore (at least the way it looked in the mid 80s, when I was a student there).

For at least one independent bookstore in Seattle — Elliott Bay Book Co. — 2007 was not the year of Harry Potter. The best-seller for the store? Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, with 640 copies sold, according to the American Booksellers Association.

New year's greetings from what used to be known as America's most literate city. Sadly, Seattle fell to No. 2 in the latest annual survey, sandwiched by the Twin Cities, with Minneapolis (home to our distributor, Consortium) slipping into first place and St. Paul following in third.

However, all is not lost for Seattle. It moved into first on the list of most bookstores per 10,000 people and was declared the most (over?) educated city in another ranking. (Glad to know that barista serving my tall americano has a master's in psychology.)

I was glad to see my birthplace, Cleveland, take No. 1 in the library category, and see that Newark held the top spot in newspaper circulation. It just goes to show that there is more life in cities facing tough times than some of us living in boomtowns like Seattle care to realize.

Wherever you live, happy reading in 2008.

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.

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.

Peter swung by NYU this week to make the first purchase of Goodbye Madame Butterfly at the university bookstore. He was thrilled enough to send us this pic. Thanks Peter! And folks, keep your eyes peeled, because GMB is popping up in bookstores across the country (and in Japan).

The San Francisco Chronicle recently ran a piece on a growing trend toward book readings at Fortune 500 companies. This is old news in Seattle, where Microsoft, Starbucks and Amazon have been rushing in celebrity authors and musicians for years, but the piece hints that the trend is spreading. As a publisher, I'm ambivalent about this. If Microsoft wants to book Sumie Kawakami for a lunchtime talk on Japanese women and sex, or Jason Berry on writing fiction in post-Katrina New Orleans, I am very, very happy to oblige. No question. And I think that offshoots of the corporate reading culture like authors@google could develop into fabulous resources on the Net. But I worry about indy bookstores losing more business and book-readings becoming even more elitist than they already are. If anything, we need to find a more grass-roots, less corporate way to connect with readers, because, after all, good books are still a bargain, and you don't have to be a yuppie to afford one.

McSweeney's needs OUR help! From their latest newsletter:

As you may know, it's been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney's included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000 -- actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn't hit right away, but
it's hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there's really no way to absorb a loss that big.

Trust us, this is a big deal. When they say that small publishing is a break-even proposition, it really is.

They're offering some great deals at their store: "For the next week or so, subscriptions are $5 off, new books are 30 percent off, and all backlist is 50 percent off."

I've been on the road for the past week so I haven't had a moment to sit down and pick anything up, but I know I'll be putting in a few orders this weekend. As they say, if you've had your eye on any of their stock, now is certainly the time to pick it up. Vote the American way, with your wallet.

I wanted to share this with you before it gets stale. One of the more interesting items I ran across during Book Expo America in New York at the beginning of the month was not a book, but a movie. Specifically, it was a movie made by Powell's Books of Portland, OR, about Ian McEwan's new novel, On Chesil Beach. I imagine some of you are scratching your head right now and thinking, 'Why is a bookstore making a film about a book?' That's what I was thinking as I dropped round a showing of the film and a brief talk by David Weich of Powell's and Ian McEwan. Weich had me with his opening comments, when he talked about how insular literature has become. "Sometimes it seems that we in the book industry are a bunch of lit majors sitting around talking about what we know really well and intimidating everybody else."

Weich, a Powell's employee, watched how books broke out on the national scene. They did it through appearances on Oprah, through word of mouth. But rarely were those books novels. Novelists could hope to appear on Charlie Rose's show or Fresh Air with Terri Gross, but that was about it. "An author photo on the back of the flap is about as close as most readers get to a writer," Weich said. He wanted to try and make "compelling entertainment that energizes the conversations" about books, and thus he turned to film.

Weich must be a helluva salesman to persuade the owners of Powell's to plunk down the change to make a 28-minute movie (he wouldn't divulge the budget). But what I really like about this development, besides the high quality of the movie (check it out — it's entertaining and even very funny toward the end), is the collective sense Powell's brings to it. The movie is being made available, along with posters and other promotional material, to any bookstore that asks. Thus, if a bookstore in Santa Fe or Ann Arbor wants to screen the movie and promote McEwan's novel, they can. Several bookstore owners in the audience seemed very grateful for this service, since McEwan wasn't planning a book tour.

But will Powell's films kill author readings?

I'm off to Powell's in Portland today with Roland Kelts, who'll be talking there this evening about Japanamerica. I'm hoping to ask the Powell folks about their plan to make movies about authors and their books. Perhaps they'd be interested in our own efforts in this field.

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.

