Florence’s life spanned three continents and most of the twentieth century. She was born in 1916 in Tottori Prefecture. When she was six years old, her family moved to Canada, where she was educated until she returned to Japan to attend Tokyo Women’s Christian College in the 1930s. After graduation she rejoined her family in Hiroshima, where she studied the traditional arts, worked in a kindergarten, and became a licensed pharmacist. After an arranged marriage, she lived with her husband in Manchuria for a little less than three years. She was detained, together with her young daughter, in what is now North Korea upon trying to escape the turmoil of World War II. After the war, she returned to Hiroshima, where she began working on children’s books for a Hiroshima publisher. Traveling often to Tokyo (at that time an 18-hour train trip) to obtain materials from the Civil Information and Education section of GHQ, she met Charles Tuttle, and began working for him when he set up his publishing company in 1958.

Working with some of the other giants of English publishing in Tokyo like Meredith Weatherby, Ralph Friedrich, Nobuki Saburo, and Bruce Rogers, Florence began to design, edit, and produce books for young readers—many of which are still in print. Her first book was Japanese Children’s Favorite Stories; it was published in 1958 and remains in print today. Another early Sakade book was Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese, which she compiled from scratch and which has been used by generations of Japanese language students to study kanji. A number of the books she went on to produce on the arts of Japan have received design and editing awards; authors she worked with include Donald Richie, Don Draeger, Hugo Munsterberg, Raymond Bushell, William Malm, and Andrew Nelson (of Japanese-English Character Dictionary fame.)

To dozens of people who worked with Florence at Tuttle as editors, proofreaders, and designers, she was a patient teacher and model of good design principles and high editorial standards. “Florence was simultaneously kind and exacting, and the combination made her a wonderful teacher,” remembers one. Always modest and self-effacing, she downplayed her own talents, but she followed and taught the basics of good editing: less is more; don’t change the meaning; editors shouldn’t resort to rewriting; never sacrifice good style to grammatical correctness. Even in her seventies, she was always open to new ways of doing things: “When I have to stop learning, I may as well give up,” she told one colleague. She could always laugh at her own mistakes: a former staff editor remembers Florence patiently telling a new proofreader to be careful of missing glaring typographical errors in display type, and then laughingly discovering that she herself had missed a misspelling of “Tuttle” as “Turtle” on a title page proof!

As a young designer, Florence worked with Meredith Weatherby, one of the best; and editors who worked with her continue to use her books as examples of clean, elegant typography. Over the course of forty years at Tuttle, she was responsible for more than 400 books, on subjects ranging from martial arts to architecture and in formats ranging from slim volumes of poetry to complete dictionaries and manuals. She saw each new book as a challenge—one that she relished.

In spite of being subjected to the time-honored Japanese form of “rationalization” in the form of a dramatic cut in pay when she reached the age at which she might have retired, Florence continued to hold the Tuttle editorial department together into her eighties. Her advice to younger co-workers was always the same.  “You must love what you are doing. Otherwise your editing becomes sloppy and you won’t be able to produce good books.” Her work inspired and energized her, and she kept a regular schedule at the office until well into 1998, when she was hospitalized with cancer. Until a few weeks before her death, she continued to work on a reduced schedule at Tuttle’s relocated offices in Kawasaki.

Florence was a dignified, self-effacing, and private person, with a quiet sense of humor and a unique blend of sophistication and innocence. She kept up with friends and relatives in many parts of the world, enjoyed visiting bookstores and attending art exhibits in Tokyo, and loved gardens and walking. A member of SWET since its founding, she attended a number of its social and professional functions over the years. She was devoted to her family, who included a daughter and two grandchildren in Tokyo and a brother in Canada, and for many years she cared for her aging mother at home.

To those around her, her energy seemed boundless: for decades she regularly walked the several kilometers between the Tuttle office in Bunkyo-ku’s Omagari and her home near Yasukuni Shrine, leaving younger colleagues in the dust with her brisk pace. Those of us who were privileged to know her—and occasionally to take that walk with her—will miss her curiosity, her kindness, and her enjoyment of life. The books she so lovingly made will remain as an inspiration and as a tribute to her great contribution to our community of the English word in Japan.

Susie Schmidt wrote this article, with help and contributions from Florence’s friends and former colleagues Becky Davis, Anita Feldman, Peter Goodman, Amy Heinrich, Susan Oki Mollway, Susanne Kirk, Michael Brase, and Steve Comee. Much of the biographical information was taken from an interview with Florence by Steve Comee and Nina Raj that was published in the December 1997 SWET Newsletter (#78).

Originally published in the SWET Newsletter, No. 85 (May 1999), pp. 18–20

Please contact SWET for a map to the venue or for further information.

Published in A4 format from 1980 to 1998, and in a new A5 format since 1998, the SWET Newsletter has undergone various design and editorial changes in the course of its 30-year history and nearly 125 issues. Since No. 104, it has been more like a journal than a newsletter, with only a few articles, of substantial length, in each issue.

