It was a typically cold and grey Seattle spring afternoon. I walked outside to retrieve the mail, expecting the routine litany of bills and unsolicited catalogues. Instead, I was greeted by a small, nondescript cardboard box. Across the top, the single word “Indiespensible” sent my heart a-flutter. It was here! The latest collection of goodies from Powell’s subscription club had arrived.

Every six weeks, Powell’s Books of Portland, Oregon mails approximately 750 such nondescript boxes to folks around the globe. As Powell’s website explains, Indiespensible “delivers the best new books, with special attention to independent publishers. Signed first editions. Inventive, original sets. Exclusive printings.... Every six weeks, another installment to read and admire.”

And as if a new, signed and numbered limited edition wasn’t enough, Powell’s always throws in a little something extra. Each package comes with a note entitled, “How We Assembled This Box,” and tells the tale of the included book(s), author(s) and Powell’s reason for selecting the particular set. One might also find a note from the author, discussing anything from her ten years of writer’s block to her fondness for Talladega Nights. But wait –- there’s more! Dagoba Organic Hot Chocolate, three truffles from a local Portland chocolatier, the latest McSweeney’s Wholphin. Thanks to Indiespensible, I am happily spoiled every six weeks. And thanks to myself and 700+ other fans, Powell’s sells out of each edition.

In February, the program featured the debut novel, Tinkers, from writer Paul Harding. Tinkers was published by a small independent, Bellevue Literary Press, and was introduced to the Powell’s buyers by CMP’s very own Consortium rep, Bob Harrison (Blogger note: get your hands on Tinkers and read it as soon as possible!). March brought to my doorstep both an advanced reader’s copy of Glen David Gold’s Sunnyside (published by Alfred A. Knopf) and a colorful, custom chapbook of the novel’s first section. And here’s where we at CMP really raised our heads and paid attention: in the midst of a major economic recession, a publisher with both size and stature spent money on a limited hardcover selection from a forthcoming novel. Each chapbook contained a print by artist J.D. King and was bound in vibrant, textured cloth. In other words, yet another publisher has returned to the concept of a book not simply as a vessel for ideas, but rather as the site and medium of art itself. (It’s been a bumpy bandwagon here at CMP, but we’re glad that other publishers are finally jumping on board! In fact, the next Indiespensible features a debut novel presented in a hardcover, full-cloth slipcase. One might think they were catering to CMP’s 19th century bibliophilia alone!)

Perhaps most reaffirming of all is Powell’s incessant linking of print and digital media. On the Powell’s Blog, you can read an essay by Glen David Gold about the experiment that was his participation in Indiespensible. You can also read an interview between Indiespensible’s David Welch and Robert Goolrick, the author of April’s featured title. What better way to drum up excitement for a new novel or provide an author with a unique forum in which to discuss her work? It’s very exciting to see an independent bookseller like Powell’s influence publishers of all shapes and sizes to (re)think the idea, presentation and delivery of a book.

I can’t wait until the next cardboard box arrives…

Here's what we're looking for: Someone with strong web skills (html, flash) and an interest in literature to join our team as an intern for six months with the goal of then becoming a part-time or full-time staff member. We are in battle mode, and the one key player we're missing right now is the web designer. We have excellent support and advice waiting in the wings (Craig Mod, architect of Chin Music's formidable online presence; Jill DelSordi, a talented designer who has been consulting with us recently) but as a small press, we have a limited budget, so we need someone willing to dive in and help us build one of the strongest, eclectic and interesting online presences of any small press (or big press, for that matter).

Here's the emotional pitch: Chin Music Press doesn't pay particularly well, but it offers opportunities to carve your own path that few companies are willing to offer. Our model is different -- take a risk on talented unknowns, allow them to blossom, send them out in the world to achieve fame and fortune, repeat process. This is truly our model, and we're firing on almost all cylinders right now, accept for one: web designer.

Send me an email or leave a comment if you're interested. We demand a lot, but in six months, you'll have a killer portfolio and maybe a job in a growing small press. No promises, not in this economy, but if you are interested in figuring out how to sell and market art and literature online at a moment when no one knows what will work, contact us. It's been an invigorating ride for all of us, and we need another crew member to help us navigate the increasingly choppy waters.

Here's the press release announcing our new imprint, Broken Levee Books, which went out to the press ahead of today's New Orleans Book Fair.

Chin Music Press Launches Broken Levee Books Imprint
Seattle publisher reissues popular New Orleans book in beautifully redesigned hardback edition

SEATTLE — Chin Music Press announced today that it has started a new imprint called Broken Levee Books dedicated to preserving the unique literary heritage of New Orleans and discovering its most compelling voices.

The Seattle publisher also has released this month a redesigned and refreshed version of its hit 2006 anthology of essays and art, Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? Chin Music Press took the unusual step of reissuing the book as a hardback edition because it wanted to offer a more aesthetically stunning version of the book, which was made during the chaos after Hurricane Katrina and released before Mardi Gras in 2006.

“When we published the anthology after the levees broke, speed was critical. We were one of the first publishers to respond to the debacle in New Orleans because we felt the urgency of our mission,” says Chin Music Press publisher Bruce Rutledge. “We haven’t changed a word because the writers need to be read in context: They wrote their essays without knowing if their city would be saved. But the art and the design and the paper quality have all been refurbished and refreshed. We rebuilt the book while the Gulf Coast struggled to rebuild itself.”

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.

We're at the point where we are starting to grow but still seem constantly strapped for cash. Every upstanding businessperson knows that there's only one solution to keep us growing: Interns, interns, interns!