Jessa Crispin of Bookslut fame writes about the death of the traditional bookstore tour in this article from The Book Standard.

As a publisher that has launched two books in bars and one in a museum, we know what she's talking about. Bookstores that just go through the motions are missing out on a resurging interest in literature that is not readily reflected in their bottom lines. Lit blogs are flourishing; people are writing and talking more about books than I can ever remember in my 43 years on Earth. And literary types are doing more interesting things to promote their books. David Eggers and his posse but on a whole show to raise funds for 826 Valencia. Jonathan Lethem publishes a limited collection of short stories and demands that the book not be sold in stores or distributed to trade journals, magazines or newspapers. These are exciting times for publishers, and that's partly why we joined the fray.

To date, our most successful reading in terms of sales was in a bar in the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans about five and a half months after the levees broke. It was — not coincidentally — also the most fun.

But a word should be said for the inspired booksellers out there (and Jessa mentions this in her piece): There is no reason bookstores can't hold exciting, interesting literary events, and many do. Follow the lead of Tom Lowenburg at Octavia Books in New Orleans (p.s.: Jason Berry is reading from Poppas there this Saturday at 6 pm) and put out a little wine and cheese to give the event the feel of a party; Janis Frame at Book Buffs in Denver provided a sushi spread for our Kuhaku reading, and the hour or so we spent there felt so much more like a conversation than a monologue. This ain't brain surgery folks — just make it fun and pay attention, because the people are reading, writing and talking about literature a lot these days.

Andy Budd has a good little post on the dark side of the publishing industry — yes, even having your cover turned out on the shelves costs money.

But, actually, some stores will put your book on display if they really like it. We know for a fact that Kuhaku was prominently and happily displayed at some of the store-front, prime-space "New Arrivals" desks. And lord knows we didn't pay a cent for that.

During my brief stint with home-spun distribution here in Tokyo, I know that having Kuhaku face-out kicked sales up a few notches. At many stores here I was also sure to include a "shelf talker" with the package. Compared to stores that wouldn't give us the cover-out luxury, sales were probably a good 30-40% less. More so without the shelf talker. And sales at Book 246 in Aoyama-1 Chome, which once gave us cover-out preference and now doesn't, have dropped precipitously.

So Mr. Budd is most definitely correct in advocating flipping those books you love to show their covers — chances are that's enough to shift the sales in a positive way.

Today I asked a well-known bookstore to host a reading for our next book, a novel called Last of the Red Hot Poppas, which will be out in September. The store's quick, polite rejection tells a lot about what we're up against. Here's an excerpt:

I am sorry, but there is no way that we can schedule a reading by an unknown novelist at the store in the fall ... It is very, very difficult to do fiction here unless the person is a name brand. Even for fairly well known fiction writers, we get, if we are lucky, twenty people not related to the author.

Fair enough. I understand their position. To be honest, I don't even care, because somewhere deep inside of me I know that going about this whole publishing business in the same way that the big New York firms do — spend loads on marketing, sign brand-name writers, do six-week book tours, etc. — is both demeaning and suicidal. The reason we got into this industry in the first place was to exploit the blind spots of an industry grown obese with bad books and sloppy distribution policies, not to imitate the biggest players.

Join Bruce and David Rutledge at Book Buffs in Denver this Thursday at 7pm for a reading and talk about the making of Do You Know ... Book Buffs isa great store in south Denver, filled with beautiful first editions and original prints from local artists. Rumor has it the Rutledge brothers may be packing Colorado Rockies Mardi Gras beads as well.

After our reading in Austin Saturday, I began talking to BookWoman owner Susan Post while we and others from the event relaxed over a beer at The Tavern, a bar next door that, according to Susan, had its soul ripped out when the new owners tried to clean up its dive-bar image. It was the least interesting bar I saw in a weekend of book reading and bar hopping (favorite Austin bar by far: Deep Eddy's — please tip bartender Yuri heavily). But Susan's conversation and an epic baseball game on the tube made up for the Tavern's neutered atmosphere.

Susan has run BookWoman for 34 years. Her little store on the corner of 12th and Lamar has survived and evolved while many other feminist stores have faded away. I wasn't sure how we'd be received at the store, but I knew we were in a good place when the audience and staff erupted with laughter as Ray Shea read a passage about Doc Severinsen eyeing the pretty girls in the crowd and saying, "Oh look at that! Give me some of those long beads, quick!"

In fact, the reading was great. It was short — the whole thing was about 30 minutes — and it left the crowd of nearly 20 wanting more. That's the way a reading should be, since your ultimate goal is to get people interested in your book. Dave, Juliette and Ray did a nice job of showing the breadth of our book, too, with the sad procession of brake lights that closes "Corners of the Quarter," the humorous tales of summer movie theaters from Juliette, and Ray's "I Was a Teenage Float Grunt," which has become our reliable closer, like Lynyrd Skynyrd saving "Free Bird" for the encore.