Now: how about something yet different again?

With the start of SWET’s fourth decade, the current editorial team calls on SWET members to help design and launch a new incarnation of the group¹s main publication. What should its purpose be? What format should it take? How will it gather content? What is the role and niche of such a publication? Who will produce it?

SWET members have always published a newsletter because they love the writing, editing, proofreading, compiling, designing, layout, and other tasks that go into producing a publication that suits SWET. It has been a way of accumulating information about our cross-professional endeavors and interests that stands the test of time. But what really suits SWET in 2010?

All interested SWET members are invited to get into the discussion and brainstorming as we work toward a transition later this year from the current publication. What should it look like? Sophisticated? Simple? Colorful? Monotone? SWET invites anyone who would like to shape the SWET NL, help make it happen, or just kibitz, to join in this gathering. Discussion will be led by members of the current Newsletter Editorial Team.

For more on Smashwords, please see the article on my blog–-it’s a very interesting approach to the whole ebook concept, including Kindle and B&N distribution. Kindle, iPhone, PDF, Sony, Palm, etc. formats all available, covering almost all the bases.
Please download the ebook and help Haiti.

Translating literature related to Japanese art presents unique challenges. Not only are there issues of origin, as in the case of Buddhist deities, for example, but the presentation of traditional Japanese art has been up to now targeted at a specific audience, namely one that is educated and Japanese. Since the language used to describe art, and at times the exhibition title itself, can be difficult to read, an English translation may be helpful not only to English readers but also to some native Japanese. Seen in this light, English translation in the art field can be invaluable tool to reach new audiences, both domestic and international. This presentation will focus on technical issues related to translation, as well as the wider social implications surrounding them.

Eric Luong is a full-time instructor at the Kyoto University of Art and Design, teaching English, art, and comparative culture. Originally from Toronto, Canada, he works as a translator for the Hosomi Museum in Kyoto, as well as as free-lance, specializing in Japanese art history.

The Subversive Copy Editor—what a great title! That alone was enough to make me pick up a copy right away. The author is an experienced editor from the University of Chicago Press—producer of the style bible followed by many publishers, the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS)—who among other things edits the monthly CMS online Q&A fielding questions from readers all over the world (including a professor translating CMS into Chinese—er, what?).

More pertinent, however, is the understated subtitle in parentheses, for this is not a book about style, but about the job itself and what it involves. In her introduction Saller suggests that we should “consider this a ‘relationship’ book,” that writers do not need to be considered natural adversaries (take note!), that we need to be flexible and not hidebound by rules (hooray!), and that “ultimately, I’m hopeful that a reexamination of your role as copy editor can benefit all parties while liberating you from the oppression of unhelpful habits and attitudes.”

In “Part One: Working with the Writer, for the Reader” she elaborates on what some of these unhelpful habits and attitudes are, and how to avoid them. While taking our intelligence and education for granted, she points out some of the pitfalls, such as, “One of the most counterproductive assumptions for young editors to make is that they are going to be working against the recalcitrance of writers who are ignorant of the rules.” She emphasizes that a copy editor’s job is to “listen for the writer’s voice” rather than impose their own style, warning that, “For every writer with a tin ear who is helped by a competent editor, there is surely an inexperienced editor who will take a fresh and well-voiced text and edit the life out of it.” And as for sticking dogmatically to points of style, she observes that, “There’s a difference between the considered breaking of a rule and a failure to observe it out of ignorance.” The hallmarks of an “enlightened editor” are, as she puts it, contained in the mantra “Carefulness, transparency, and flexibility” (and the book is full of these effective little three-point lists).

She acknowledges that some writers may be “nervous” about the editing process, for various reasons, and advises how to approach this kind of situation in order to bring about the best solution for the manuscript. She also points out that “writers aren’t the only ones with ego issues,” advising editors to examine our own motivations saying that “when you decide to argue a point, it should be on the merits of that point, not because you feel you have something to prove,” and that although the writer may be a jerk, “even jerks can be right sometimes.” She adds some helpful advice in the event that the writer is a bully, advising tact and flexibility at all times while not allowing yourself to be browbeaten into submission. She caps Part One with a chapter dedicated to writers, advising them on why the copyediting process is necessary and how they can best work with their editor—and what to do if they feel the editor has ruined their work. I would recommend that editors read this chapter too, as it naturally illuminates some of the reasons writers can be unhappy with editing decisions.

Part Two is dedicated to “Working with your colleagues and with yourself.” Here Saller goes into the nitty-gritty of the editor’s working life, and gives coping strategies for when the going gets tough, such as dealing with mindless tasks or complicated tasks—and what to do when you goof. A whole chapter is devoted to “Know Thy Word Processor” and how you can save time on all kinds of mundane tasks. Another focuses on “The Living Deadline”—why it is important to honor deadlines, and how to manage your time accordingly. And what to do when it becomes impossible to meet a deadline. Two chapters are dedicated to editors working in-house and freelance respectively, with eminently sensible comments on aspects from office politics and behavior, and how good etiquette and practice will ultimately be to your benefit, to advice on how to charge for a project. Part Two ends with some apt advice on how much time and effort you should spend on a manuscript, given that “The manuscript does not have to be perfect, because perfect isn’t possible.” Finally, she rounds the book off with an appendix devoted to practical advice on how to get started in the editing world, entitled “You Still Want to Be a Copy Editor? Breaking In.”