So if you're looking for long hours of hard, anonymous work, if you're dream is to talk on the phone with a writer who is pretty ticked off that his book isn't in the Tacoma Barnes & Noble, if you'd like nothing better than to spend your summer trudging to the post office to mail off elaborately packaged cans of coffee or if picking up my egg salad sandwich on your way back from Office Max to stock up on padded envelopes sounds like almost too much fun, then don't hesitate to give us a buzz at 206-784-4700.

In all seriousness, we have an array of potential positions and assignments to offer ranging from low pay to no pay. We're looking for production people (web designers, graphic designers, editors, proofreaders), marketing and sales people and maybe an MBA student or two who want to show us all the basic business mistakes we make every day (and lord knows, there are a lot of them). At this point, none of these positions are full-time (I believe it's illegal to have full-time nonpaid interns, is it not?), but you never know — if we keep on this pace, we'll be able to add staff in the not-too-distant future.

Also, while some of our jobs require people to be in the Puget Sound area, others could be done from Timbuktu. Don't let geography dissuade you.

So call us, send your resume to me at bruce at chin music press dot com, and we'll take it from there.

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.

The Hugo House is putting on a panel about small presses in the Pacific Northwest tonight, and I'll be part of it. Hope you can come on by.

Here's the dope:

The Hugo House InPrint Series presents:

Why Publish With an Independent or Small Press?
An Evening with Northwest Independent Press Publishers

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008, 7:00 - 9:00
Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave. Seattle
Admission $3 members/$5 non-members

Why Publish With an Independent or Small Press?

The Northwest features a handful of excellent independent press publishers who are producing interesting work and attracting positive critical attention and awards.

Tonight editors and publishers from several publishers will be on hand to explain the advantages of publishing with an independent small press and how to go about it. Our speakers will cover the editing and business side of small press, from queries and pitches to editorial preferences and distribution.

Small press publishers can serve audiences that aren't normally served by larger publishers who can only publish very commercial work, allowing them to get away from publishing only work that appeals to the largest common denominator of readers. Once books have been published and received positive reviews, they often attract the attention of larger publishers for broader distribution. All of your questions will be answered and you'll come away with valuable information and contacts for publishing.

OUR PANEL:

Black Heron Press: Jerry Gold, publisher and editor-in-chief

Chin Music Press: Bruce Rutledge, journalist and author

Fantagraphics: Eric Reynolds, editor

Aqueduct Press: L. Timmel Duchamp, author, publisher and editor

Payseur and Schmidt: Jacob McMurray, publisher

Wood Works Press: Paul Hunter, publisher and editor

The InPrint Series is a quarterly forum designed to connect writers with agents, publishers and publishing industry experts. The mission of Richard Hugo House is to build a vital learning community that develops and sustains practicing writers doing essential work. (206) 322-7030

We're extremely excited to announce a project that has been under wraps for ages — Art Space Tokyo. The book is set to come off the printers at the end of March. To put it simply, it's a guide to twelve art spaces in the city. Some are well known, some aren't even known by those in the art world. We've used these twelve spaces as pivot points to discuss, through interviews and essays, all sorts of topics related to art in Tokyo. It's a fascinating read and I'll be posting more information on the project and how it came to be in the coming weeks.

But for now, you can get more info and take advantage of a $22-free-shipping-worldwide pre-order deal (I plan on posting something about the economics of pre-ordering too) over on the book's homepage: artspacetokyo.com. As always, thank you for your support.

There's a wonderful copy of a recent TV show about Japanese book designer Shin Sobue available on You Tube. It's in Japanese so you may not catch all the nuances, but it offers a good peek into the "otaku" style workspace and ethic of Japanese creatives.

The main portion of the video revolves around Sobue trying to produce an "inside out" book. That is, where the endpapers are on the outside and the cover on the inside. The men in suits are from the bindery and, to say the least, not particularly enthusiastic about the idea. Mainly because they won't be able to guarantee the integrity of the finished product. Anyone who has tried to design something that pushes the production standards can understand the breathless trepidation of seeing his "vision" fulfilled that Sobue is so clearly feeling in that meeting.

I think my favorite scene is with Sobue at the book bindery where he pulls a piece off the production line and sends a shiver of worry into the workforce of the factory.

It's too bad we don't see the end product. And I partly wonder if the book ever got made. Or maybe it's yet to be published. I feel a book like that would be prominently displayed in the new releases section and I've yet to see it in my regular bookstore visits over the last couple of months.

Anyway, a fascinating little documentary into the Japanese bookmaking world.

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.

Check out Adam Greenfield's New Year's post on self-publishing his next book. This is a great opportunity to follow a writer through the process. And don't forget to check out all the comments — he and Nurri have a full head of steam!

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Holidays, and thanks again for everything.

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

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

It's out. It's ugly. And its reception has been somewhat luke-warm. Then again, when the first generation iPod came out, people laughed, spat and declared it an abject failure. Here's some ramblings from the bloggerheads:

Mr. Pilgrim:

You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.

Mr. Greenfield:

Unless something comes along to radically reorient my thinking, I’m willing to bet Chris Heathcote has nailed it in eighteen words: “Kindle is what happens when a non-cool company attempts to do a closed service: a car crash.�?

Mr. Godin:

The challenge that my hero Jeff Bezos has is that if he's really really lucky, he'll sell a million of these things in a year. And that means that at $10 a book, you need to have significant market share to make an impact. The Sony reader has been out for months and it has sold, perhaps, a few thousand units.