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.

It looks like Kichijoji's little book store that could is moving -- right next door and into much bigger digs.

From the horse's mouth:

Time for a bigger space. Its official. We are moving into a new space just around the corner from our current place. The move should be completed by the first week of May 2006. If you know where the current shop is then it will be easy for you to find our new space; it is literally in the building next to us with the entrance on Itsukaichi Kaido, which will definitely make it easier for people to find us. The space is three times the size of our current shop.

Our range of stock will be expanded in quite a few different ways for the next shop. Expect to see a larger art and photobook section, the childrens book section will also be expanded, more nonfiction, spaces to sit and read and a rare book and first edition section.

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.

Maybe Jeff Bezos reads this blog after all. The day after I complained about Amazon returning 10 copies of Kuhaku, the online book behemoth ordered 17 more. Intimidated by the power of this little ole blogger, perhaps? Or maybe it's an olive branch after they rejected my suggestion for their 10th anniversary party. Tell me, who would you rather hear: 1980s rocking sensations Toto and Loverboy (pictured), still rockin' hard into their twilight years, or these two has-beens?

At any rate, -10+17=7. I bow to you, Jeff.

Amazon has just scolded us. It put us in our place and told us to stay there. And because Amazon is bigger than us, we grin and bear it.

Amazon has given us global reach, no doubt about it. We have Kuhaku pages in Japanese, French, German, even Canadian ... But it's also given us our first real dose of the hated "r" word, the ultimate curse word in the publishing industry: returns. The cyberspace bookstore just returned 10 copies of Kuhaku. Ugh, what is with these distributors? Hal the computer has told them, "We need 67 copies of Kuhaku ... definitely not 77."

The more I'm in this industry � here's where I sound like a grizzled veteran, so please don't tell anyone the company's just two-and-a-half years old � the more I'm convinced that the way to survive is to look back at how books were marketed in the 19th century, then add a layer of Internet outreach to the mix. In other words, go the old-fashioned route and visit as many bookstores as you can, talk to as many people, et cetera, but whatever you do, don't get obsessed with Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Borders. They will only break your heart.

But of course, they can still turn on the charm when they want to. The reader reviews are a great touch on Amazon, and we just received another five-star review on our Japanese Amazon page. Plus, shipping is free anywhere in Japan via Amazon, which is, well, really, really nice.

OK, now back to chasing chickens.

Picture an indie bookstore owner for a moment. A cerebral, soft-spoken, left-leaning woman with salt-and-pepper hair? Or perhaps a very intelligent but socially awkward middle-aged man, usually sporting an earring? Am I close?

Whatever your stereotype of indie bookstore owners, I bet Brad Beshaw breaks it. Brad runs Confounded Books in Seattle's Capitol Hill (on the right, with the neon "open" sign � 315 E. Pine St.) . He opened his store about 10 years ago, as the zine culture was really hitting its stride. Sadly, many of the bookstores that opened then are long gone. Brad is one of the few who, inspired by punk rock and the zines that fueled punk's rise, is still hanging on.

We've added a short profile of Brad to our indie bookstore section. And here is his kick-ass tattoo. We'll be reading here June 9 at 7 pm. And we'll be in Portland next Friday the 13th, at Reading Frenzy, another one of those bookstores that came out of the zine culture. These places are great. If you're looking for a new book, why not turn off your computer, get a little fresh air and walk to one of these stores? Everyone will benefit but Jeff Bezos.

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.

I've bumped into Kuhaku in two Seattle bookstores recently. Each time, I fix the bellyband to fit snugly at the bottom of the book, not a third of the way up the cover. If you see a copy of Kuhaku with the bellyband halfway up the cover, like a nerdy boy with his pants pulled up too high, please push the band down. Kuhaku wears low riders.

At Wit's End in Fremont, the book was displayed nicely on a front table. It looked small and proud.

At Elliott Bay Book Co. in Pioneer Square, I spotted Kuhaku in the travel loft. Six copies were lined up on a shelf at the top of the stairs with the following mini-review from a staff member:

Some of these essays are entertaining. Some will break your heart. All are thought provoking. Kuhaku is as lovely to read as it is to hold.

We sent a copy of the book to a reader at Elliott Bay back on August 18. The reader mentioned that she received it and called it "exquisite," but that was it. By this point, I thought that she had ended up hating the book. But it turns out that Elliott Bay ordered 20 copies and displayed it prominently with the comment above.