All in all, there is nothing in this little book that sounds extraordinary, groundbreaking, or even particularly, um, well—subversive. However, the advice it contains is solid and pertinent, and I suspect it could be quite an eye-opener—possibly even life-changing—for some working editors. Saller’s humor is infectious, and helps her to make points effectively, so that even experienced editors happy with their working relationships will enjoy the read, as well as possibly picking up some useful suggestions and tips and gaining some beneficial insights. Numerous helpful links are provided, such as the free Microsoft Word resources provided on www.editorium.com, or the Editorial Freelancers Association’s guide to fees. Each chapter is prefaced with questions received at CMS online, to which Saller gives her rather caustic answers at the end of the chapter, by which time we’ve absorbed the lessons they contained and are able to laugh along smugly. It’s also a great little book to dip into: opening it up randomly at page 85, my eye fell on the line, “First, don’t make a habit of promising anything, especially to demanding personalities”; on page 93, “Play nicely.” And when all’s said and done, well, here I have to steal Saller’s last line: “‘Remember, it’s only a book.’ How deliciously subversive.”

(Originally published in the SWET Newsletter, No. 123, October 2009)

In this issue:

• Features
  • From Behind Cloistered Walls: A Tale of Two Translations · Lynne E. Riggs
  • Remembering Jiho Sargent: Technical Writer and Buddhist Priest · Naomi Otani
• SWET Events
  • A Poet's Prose: The Economy and Voice of Moving · Bonny Cassidy
  • SWET Open Forum 2009: Wordsmithing in Japan · Katherine Heins
• SWET Member News
  • Talking Poetry with Jane Joritz-Nakagawa · Leza Lowitz
• SWET Cyber Matters
  • Lacunae of English, Manners, and Elucidations · Torkil Christensen
• Book Review
  • Self-Help for Editors · Ginny Tapley Takemori

Features

From Behind Cloistered Walls: A Tale of Two Translations, by Lynne E. Riggs

In February, In Iris Fields: Remembrances and Poetry by Abbess Kasanoin Jikun, edited by Barbara Ruch and Katsura Michiyo, was published by Tankōsha (Kyoto). The book’s prose was translated by Beth Cary and its numerous poems by Janine Beichman. In early April, Amamonzeki—A Hidden Heritage: Treasures of the Japanese Imperial Convents, edited by Patricia Fister and Monica Bethe, was published as the catalog for an exhibit co-organized by the Medieval Japanese Studies Institute (Kyoto), the Tokyo University of the Arts, and Sankei Shimbun Sha, which was held April 14–June 14 at the Tokyo University of the Arts. Both books may be obtained at http://www.chusei-nihon.net/index.htm. On May 23, taking advantage of the presence in Tokyo of several of the principal people involved in both projects, SWET held a special tour of the exhibit followed by a talk featuring Cary and Beichman and dinner at a restaurant in Ueno Park.

Remembering Jiho Sargent: Technical Writer and Buddhist Priest, by Naomi Otani

Jiho Sargent, long-time member of SWET and friend, advisor, and teacher to many SWET members, passed away in Oregon in June 2009 at the age of 77. On August 23, friends and SWET members gathered at Taisōji, the temple where Jiho had served as assistant priest, for a brief service and gathering to share the ways they remembered her. Jiho tells part of her own story in “Swimming with the Flow,” an article published in SWET Newsletter No. 90. Sargent’s Asking About Zen: 108 Answers (Weatherhill, 2001) is out of print.

SWET Events

A Poet’s Prose: The Economy and Voice of Moving, by Bonny Cassidy

Bonny Cassidy is an Australian poet and the president of Sydney PEN. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Sydney, and her first two collections of poems will be released through Puncher & Wattmann and Vagabond in 2010. In 2008, she received an Asialink fellowship to write a series of narrative essays on travel, art, and literature in Japan. In Kyoto on November 16, 2008, she spoke to Kansai SWET members about the process of departing from poetry to compose the collection of essays titled “Fields.”

SWET Open Forum 2009: Wordsmithing in Japan, by Katherine Heins

Where to go for translators’ resources, how to control your computer’s Japanese inputting settings, what an editor needs to know about word processing and other software, how to market your professional skills and carve your niche, how to get your work published, what to tell a Japanese author who wants his/her work published—these were some of the questions that were asked and answered on April 21, 2009, at the SWET Open Forum on wordsmithing in Japan.