Mr. The Reader

Mr. Fireball

So the Kindle proposition is this: You pay for downloadable books that can’t be printed, can’t be shared, and can’t be displayed on any device other than Amazon’s own $400 reader — and whether they’re readable at all in the future is solely at Amazon’s discretion. That’s no way to build a library.

Mr. Kawasaki

I have used it and if someone gave me a choice of receiving an iPhone or a Kindle, I’d pick the Kindle.

Updates:

Here's a couple sources with more specific details on the Kindle:
15 Things I Just Learned About the Amazon Kindle (Boing Boing)
Many Details About The Kindle (Engadget)

This is the week that Amazon releases Kindle, their new electronic book reader to the public. We should be somewhat excited — if for no other reason than to see what a progressive company can do with eInk technology. Sony has had a four-year head start on producing electronic readers and distributing electronic books and, not unlike most things at 21st century Sony, they've all but botched it. I'm in my 20s, surrounded by tech savvy and literary types, live in Japan, and don't know anyone (not one person) who owns a Sony Reader — they've failed.

Amazon, despite the publishing industry's love-hate relationship with them (we love them for ship-ship-shipping our books all over the place; we hate them for selling our books for penny-profits thus undermining anyone else [including direct sales from publishers like us] trying to make a profit selling books), you can't deny they've affected the industry more than anyone else — certainly in the online realm if not also in distribution.

So what's up with the Kindle? Here's the shortlist:

- 10.3 ounces
- 30 hours (max) battery life
- Retail: $399
- 167 dot-per-inch display
- Uses typeface Caecilia for body text
- Design inspired by both the year 1982 and the film War Games
- Wireless (not just WiFi but a ubiquitous, work-anywhere (only in America one presumes) network called Whispernet)
- Browses the web
- New releases and Hardcovers for $9.99
- Old books for much much less
- First chapters for free

A quick type-dork note on Caecilia, from the Veer type notes page:

This Linotype typeface was designed in 1990 by Peter Matthias Noordzij (PMN), and named for his wife, Caecilia. Because its shapes are humanist rather than geometric, PMN Caecilia is easier on the reader’s eye and so more useful as a text typeface than most slab serif designs.

Some quotes (and notes) from the Newsweek article on Kindle:

Regarding the wireless connectivity:

'Some of those features have been available on previous e-book devices, notably the Sony Reader. The Kindle's real breakthrough springs from a feature that its predecessors never offered: wireless connectivity, via a system called Whispernet. (It's based on the EVDO broadband service offered by cell-phone carriers, allowing it to work anywhere, not just Wi-Fi hotspots.) As a result, says Bezos, "This isn't a device, it's a service."'

'"The vision is that you should be able to get any book—not just any book in print, but any book that's ever been in print—on this device in less than a minute," says Bezos.'

This will allow readers to theoretically buy any book on Amazon, anywhere, whenever they want. And it's important to emphasize that Mr. Bezos isn't talking about renting books — taking a cue from the successful iTunes sales model, they'll be selling to own. The lingering unknown is in what kind of format these books will be provided. Will there be DRM? Will you also be able to read these books on your computer? How many devices will you be able to share them with? We'll find out this week when Kindle comes out, but if the Amazon MP3 store is representative of the Amazon digital sales ethos, then we can assume a nonrestrictive, reasonable license associated with each eBook.

On updates:

Another possible change: with connected books, the tether between the author and the book is still active after purchase. Errata can be corrected instantly. Updates, no problem — in fact, instead of buying a book in one discrete transaction, you could subscribe to a book, with the expectation that an author will continually add to it. This would be more suitable for nonfiction than novels, but it's also possible that a novelist might decide to rewrite an ending, or change something in the middle of the story.

Anyone who has ever published a book knows receiving the first copies from the first print-run is a terrifying experience. You are both overjoyed and, quite frankly, channeling some form of schizophrenia — as you're frantically flipping through looking for printing, editorial and design errors, you're also frantically trying to block out your ability to see said errors. It's like the mother of a convicted murderer hugging her child trying not to let the murderer aspect interfere with her love ... Or maybe it's nothing like that.

And finally, two quotes — one from Mr. Levy (the author of the article) and the other from James Patterson:

Levy: 'That fort [of physical books and traditional publishing] will stand, of course, for a very long time. The awesome technology of original books—and our love for them—will keep them vital for many years to come.'

Patterson: "The baby boomers have a love affair with paper ... But the next-gen people, in their 20s and below, do everything on a screen."

I think Patterson's quote provides a tidy summation of what one in the industry can expect: the fort Levy describes has a lifespan only as long as, and probably much, much shorter than the remaining lifespan of baby-boomers.

In closing, my thoughts on Kindle are that I think the infrastructure of the Kindle system (having the books in a digital format, the collaboration with and support of large publishing houses and having a simple, ubiquitous sales system in place) is more exciting than the Kindle physical object. For a large company, Amazon has been surprisingly generous in opening up its databases and systems for the public to build on top of. If the Kindle system was open in such a way that allowed other devices (and I'm looking at you iPhone and iTouch) to patch into it, then I think we're onto something really interesting.

Other Reading:
- The Future of Reading Steven Levy for Newsweek
- Engadget
- Gizmodo

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.

Let me direct your attention to The Reader, a blog dedicated to reporting on and pondering the evolution of the book. I stumbled upon the site looking for concrete information on whether or not the iPod Touch could read PDFs, thus potentially making it a wonderful eBook reader. I turns out they can (sort of), and The Reader confirms my suspicions that a high-density pixel count will yield happiness for the eyes over long text sessions.