To me, going from journalism to book publishing has been like changing my diet from fast to slow food. I'm still making the transition -- getting antsy when comments don't come right away -- but when something good happens in book publishing, there is time to savor it. I've already committed the above comment to memory.

We officially launched Kuhaku in North America this week with our distributor, Consortium. Our handsome little book with the cloth cover and spanking new bellyband is being shipped all over the country and will soon appear on bookshelves, turning heads and making the standard hardbacks lining up next to it gaze in envy and talk behind its back.

As a first-time publisher, this whole process has been exhilarating and exhausting. We are like toddlers in this industry. We are filled with glee when someone buys a book online. We google their name. Who are they? Why do they want our book? How exciting! A reader in Linkoping, Sweden!

Was contacted by Libro in Kichijoji today. I introduced them to the book before I left for vacation and they said they would get the store/files ready for Kuhaku's arrival upon my return. Well, it looks like some email mixups before I left caused my "Company Information" email to end up in a Parco black hole. I re-sent the information again today, and they said they would contact me again next week. So it looks like Libro should start stocking the book by the end of the month. I plan to followup on Tower records tomorrow.

In the south of Sweden, a mere forty minutes from Copenhagen by train over a bridge that spans the sea, lies a small university town with streets made of stone, abounding in blonde women and chiseled Scandinavian men. In this small town with many small shops � but very few actual small people � is a French bookstore turned Japanese bookstore turned Spanish and Portuguese bookstore. Started twenty years ago by a Frenchman, this small shop has sat near the edge of the center square in Lund for ages, selling books in all languages but Swedish. A bold business decision. It's near the town's kebab and sausage men, whose cheap radios blast pop music from their aluminum trucks; the music sounds like a whisper when you're standing on the bookstore stoop. Inside, the eccentric Frenchman who runs the store will tell you that he calls himself "The Book Man." Spend too much time here and you begin to wonder if the whole place is crazy or if it's just you.

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."

I launched myself on yet another round of bookstores recently. I planned on spending just an hour or so hitting up two shops that were on my radar: Cow Books in Nakameguro and Yaesu books next to Tokyo Station. I planned on stopping by Good Day Books as well, but, being Tuesday, it was closed.

Even if you abhor the idea of reading, I highly recommend at least visiting Cow Books. It's located just a short walk from the now anomalously hip Naka-Meguro Station, situated right on the edge of Meguro-gawa. The interior is beautiful � perfectly lit with generous, warm accent lighting. A glowing table down the center of the small shop, set off with a cloth covered, subtly perforated lighting fixture. The walls and back space are done in spotless stainless steel, and, in surprisingly good taste; an LED banner rotates phrases about the whole shop just next to the ceiling. It's sexy.

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.

Just got off the phone with the floor man for Tower Records Shibuya. Turns out the process is going to be a bit more complicated than it initially seemed: he's going to introduce the book to the honsha (main branch) manager. He will also introduce me to the manager, at which point I will have to pitch the book all over again.

I'm leaving for a little trip on February 10th, so we're trying to get everything sorted before then.

We talked about the review of Kuhaku in the latest edition of Paper Sky magazine. It'll be interesting to see if the review substantially affects sales in the coming months.

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.

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."

From Glenngary, Glenn Ross:

A-B-C. A-always, B-be, C-closing. Always be closing! Always be closing!! A-I-D-A. Attention, interest, decision, action. Attention -- do I have your attention? Interest -- are you interested? I know you are because it's fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks! Decision -- have you made your decision for Christ?!! And action. A-I-D-A; get out there!! You got the prospects comin' in; you think they came in to get out of the rain? Guy doesn't walk on the lot unless he wants to buy. Sitting out there waiting to give you their money! Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it?

We aren't selling real estate, but I have a feeling if we had Blake on our side, we'd have sold out of 10 runs of Kuhaku by summer and have bookstores cowering at our whim.

Kuhaku isn't a house or a piece of land. But it is a book, an actual product. And as such, it needs to be sold or else CMP starts and ends at Kuhaku. And we have way too many ideas for new books to go through before we give up just yet.

These past few months we've done a soft launch in Japan, and people seem to be really digging the book. Now it's time to push into the American market in a big way. We have distribution (see: A crash course at Consortium) and a sales team of about 40 people on our side, poised to push Kuhaku into shops around North America. I had until December 23rd to make a sales kit for this team. We wanted the kits to be visually interesting and reflective of our attention to detail. But we also needed them to be really cheap. So I set off to Tokyu Hands and, after a few hours of poking around with materials, had developed an idea of what they should be like.

COST
We were able to produce 50 kits for a grand total of (about) $45.00.