SWET Member News

Talking Poetry with Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, by Leza Lowitz

SWET member Jane Joritz-Nakagawa recently completed her fourth book of poems, The Meditations, published by Otoliths. Her previous collections are Skin Museum (Avant Books, 2006), Aquiline (Printed Matter, 2007), and Exhibit C (Ahadada, 2008); the latter two are currently available at through both Small Press Distribution (http://www.spdbooks.org) and Amazon. She is an associate professor at Aichi University of Education in the city of Kariya, and founder of the annual Japan Writers Conference (http://japanwritersconference.org/) and the Peace as a Global Language Conference (http://www.pglijapan.org). SWET member Leza Lowitz, a writer, translator, and yoga teacher, interviewed Joritz-Nakagawa by email for this article.

SWET Cyber Matters

Lacunae of English, Manners, and Elucidations, by Torkil Christensen

Wherein the urbane denizens of SWET-L and the SWET Weblog solve wordsmith conundrums, proffer personal experience for the benefit of all, and fill in fine points of manners, grammar, and usage for questing SWETers. The Newsletter prints the high points of this rarefied and wittily provided expertise for your slow-time reflection.

Book Review

Self-Help for Editors, by Ginny Tapley Takemori

The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself). By Carol Fisher Saller. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. ISBN-13:978-0-226-73425-5, ISBN-10:226-73425-0, $13.00.

According to conventional wisdom, anthologies are a hard sell. Readers supposedly don’t buy them; reviewers are generally loath to review them; therefore, publishers tend to shy away from bringing them into print. Nevertheless, pick up any writing magazine and you’ll probably find a call for submissions to a forthcoming anthology. For example, in the January/February 2009 issue of the American magazine Poets & Writers, anthologists seek poems about bridges in New York City, poems about human rights violations, creative nonfiction about crepes, and poems set in San Francisco. Some of these editors have a book contract in hand, but others are putting together manuscripts with hopes of finding a publisher later—a process that can take years.

Although I am aware of the relative unpopularity of anthologies, I personally enjoy reading them, have written reviews of several, and have contributed to others. I’ve also conceived of, edited, and published three anthologies of my own. None of these books has made me wealthy, but they have been reviewed and have sold modestly well. Would-be anthologists sometimes ask me for advice on how to put together and publish collections of their own. Here it is.

Conception

First, you need an idea—one that is original, but also somewhat obvious. My first anthology, The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan, began with a one-page query to Stone Bridge Press, which specializes in books about Japan. Although I had no reputation to speak of, having only published a few stories in obscure literary journals, editor/publisher Peter Goodman liked my idea and had, in fact, been wanting to publish such a book. The concept was not particularly original. I discovered later that at least four other expatriate writers had had the same idea, and three of them contacted Peter after I did. I actually wound up working closely with two—Donald Richie and Leza Lowitz—who recommended and provided contact information for several writers who later contributed stories.

The idea for my second anthology—literature on raising a child with special needs—seems fairly obvious as well. In fact, in the year before Love You to Pieces: Creative Writing on Raising a Child with Special Needs was published, at least four similarly themed collections of essays were published. Mine, however, is the only anthology that includes poetry and fiction on the topic. Quite a bit of time—four years—elapsed between my conception of the anthology and its publication. If I had managed to get my book into print a bit earlier, I might have had a jump on the competition. However, in spite of some similarities to those other four books, Love You to Pieces fills an important niche. It is the first collection of serious literature—writing with an attention to craft—on parenting children with special needs.

My third anthology is based on another very timely concept—mothering across cultures. As the United States has just elected its first multicultural president, I sense that more attention will be given to multiracial and multicultural families. I’m sure that if I had not compiled such a collection first, someone else would have beaten me to it. Therefore, although I had been planning to devote my energy to finishing up my second novel, I sent a pitch for Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering to Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, an independent American publisher in the Pacific Northwest specializing in nonfiction on motherhood. Because I’d proven myself as an anthologist already, and because I’d racked up quite a few related publications, thus establishing a platform, I didn’t have to produce a manuscript up front. The publisher loved the idea and had faith in my ability to execute it. Within a week, I had a book contract.

Contributions

Once you have an idea, you need contributions. At the first annual Japan Writers Conference held at Ochanomizu University in 2007, Japan-based writer and anthologist Hillel Wright reported that he sometimes solicited work from writers and poets he’d discovered at open mike events and other readings around Tokyo. If, like me, you live in a remote part of Japan where there are few literary events, this is not a viable option. Many would-be anthologists post or publish calls for manuscripts in publications such as Poets & Writers, or on websites such as Newpages.com. In seeking submissions for my first anthology, The Broken Bridge, I began by writing letters to Japan-based writers of fiction. (This was the pre-Internet age.) I also put out a call for manuscripts in various Japan-based literary journals. Although I expected an avalanche of submissions, my advertisements did not generate enough quality work for a book. Most of the stories included came about from direct solicitations to writers I’d discovered in literary journals, at writers conferences abroad, in publishers’ catalogs, and in libraries. I also made a point of asking contributors for suggestions of other writers whose work might be appropriate. I tracked down one writer—Meira Chand—by posting an announcement in a newspaper.