I have spent a couple of thirty minute sessions in Apple stores flicking my way around the web with the iPod Touch. To me, the music and video capabilities are a distant second to the way the high-pixel count screen renders text and web pages. This is where written word is heading, like it or not, and it's quite exciting to see it in action — and what beautiful action it is. Now if I could only afford one.

Already five days late on this one: November 1st marks the start of National Novel Writing Month. I love that simply the declaration of a period of time as being "novel writin' time" is enough to push us would-be writers over the edge into actually completing something. There's a whole psych 101 class on deadlines, procrastination and goal setting wrapped up in this project.

Kottke interviews Cory Doctorow, author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Eastern Standard Time among others. He probably became most well known for giving his first book Down and Out away for free online while still allowing readers other avenues of purchase.

From the interview:

CD: So, let's pick the issues right. Let's first of all say that fraud or plagiarism is bad for a number of different reasons—not all of them having to do with the writer, some of them having to do with the reader. Readers deserve to know that the thing that they buy has been accurately labeled. I also wouldn't approve if someone sold Coke in a Pepsi can. Not because I particularly like either beverage, but I think fraud is wrong. So that's the first question. The second question is, "How would I feel if a corporation misappropriated the fruits of my labor and profited by it without my permission?" And that's a meatier question, but when you conflate the two you just confuse the issue.

Five years ago today I signed some papers, paid some money to the state of Washington and formed Chin Music Press Inc. Four books, two blogs and a slew of (pretty damn innovative) websites later, we're still here, hanging on and trying to figure out how to ride whatever next digital wave comes our way. It's been fun — no sugarcoating: it's also been hard as hell and at times extremely frustrating — and little by little, we seem to be getting stronger. We are betting on the tortoise in this race.

Thanks to everyone who has supported us. As corny as it may sound, it's the chance to connect with people that makes this venture worth it, from readings at the Saturn Bar in New Orleans, the Pink Cow in Tokyo or Mac's Backs in Cleveland, Ohio, to comments from readers on our blogs, and of course, to those lovely online orders that come through our site. That and the chance to work with up-and-coming writers and artists ... That's why we set out on this damn trip. So thanks everyone!

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.

If you've ever wondered how big publishers work, take a look at this snapshot of Random House from New York magazine.

At Chin Music's current rate of one new title a season, on September 1, 2038, we will have produced as many books as Random House pushes out in a week.

Arthur Sulzberger speaks candidly with Haaretz on the future of The New York Times and going digital.

"I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either."

The Ballard burglar is by no means a smart man. Imagine ripping off the headquarters of Chin Music Press and: 1) looking for cash (who they kidding?) 2) looking for expensive hardware (ibid) and 3) not stealing a book (idiot!).

So, yeah, we got broken into over the weekend. And so did some of the neighboring businesses. Some of them had far more substantial losses than we did. The semi-literate burglar ransacked several offices, looking for cash and small items he could carry, dropping many of the things he was trying to steal along the way (my neighbors arrived at work today to find a new video camera on their floor!) and finally opening a door to an office that still had people in it! OK, this guy is not a master criminal. He probably doesn't even have a bachelor's. But he did make a proper mess of CMP HQ. For a moment Sunday, sifting through all the papers on the floor, I thought I was in my brother's apartment (ba-dum bum).

But we're back to normal now, although with a cancelled credit card.

We also received a rather tepid review of Poppas in the Baton Rouge Advocate Sunday. But then — and it may sound cliche, but these sorts of emails make my day — we received a message from a reader of DYK that said in part:

"I just purchased Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans? from Elliot Bay and read it in the same day. As an evacuee from New Orleans to Seattle, it was moving to see people outside of New Orleans realize what an impact the city has. You were able get writers who captured the essence of the city that is so unique and beautiful. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

All in all, it was a good day.

We're addicted to stats. Well, at least I am. We're hooked into Google Analytics as well as Mint, as well as a free Crazy Egg account. I want to know everything about our visitors — where they come from, how long they're staying, which pages they visit and which links they use to get to those pages.

The more I know the better I can sculpt our site, and hopefully, get people to where they're going more efficiently. And sell more books. Lots of books.

Until recently, there was one source of traffic we had no real method of quantifying: external links from non-web sources. For example, links in a PDF (like our Poppas sample chapter) or links in a newsletter.

So what I did was go and write a plugin for Mint. A "pepper," in Mint parlance. It's called "Link Spice." You can read all the dirty details here, but essentially it allows us to add two variables to all URLs. Link Spice then searches our logs and parses for those variables and shows us in a few, wide brushstrokes an overview on external traffic.

The pepper is available for free from my website, so if anyone else out there is using Mint and wants to track their external linkage, go grab it.

For an example of it in action, download the Poppas chapter 1 PDF and click on the link on the first or last page. Then check out the URL that it directs you to in your browser.

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.

We try to provide excellent customer service here at CMP. If someone has a problem with an order, or their shipments are lost, we try to respond to their enquiries with replacements the next day. If you're a small publisher/business, I can't imagine *not* providing customer service above and beyond the call of duty. It's one of those areas where trumping the bigger players is trivial thanks to our size.

Here's two cases of recent customer service I've encountered that have made me think that maybe the world isn't completely falling apart:

1) InCase. I bought an Incase laptop bag about two years ago, and the plastic buckle on the shoulder strap broke one day near Korakuen. I emailed Incase and was told they didn't make that bag anymore. And furthermore they didn't carry the straps. Well, a laptop case without a shoulder strap is almost useless to me, so I responded with a hopeless "What should I do?" email. My Incase contact said she'd scour the warehouse and let me know if they found anything. Fast forward two weeks — a new strap arrives at my house, free of charge, in the US. Will I be buying from Incase again? You bet.

2) Safari Books. I've been using Safari for about 1 1/2 years — ever since I started working on the Buzztracker web version in Winter 2004/2005. For some reason, I had canceled and created new accounts along the way and one account got lost in the shuffle. Since I was already a subscriber, I didn't take conscious notice that there were two of the same charges appearing on my two credit cards each month.

Recently I was the unlucky recipient of credit card fraud, and after combing over recent transactions, I finally noticed the duplication. I emailed Safari and they were not only quick to respond but checked the logs and refunded me for about eight months of unused account billing! Considering this was entirely my error, this ranks as one of my best customer-service experiences ever.

Certainly better than when I had to beg Bic Camera to take back a 20" Apple Cinema display with three glaring dead pixels smack in the center. And better than last week when I dropped my Powerbook off to be fixed and had it returned to me, still broken!

Just a little note to readers that we've updated our hitherto largely neglected online store to reflect our full catalog of books and other things.

We've also added some specials: slightly used copies of Kuhaku and Do You Know. These are basically returns we've gotten from our distributor because of a tear in a page or a missing bellyband or a small dent in the binding. Otherwise perfectly fine books. If you plan on carrying your books around with you, brand new copies will probably end up like these returns in a matter of days.

Most special of all the specials is the CMP Starter Pack: both (slightly worn copies of) Kuhaku and Do You Know for US $20. Which is cheap. Very cheap.

So if you've been reluctant to throw down $30 for Kuhaku or $20 for DYK, here's a chance to own both for less.

A quick followup to a previous post on this PDF/e-Book by 37 Signals. It seems as if they've pushed out well over 5,000 copies this past month. Nice to see there is a strong, viable market for things digital. And refreshing to see such candidness with numbers from 37s.

I would be very interested to hear how many people are printing this out and binding it themselves for offline reading.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There's just one week left in our Do You Know campaign. For those of you who are just tuning in, we've pledged to donate all the profits from early orders of Do You Know to a relief organization in New Orleans. We named that relief organization on our Voices blog today: Rebuilding Together New Orleans. For more on this organization's work to rebuild the homes of low-income people in the Big Easy, check out this post.

And for you publishing otaku and IRS agents among our readers, here's a rough outline of how the money works:

Orders of DYK as of 1/24 = 89
Total revenue raised = $1,646.50
Shipping and handling costs = 356
Cost to make & market 89 copies of DYK = 579
Money raised for Rebuilding Together = $711

There you have it. Each book sold makes about $8 for Rebuilding Together. If we sell another 23 copies or so, we can raise $1,000 for them.

PS We also appreciate the infusion of cash. It keeps us going. Thanks. And you're gonna love this book.

Buzztracker gets a lot of traffic. It also costs a lot to run. The maintenance cost is mainly in servers — it takes a lot of horsepower to handle 450,000 to 500,000 unique visitors a month. But on top of servers is, of course, my salary (when I'm working on it full-time). We're wary of slapping ads on it for the sake of revenue because it was never initially intended as a direct money-making mechanism. So instead of bombarding people with Google ads, we added a simple link for donations. We figure, if you use buzztracker (and obviously, a lot of people do — regularly), then you could probably afford to give up five bucks.

The thought process was like this: if just 1% of 1% of the people who visit buzztracker.org donated $5 a month, we'd cover server costs and be perfectly happy. 1% of 1% is not a lot. At least, I don't think so. And we have enough traffic where that small percentage is, while not huge, enough to help us along and continue offering the project to the public.

So in the two months we've had the donations link up, how much money has come in? Five bucks.

Which equals 0.0001%. (Our goal was 0.01%)

*sigh*

We didn't expect an outpouring of support but we did expect a bit more than that. Call it what you like — faith in humanity, the impossible optimism you need to run a small publishing company. If anything, this feels like it's been more of a curious experiment than a futile plea for cash. What we've learned is that people don't give money when they absolutely don't have to.

So what are we to do? Making books is expensive. We'd like to make a lot more. In fact, it's rather stupid that we don't make more than we do — and we would, had we an infusion of cash. We have a national distribution network and a small but acutely dedicated team. We also like to think we have a finger on the online and digital publishing pulse. There are lots of interesting things to be put out there in beautiful little packages but not a whole lot of money floating around to do it with. Last year we stumbled through our birthing process; this year has been the year in which we defined ourselves in broader strokes, and 2006 is going to have to be the year we pull all of these bits and pieces — our books, our online work — together and find the cash to take this operation to the next level.

But for now, I'm off to donate a few bucks to all the small sites I frequent regularly.

We've got an excellent new offering in the Chin Music Press store. Xconnect is a literary review published by a nonprofit called CrossConnect at the University of Pennsylvania (Craiger's alma mater). A print version comes out just about every year, and this is the latest.

The subtitle of the review — "writers of the information age" — gives a hint at what to expect: everything from modern poetry to translated works from Vietnam, black-and-white photographs, stories from Africa, to haunting cover art by Ray Caesar (pictured here). It's made for the modern reader who is undaunted at the prospect of switching from continent to continent and from essay to poetry to photograph as he or she turns each page.

This is CrossConnect's seventh edition of Xconnect, and it features writings by Russell Banks, Barbara Tran, Anyssa Kim and Vietnamese poetry translations from Linh Dinh.

If you have a publication or work of art that you'd like to sell in our store, let us know. We'd like to expand our offerings in 2006. And, since we know firsthand how hard it is to get books and art out to a larger audience without a big distributor on your side, we make a point of paying up front for everything we sell here. So you can earn a little cash right away if we think your work will sell.