I’ve found that most writers, even well-established ones at the height of their careers, are generous and cooperative. Edward Seidensticker, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Bret Lott, for example, were all quick to grant permission for me to reprint their works in my anthologies even before I had publishing contracts for the books in question. Some writers (or, more likely, their agents) will inevitably ask about the publisher, the print run, and about who else is included. Others will ask about money. I find this understandable, and I believe that writers should be paid, whenever possible, for their work. Many established writers have neither the time nor inclination to produce original work for free. However, some would be happy to lend an anthologist a piece of writing that has been published elsewhere, and for which they have already been compensated, if the project is of interest.

In my opinion, a good anthology is focused, and yet covers a wide range of viewpoints and topics within that focus. In The Broken Bridge, I aspired to have fiction ranging more or less evenly over the years from post-World War II to the 1990s, written by both men and women, minorities, and several different nationalities. For my second anthology, Love You to Pieces, I sought poetry, fiction, and essays on a range of disabilities, and on children from birth to adulthood, by both mothers and fathers. Since mothers typically take on most of the childrearing duties, it didn’t seem necessary to have an equal representation of mothers and fathers. Because the book was aimed at a multicultural American audience, it was important to include minority writers. Thus, in some cases I favored work by minority or male writers over equally excellent pieces by white women. Since my publisher’s catalog reflects a respect for diversity, my editor agreed with my choices. My third anthology, Call Me Okaasan, includes a more or less equal number of essays by expatriates, adoptive mothers, and women married to men of a different culture. The contributors are mothers of different religions, ethnicities, and nationalities.

Compensation

An anthology is usually a labor of love. Most publishers will not offer to pay contributors or even finance permissions fees for previously published work. In order to pay writers, anthologists generally have to reach into their own pockets. In putting together The Broken Bridge, I was able to avoid hefty fees because most of my selections were from out-of-print books, and the copyrights had already reverted to the authors. This was the case with Edward Seidensticker’s story. Other pieces came from small presses, which tend to request only modest fees. I wound up paying only a few hundred dollars.

In the case of Love You to Pieces, however, I’d started out planning to include an excerpt of Jewel, a best-selling, Oprah-approved novel by Bret Lott. Because the domestic and foreign rights had been divvied up and the novel had been published in several countries, I had to get permission from the book’s British publisher as well as the American publisher. I paid over a thousand U.S. dollars for reprint rights for Lott’s work and for other essays and stories excerpted from books. Keep in mind that writers—and anthologists—must get written permission (which often costs money) for snippets of song lyrics and poetry, also. Fortunately, my publisher paid me a modest advance out of which I was able to cover permissions fees and pay contributors, with a little left over to finance a trip back to the States to promote the anthology in bookstores.

In many cases, however, editors are unable to offer monetary compensation for contributions. As a contributor to several anthologies for which I was paid in copies, I appreciate the intangible benefits of having my work appear in a book. Anthologies are reviewed more often in literary journals or magazines, are sold at both brick-and-mortar and online bookstores, and are bought by libraries. I have heard from more readers who have come across my work via anthologies than from those who stumbled across a story in one of the hundred or so magazines or literary journals where my writing has appeared. Also, I’ve been given at least one well-paying writing assignment based on a contribution to an anthology. As a reader, if I enjoy an essay or story or poem, I often flip back to the contributors’ notes to see what else the writer has published. If that writer has a book in print, I am inclined to seek it out. Therefore, while a famous author’s contribution might bring readers to a book, an emerging writer might attract more readers to his or her work through contributing to an anthology, whether or not there is cash involved.

I received no advance for my anthology Call Me Okaasan, so I was unable to pay contributors for their original essays. However, I allowed the writers to retain rights to their work, which means that they can sell their essays to paying publications. I am also marketing first serial rights (rights offered to newspapers or magazines to publish a manuscript for the first time) to individual contributions, which could potentially generate income for the authors. The writers are also entitled to buy copies at a discount to sell for profit.

Marketing

Now, more than ever, book authors are expected to take an active role in marketing their books. The same is true for anthologists. These days a standard book proposal includes a marketing plan. When my most recent anthology, Love You to Pieces, was under consideration at Beacon Press, I was asked to supply information on how the book could be marketed. I made a list of potential reviewers and probable markets. I also solicited comments via my blog to show that there was an eager readership awaiting the publication of my book when the publisher wondered if anyone would actually want to read it. Presumably Beacon Press, a mid-size independent publisher with a long history, has a reasonable amount of expertise and experience in selling books. Even so, I found that most of the ideas in my report were implemented.

The Seattle-based feminist publisher Seal Press has published a number of anthologies over the past few years. In their guidelines for submission, they suggest that proposals include three niche-marketing areas. I have found this to be useful. If an anthology is too general, it is apt to get lost in the shuffle. If a small, but specific market—or two, or three—exists, it is easier to attract attention. An anthology of poems about bears, for example, might be marketed to nature lovers via wildlife-related publications and national park gift shops; to professors and students of poetry; and to general-interest publications in areas where there are many bears (such as Hokkaido or Alaska). For my first anthology, The Broken Bridge, these niches were Japan, travel literature, and literary fiction. For Love You to Pieces, I targeted parenting publications, magazines and websites focused on disability issues, and universities with disability studies programs. My anthology, Call Me Okaasan, is intended to appeal to readers familiar with my previous books, essays, and stories, and is being marketed especially to mothers, expatriates, and adoptive parents.

Alternatives

All three of my anthologies are published by mid-size independent presses in the United States, and my advice is based on these experiences. Obviously, publishing practices vary by country. (British publishers, for example, don’t seem to be quite so expensive as American ones when it comes to granting reprint rights.)

Also, although I think that much of what I have outlined above can be applied universally, there are other options for getting a book into print. For example, the latest print-on-demand technologies allow editors to compile and publish anthologies with small print runs, little overhead, and little risk. By using the Internet, it is easy to find and market to niche audiences for the most obscure of topics. So while reports from commercial publishers may be bleak, if you have a great idea for an anthology, don’t let bad news stop you. Just don’t expect to get rich.

Originally published in the SWET Newsletter, No. 122 (May 2009), pp. 13–19.

The software to convert existing material to ebooks does not seem to work at all well. For example, although Adobe claims that InDesign CS4 produces ebooks, it doesn’t - these are simply strings of text, rather than organized and formatted books).

Though there is obviously some technological skill required to produce an ebook, many producers of ebooks will be the authors, with sub-optimal technical skills, and the situation, with its different standards (Kindle, Stanza, nook, PDF, etc. etc.) seems to be much worse than, say, the start of the Web, where we were all learning what these strange “tags” and weird angle brackets meant.

Although there is an easy-to-use conversion service provided by Feedbooks, it comes with a very large string attached - the demand that the material enter the public domain, which to me seems an unfair restriction to put on an author who has something original and worthwhile to say, and who has taken the time and trouble to say it.

So… Any ideas on how ebook publishing should proceed? I have a little more to say about this and ebooks at my own site.

Wetherall’s articles on a variety of subjects are posted on his websites at http://www.wetherall.org.

Intrigued by its title and byline, I recently bought a bilingual book with the mixed-language title Discover Japan: Moshimoshi, sumimasen, dōmo by Donald Keene, E. G. Seidensticker, et al. The “et al.” includes forty other writers, translators, and scholars, most now aging but still living in Japan. Published in 1983 by Kodansha International, the book features fifty-four short articles in English with Japanese versions translated by Matsumoto Michihiro, whose name is billed larger than those of the two featured authors.

The pieces were selected from the two hundred articles in Discover Japan: Words, Customs and Concepts—Kodansha’s re-issue of the volumes originally known as A Hundred Things Japanese and A Hundred More Things, published in the mid-1970s by the Japan Culture Institute, one of several organizations—like the International Society for Educational Information and Kodansha International—founded after World War II to improve Japan’s image to the world.

Only the bilingual edition had a byline. But why mention only Keene and Seidensticker—who had only one article each—when some among the “et al.” had as many as five? Seidensticker might say, with a shrug and a grin, “We were more famous than Richie or Riggs.” And the name order? With a sigh and a smile: “Well, K comes before S in both English and Japanese.” And if Reischauer had written something? He might grimace, laugh and say, “It would have been ‘Reischauer, et al.’”

The drama of how Donald Keene (b. 1922) and Edward G. Seidensticker (1921–2007) became rival commodities, especially in Japan, emerges from a reading of their several autobiographical works. As preeminent “buffers” in the postwar realm of Japanese literature with a penchant for column writing, the two men made a classic good-cop, bad-cop team in their journalistic interrogations of life in Japan. Over the decades, Keene’s feelings about being asked if he can really read Japanese have softened from annoyance to disappointment. Seidensticker’s reactions to being asked if he liked “Japanese sushi” mellowed from sarcastic mischief to mirthful cynicism. Keene, ever humble about his efforts, is a better cop than he thinks, and Seidensticker was never as bad as he tried to be.

Keene has been more insistent that Japan is his country as much, if not more, than the United States, and that Japanese is not a foreign language for him. Seidensticker loved Japan no less but found more to complain about in the human condition generally. He had fewer inhibitions about baring his neuroses and exhibiting his fetishes. Keene, more selective and sparing, in On Familiar Terms, declares simply, “I am not making a confession” (p. 283).