Chin Music Press turned three yesterday (after the annual cake, champagne and Cohiba breakfast, we weren't in shape to post). It dawned on me that the four principals — David, Craig, me and Yuko — have never been in the same room at the same time. We made Kuhaku, buzztracker and cannedcoffee.com without ever sitting down together for a four-person chat. Three of us have been together plenty of times, but never all four. Can any company beat that?

Our second book will come out in time for Mardi Gras.

Two days after Katrina hit New Orleans, I picked up my brother, a resident of the French Quarter, at Seatac Airport. He was carrying a bag of clothes, as if he had packed for a long weekend ("My only belongings," he said). The next night, over a couple of beers, I proposed a project to him: A book that would capture the spirit of New Orleans before the incompetents in D.C. bulldozed it. Remember, this was three days after Katrina, and bulldozing the city was very much on everyone's minds (Denis Hastert, anyone?)

Needless to say, he was shell-shocked, watching his home city turn into a hellhole on national TV and worrying about the fate of his friends. But he liked the idea. So did Craig. And Yuko. And David. Suddenly, the creative fires were stoked and Chin Music Press was on a mission again.

Over the next three weeks, we've been impressed and humbled as people from all over the country contacted us with offers to help. Poets living in tents, writers taking refuge with friends in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Houston, people who love the city from afar and even one dedicated CMP backer who is mulling offering us a low-interest loan to help cover writer fees and printing costs. People are passionate about this city, and we realized soon that this was becoming an important project.

As New Orleans is rebuilt, who will stand up for its quirks and eccentricities? Will public music in the square be seen as a public nuisance? Will the winos be tolerated? The spontaneous dancing and drinking? We've seen in recent years what happens when privileged country-club types are not kept in check. If they are left to rebuild New Orleans, we'll be left with this.

So, our book, title pending, is in the works. If anyone out there would like to contribute (stories or dollars), there's still time. And when the book goes on sale, check back with us, because we'll be raising money for certain Katrina-related charities over our site.

Another Monday, another distinct lack of caffeine-focused prose.

Fear not. because we are actually doing something with the whole coffee thing. It's just we've had a lot of other things pop up in the meantime. Things like putting together a book on New Orleans in an insanely tight time-frame. But I'll let Bruce talk about that in another post.

Back to the coffee -- part of the "thing" we're working on is an eBook, which is going to be an experiment on a number of levels. It's an experiment in shoving physical media into awkward digital spaces -- especially physical media that's quite strange, image driven and awkwardly shaped. It's also an experiment in seeing if people actually care about electronic books and if they're willing to pay a rather small sum to obtain them.

Seth Godin, some sort of clean-shaven mad marketing genius, recently put out his own eBook and wrote a piece about the experience on his blog:

I'm really pleased at the great reception KnockKnock received. The first lesson is that free ebooks spread FORTY times faster than ebooks that cost money.

Of course, Seth is a bonafide Net celebrity of sorts so his give-away is certainly held to different criterion than say a small company run by a bunch of guys, sitting alone, in rooms, all across the globe, crying themselves to sleep. Regardless, it's interesting to see if the "Television Model" of publishing is enough to sustain a company giving away their goods for free. (Acland Brierty begs to differ.)

We're working on a top-secret sushi project here at Chin Music Press. If I say any more, my tongue will be cut out of my mouth, renamed Joe Tan and sold to a yakiniku restaurant, so you'll just have to take my word for it when I say this is a very important project that will redefine the sushi experience. We're looking for sushi-related tales of any sort, but we're especially looking for stories from people who are regulars at a certain sushi bar or who work in the industry. And that goes for sushi bars anywhere in the world.

I know that's vague, but let's just say our silent partner in this project wields a very sharp knife and I must choose my words wisely. He has nicknamed my belly toro-chan and tends to drool in my presence. So please, help me by offering your sushi stories below or by contacting us directly for a more discreet conversation.

One of the Design Museum of London's shortlisted designers of the year is Penguin books. I have to say their new paperback reissues of the classics have caught my eye several times over the past year. Beautifully stark and simple with an elegant use of color and creative embossing, these are inexpensive paperbacks you can get your design kicks off on.

They sell for just BP3.99, which goes to show you how great design can come at a reasonable price.

Greetings. I am Cletus. Please check out our redesigned and updated Chin Music Studio section. It's what keeps food on the table, master Rutledge says. But to be more precise, it kept 93.47131% of the food on our table during the first quarter of 2005. The other 6.52869% was brought in by book sales, in case you want to know these things.

Also, one final message from Cletus: Happy birthday Kimi!

Thank you for your time.

(Note to self: when writing a blog entry exhausted after almost 2 days of wakefulness, stay away from dreams! (click below the fold to read the original dream post.))

She whispers something to me but I can't quite make it out. What? Tissues? Yes, I have some tissues. No, she mouths, earthquake. Tissue. Jishin. Tissue. Jishin. I juggle the Japanese back and forth. Then, despite being far above the neon the air begins to tremble and my eyes bolt open.

"Jishin. Jishinn," she says, her eyes too are wide open, but not yet awake. They're somewhere else, desperately trying to get here. I brace myself in my bed. The shaking lasts only a few seconds. Maybe longer but still, it feels like only a moment. Disappointed, as I always feel after such a small tremor, I drift back asleep.

---

A few hours later I wake up and roll over to my computer. A page only a handful of people know about comes up with a big red dot over Tokyo. An earthquake hit at 7:22 AM. For a moment I'm filled with the feeling you get when things mesh together perfectly. And as soon as that moment fades I realize it's time to finally publicly release this thing (although, something tells me the tens of thousands of people viewing it over the last couple of days already makes it public).

So here, allow me to expel these old paranoia demons of creativity breathing down my neck. Something which would have been impossible without the help of Chin Music Press' (Brucer!) unwavering support. Chin Music Press' second project:

http://www.buzztracker.org

Pricing Kuhaku was one of the biggest challenges of this project, and some doubtless think we've set the bar too high at $28.50 in stores and $29.50 over our site (where the book is wrapped in rice paper and a hand-torn washi thank you note is included). Here are some anonymous comments from salespeople that our distributor passed along to us:

"I loved this book as a specimen even more than its content, carried it with me and talked it up. If it had been $18.50 rather than $28.50, I could have leveraged a few more. Alas. The difference between this book and one from McSweeney�s is that the McSweeney�s book is both well-made and reasonably priced."

"The book looks great, and showing it to people really helps. It seems it�s printed at the same place as McSweeney�s, and that helps, too. Simply as an object, it might be my favorite title (from the distributor) so far this season."

"Show and tell with the book generated what orders I got. The price discouraged most. That said, I like their ideals and the overall concept."

"I've had more interest than I'd imagined. If they could have kept it closer to $20 I could have gotten many more out there. It is pretty damn cool, but I don't know that I'd shell out $28.50 for it."

In late 2003 and early 2004, we labored over the translation of Takashi Iijima's Jintai no Shikumi, a guidebook for animators and digital artists who want to draw the human body accurately. We used a magnifying glass to pore over the kanji for temporalis, patella, epicondyle and other anatomical terms we had only passing familiarity with in our mother tongue. We studied like med students during the two and a half months we worked on the book. And now, finally, it's about to be released by HarperCollins.

Action Anatomy: For Gamers, Animators and Digital Artists (ISBN: 0-06-073681-X) will hit bookstores in late April. This book is partly responsible for helping us create Kuhaku (we desperately needed the money) and very responsible for forcing its publishing date back a few months. It's a great book for would-be animators, and � trust us � it's exhaustive. If you see it, turn to page 2 and find the tiny little credit, "English translation: Chin Music Press."

When I'm not working out of the garage-like confines of CMP headquarters, you can often find me at the Seattle Public Library. That's where I am at the moment, borrowing one of the 130 or so computer terminals lined up on the second floor. The library also offers wireless access and, in a move that is oh so Seattle, lets you bring your coffee in as long as it has a lid.

Ronald Reagan and others have spent the last 25 years pounding into our underused American heads the message that government spending equals waste or worse. Well, if you believe that, come here to this temple of books and educate yourself.

PBS's indulgent host Charlie Rose interviewed author and investor Jim Rogers recently about his latest book, Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest in the World's Best Market. The book, which attempts to demystify the little-known world of commodities, also serves as a guide on how to get started in commodities trading.

Yes, commodities, as in wheat, orange juice, cocoa, live cattle, crude oil, canola oil � just to name a few of life's essential raw materials.

Rogers strongly recommended investing in commodities now because they happen to be going through a cyclical bull run that should last up to twenty years. "Don't invest in stocks and bonds," he said, dismissively. Go into commodities; they're even part of his savvy twenty-one-month-old daughter's portfolio, Rogers boasted.

The 62-year-old Rogers is probably best known as co-founder of Quantum Fund with George Soros in the late 1960s. A big fan of commodities, he is the creator of the Rogers International Commodity Index. He's also written Investment Biker: On the Road with Jim Rogers and Adventure Capitalist: Around the World with Jim Rogers.

When asked for a commodity pick, Rogers seemed to like coffee and sugar. Well, so do we out here in the Pacific Northwest. Never before have we consumed so much coffee and sugar; likewise energy, or steel or copper for that matter. It's easy to see his attraction to commodities. They are everywhere around us and their prices are basically driven by supply and demand, unlike stocks, whose underlying values are complicated by multiple factors like regulations, corporate management, legislation and so on.

But, like stocks, commodities are not risk-free. Short-term and even mid-term prices are subject to wild fluctuations that can wipe out jittery traders. Rogers' advice, which also applies to stocks: buy at the right time and be patient. Which is easier said than done for many of us.

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:

While Craig was polishing his Kuhaku pitch in bookstores across Tokyo, I was calling truckers, trying to figure out the best way to get 46 boxes of books to our distributor, Consortium. My first call to a local trucking company turned into a conversation with Bob about a Seinfeld episode where Kramer goes to a fantasy baseball camp and ends up pitching to Joe Pepitone. Here's some of the dialogue:

Kramer: Well, you know, we were playing a game and, you know, I was pitching, and I was really throwing some smoke. And Joe Pepitone, he was up, and man that guy, you know, he was crowding the plate.

Jerry: Wow! Joe Pepitone!

Kramer: Yeah, well, Joe Pepitone or not, I own the inside of that plate. So I throw one, you know, inside, you know, a little chin music, put him right on his pants. Cause I gotta intimidate when I'm on the mound. Well the next pitch, he's right back in the same place. So, I had to plunk him.

Kramer ends up punching Mickey Mantle in the mouth during a fantasy camp bench-clearing brawl. (A nice use of "chin music" here, and we can now add Michael Richards' mug to our pantheon of chin music users).