In a Hundred Years

Edward Seidensticker knew where he stood in the pecking order of aliens honored by Japan for their service as volunteer or conscript “shock absorbers” between Japan and the outside world—buffers or ambassadors of mutual understanding, promoters of international goodwill and friendship. In Tokyo Central, he puts it plainly:

In 1975 I received the Order of the Rising Sun. It was only a Third Class decoration. Donald Keene had received the same Third Class decoration some time earlier. His was later raised to Second Class. First Class is reserved for people like Reischauer. I have never been raised from Third Class. (pp. 228–229)

Seidensticker was dogged by Keene’s greater fame and popularity in Japan. He wrote Tokyo Central while consulting and citing Keene’s On Familiar Terms. But Keene appears not to have returned the favor in Chronicles of My Life (Columbia University Press, 2008).

The different sensitivities of the two translator-scholars are clear from their autobiographies. In On Familiar Terms Keene gives several pages to his friendship with Yoshida Ken’ichi (1912–1977), who is standing or sitting next to him in two photographs. In Tokyo Central, Seidensticker introduces Yoshida as the literary critic son of Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, then dismisses him as “a friend who turned out not to be” and explains why: “One evening, for no reason that I could detect, he said substantially this: ‘There is a kind of American who is the most urbane, witty, and generally charming person in the world; but you are not it’” (pp. 148–49). Anticipating Yoshida’s response, yet curious to see if he would get an “honest answer,” Seidensticker says he asked who the American might be, but all he got was a “tense, high-pitched laugh.”

Before his achievement of publishing the first complete English translation of The Tale of Genji, Seidensticker worried about both the extent and longevity of his fame.

A gentleman from the Liberal Democratic Party with whom I had a conversation in the Suehiro knew the names of certain of my colleagues, but did not recognize mine when I informed him of it. It is not fun to have what small store of note one has accumulated dissipate itself so quickly. But I suppose it is some comfort to think that in a hundred years most of us will be forgotten. “It is a terrible thing, to seek to be remembered a hundred years,” Mr. Kawabata once remarked. In a thousand years not a half dozen people now alive will be remembered. Assuming, of course that there is anyone to remember. Or is it a comfort? (Diary entry for Monday, 31 May 1971; Genji Days, Kodansha International, 1977, p. 59)

If Remembered At All

Like Keene and many others, Seidensticker had trained as a language officer in preparation for service in the Pacific during World War II. After the war, in 1947, he completed a master’s degree in politics at Columbia. After passing the Foreign Service exam, he spent some time at Yale and Harvard, grooming himself for a State Department assignment as a language officer in Tokyo, where he worked in the Economic Section of GHQ/SCAP and then in the consulate until 1950.

Seidensticker learned that Edwin O. Reischauer (1910–1990), who had been one of his professors, “had not given ‘the Department’ a glowing report on my year at Harvard” (Tokyo Central, p. 44). Decades later he observed of Reischauer: “I liked him, but was by no means sure that I liked his performance as ambassador . . . [and] could not honestly share his views about Japan” (p. 177). He remarks how Reischauer was “sanctified by the Japanese” and his house in Boston “turned into a shrine to which busloads of Japanese pilgrims are taken” (p. 177). A four-page critique of Reischauer’s ambassadorship (1961–1966) is interspersed with comments recorded in his diary entries at the time from friends at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo.

For his part, Keene first met Reischauer thinking he might not like him. But in On Familiar Terms he writes, “I could not have been more mistaken” (p. 92). When Reischauer died, Keene realized they had embraced similar ideals and that he had unwittingly imitated the late ambassador. In a collection of articles he wrote in Japanese, he called Reischauer his “ikikata no moderu” [model in life] (Nihongo no bi [The Beauty of the Japanese Language], Chūō Kōron Sha, 1993, p. 105). Keene’s praise of Reischauer extended to Reischauer’s self-appointed role as a bridge between the United States and Japan. “I gradually came to realize that there was something of the missionary in me too, and if my work is remembered at all it will probably be because of the books addressed to the general public, not my attempts at ‘pure’ scholarship (On Familiar Terms, p. 94).

In 1964 Keene embarked on the writing of a new history of Japanese literature, to update, augment, and correct a history by W. G. Aston (1841–1911), which he had used as a student “often with irritation because of its old-fashioned judgments.” In On Familiar Terms, commenting on the “lukewarm or worse” reception to the first volume, which appeared in 1976 under the title World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era (1600–1867), he confesses to having doubts about it, “and, indeed, all of my writings” (pp. 269–72).

By 1991 he had published the other volumes in the series, but in the meantime, a new generation of specialists in Japanese literature had emerged, subjecting his work to its own standards of literary criticism. Commenting on the newer approaches to literature studies, he says, “When I read contemporary criticism, much of it phrased in language that I do not understand, I fear that I may have fallen hopelessly behind the times” (On Familiar Terms, p. 272). This sentiment is shared by many of Keene’s generational peers who “appreciated” the literature that some of the “next generation” preferred to “deconstruct.” The battle between the philologists and the postmodernists is still raging.

Prolific in Two Languages

Scholars and writers are generally aware that the shelf lives of their books may be shorter than their own expiration dates. Neither Keene nor Seidensticker seems to have entertained delusions about leaving a definitive work. Yet both wrote reams of manuscript, as though to ensure that at least one publication would survive them.