Back to trucking: Bob's company only hauls freight to Alaska and back, so he referred me to another local company, which quoted a price of $800. Frankly, that was way more than I wanted to pay, but I really had no idea how much this kind of thing costs. I called some more companies and realized I could get the freight to frosty St. Paul for less than $400. But which company to go with? None of the names meant anything to me. The national brands like UPS were all way too expensive. Finally, I came across Freight Quote, a company in Kansas that offers shippers instant online quotes from dozens of freight companies. I signed into their site, began looking around at different functions on the site, and ... the phone rings. It's Rob from Freight Quote ready to walk me through the site. There's something disconcerting about being jarred from your solitary online search by a phone call from the site you're searching, but all the same, Rob was very helpful in explaining shipping terms and helping me figure out the freight class, etc. It seems like a good operation, so, fledgling publishers, when you get to that very exciting state where you're asked to send 1,518 books out the door, I recommend going to Freight Quote first.

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.

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.

Never underestimate the amount of work that goes into post-publication marketing and product positioning, especially if you plan on being a hands-on kind of publisher. Even if you have a distributor lined up, as we do, you will still be working hard to promote your book and get the word out. That's why it's important that you leave enough time for other work -- you know, the kind that pays the bills.

It is not hard to get swept away by all the attention your newborn book will command, if you let yourself. And, if you need income to keep that publishing venture going, this is an even more crucial concern. You may have a bestseller on your hands, but unless your book is the long-awaited multimillion dollar sequel to your previous bestselling novel, you will not see any income from the book right away. So from here, you need to be able to answer the question: "What can I do in the meantime?"

Chin Music Press headquarters has once again succumbed to the Seattle rains. This is the third time the office has been flooded. It's not the worst, but it is infuriating all the same. We've tried sandbagging, diverting the downpipe, cutting holes in the wall to check the foundation ... and still the rain comes in.

Of course, our copies of Kuhaku are safely tucked away in a second-floor storage space. But the water leaves a smell of wet socks for weeks to come and sends us looking for refuge in cafes with wireless LANs while the floor dries.

I've cleaned up all I can for now. Time to go to the polls.

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!

There's quite an interesting interview/discussion with Kimiaki Ashino of the well-known bookstore cum artstore NADiff (Japanese only link). The article discusses the interesting and convoluted path Ashino followed before opening his bookshop. He has this to say on the function of the store:

For Art Vivant, Seibu had a "gratitude and service" kind of business creed, and since I thought that I'd better choose one too, I made "continuity, directionality and tension" the motto of NADiff. That hasn't changed to date.

Different from Art Vivant, which started as a museum shop, NADiff became "art shop NADiff." That was seven or eight years ago, when it seemed too difficult to survive with a bookshop, and since it had occurred to me that it was difficult to keep up with the movements of art only through publications, I went for the "art shop" format.

We've been trying to get Kuhaku into Nadiff for a while now. But despite a torrent of calls, we have not been able to connect with their book buyer. As soon as this is posted, I'm going to be on the phone once again, trying to set up an appointment to meet with the increasingly mysterious Nozaki-sama.

( Link snatched from the ever excellent Jean Snow. )

Update: The bookstore Gods must have heard my pleas: just set up a meeting with Mr. Nozaki at 3 pm today. Will report the outcome tonight!

Updates on the blog have been slow lately, but behind the scenes, things are very hectic. We're currently planning a couple of readings to happen sometime in the next month here in Tokyo. More info on that once the dates and venues get finalized (as well as some comments on what it takes to set up a reading).

Kuhaku has sold out at Tsutaya Roppongi Hills and Book 246 again, and we just shipped off a new batch this morning. It would be really nice to have an intern to help with all these chores -- someone who wouldn't mind cutting cover cloths, packaging books, printing invoices and getting stuff shipped out. To anyone who's thinking about getting into the publishing industry don't, I repeat, don't under-estimate the insane amount of time shipping and invoicing requires. Especially when you do something obsessive-compulsive like hand rip and stamp Japanese paper covers.

Updates on new bookstore connections, news about our supporters in online communities and more coming in the next couple of days.

The Nethercutt sign is gone. In fact, it was broken up and thrown in the trash by our neighbor, Ellen. And, FWIW Internet fans, our previous blog entry had absolutely nothing to do with it. Here's what happened:

Ellen and Harold are an elderly bipartisan couple. Ellen is the Democrat; she had a "No Iraq War" sign in her window in early 2003 and now has a small picture of John Kerry and John Edwards there. Her partner, Harold, is a Republican. He once ordered a gin & tonic at our daughters' lemonade stand and then gave me a lecture on tax-and-spend Democrats. (But he also tipped the girls heavily, I should add.) We mistakenly thought that Harold was the one who put the sign in the yard.

I didn't intend to get into politics on this blog, but we woke one recent morning to find a "Nethercutt for US Senate" sign pitched in the corner of the Chin Music Press garden, just to the neighbors' side of the property line. This is bad karma. If I don't speak out, I fear our next book will be something like "Ann Coulter Does Japan and Decides All Asians Do Look Alike."

George Nethercutt is a classic Republican scumbag. He has based his whole political career on assuming that the voters are uninformed, and he has won time and again. He plays to the lowest common denominator. This time, let's hope he goes down in flames.

Consortium Book Sales & Distribution has agreed to distribute Kuhaku and other Chin Music Press work to bookstores in North America. We sealed the deal last week when Craig and I flew into St. Paul, Minnesota, to meet the staff. (That's me on the left touring the Consortium warehouse.)

After a leisurely dinner with president Julie Schaper at the Cafe Bobino on Sunday night, we arrived Monday morning at Consortium headquarters ready to absorb as much as our tiny brains could hold. My first lesson: Lose the suit and tie.

Over the next seven hours, the Consortium crew imparted so much information about the publishing industry that my University of New Orleans baseball cap no longer fits my knowledge-filled melon.

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.

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 ...

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.

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