In addition to their numerous translations, histories, biographies, and linguistic aids, they authored about three dozen books of more personal commentary—most published only in Japanese, three in five of them by Keene—compiled mainly from the hundreds of articles they cranked out for newspapers and magazines in Japan during their annual sojourns in Tokyo, where both owned homes. Most of their Japanese works are “translations” first published in Japan. Many of the English editions are afterthoughts for other markets.

Keene’s Chronicles of My Life appeared first in Japanese as Watakushi to nijū-seiki no kuronikuru [Chronicles of Me and the Twentieth Century] (Chūō Kōron Sha, 2007). Both books contain the same articles Keene wrote in English for translation and publication in the Saturday morning edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun from 14 January to 23 December 2006, and for simultaneous publication in the Daily Yomiuri. I list the Yomiuri Shimbun first because I get the impression the column was intended to entice the paper’s 10-million subscribers to also take the 40,000-circulation English edition, known for its bilingual features. The articles were translated by Kakuchi Yukio (b. 1948), Keene’s principal translator for the past two decades.

On Familiar Terms has not been translated into Japanese, as many of the articles on which it was based had already been collected in Japanese publications. The most similar book is Kono hitosuji tsunagarite [Bound to This One Course] (Asahi Shimbun Sha, 1993), the title of which is from a Bashō poem that also appears in On Familiar Terms (p. 79). The Japanese book is a collection of articles that had run in the Sunday edition of the Asahi Evening News from 7 January 1990 to 9 February 1992. They had been translated into Japanese by Kanaseki Hisao (1918–1996), a longtime friend and colleague who became one of Keene’s main translators.

In On Familiar Terms Keene says, regarding another newspaper series: “I was enormously helped by the translator, Kanaseki Hisao, whom I had known for thirty years and who had once taught my courses at Columbia while I was on sabbatical leave” (p. 276). In Chronicles of My Life he says only: “Although I wrote my manuscript in English, it was well translated by my friend Kanaseki Hisao” (p. 152). This simplification of style and loss of detail invites my characterization of Chronicles (196 pages) as a somewhat updated but very diluted version of Terms (292 pages)—the result, I suspect, of Keene having to squeeze more of his life into fewer words in a fixed number of write-to-space installments, while keeping in mind the Yomiuri’s bilingual reader market.

Seidensticker handed his draft of Tokyo Central to Tetsuo Anzai (1933-2008), his principal translator, in 2000. The Japanese edition, poetically titled Nagareyuku hibi: Saidensutekkaa jiden [Passing Days: Seidensticker Autobiography], was published four years later (Jiji Tsūshin Sha, 2004). Anzai, a Shakespeare specialist, writes in his postscript that the Japanese version was supposed to have come out first, but illness delayed his work (p. 417).

Disciples and friends of Keene and Seidensticker have also been treading their publishing mills. J. Thomas Rimer, who had studied under Keene, gathered an impressive variety of his mentor’s memorabilia in The Blue-Eyed Tarōkaja: A Donald Keene Anthology (Columbia University Press, 1996)—which borrowed its title from, but is otherwise unrelated to, Keene’s biographical Aoi me no Tarōkaja [Blue-eyed Tarōkaja] (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1957). A bilingual spin-off called Mō hitotsu no bokoku, Nihon e [To Japan, Another Motherland] in Japanese and Living in Two Countries in English (Kodansha International, 1999), recycles from the Rimer book the articles Keene had written in English for translation in the Japanese edition of Reader’s Digest in the mid-1980s.

Rimer calls Aoi me no Tarōkaja the first book Keene published in Japan (p. viii), apparently believing Keene (On Familiar Terms, p. 181). In fact, it was Keene’s second, following by several months the Japanese translation of the first edition of one of his finest books, The Japanese Discovery of Europe: Honda Toshiaki and Other Discoverers, 1720–1798 (U.K. edition 1952, U.S. edition 1954, Japanese edition 1957). If I had to throw away all but two books by Keene, I would keep Rimer’s and the revised and expanded edition of The Japanese Discovery of Europe, first published in Japan in a totally new Japanese translation by Chūō Kōron Sha in 1968—a year before Stanford University Press brought out the newer English edition.

The year after Seidensticker’s death in July 2007, the Yushima woodcut artist Yamaguchi Tetsumi, who called his friend and neighbor “Saiden-san,” published Yanaka, hana to bochi [Yanaka, flowers and graves] (Misuzu Shobō, 2008) under Seidensticker’s byline. In his postscript, Yamaguchi describes the book as a collection of articles Seidensticker had written, some in Japanese, for Ueno, a local magazine (p. 202). In his blog, Yamaguchi affectionately remarks that his friend “was quite a trouble maker since his youth” and often quarreled with publishers; Yamaguchi’s devotion to Seidensticker was clearly shown when he brought the writer’s ashes from Tokyo to Honolulu (Yamaguchi’s “tyama-117” blog, 2008-06-12).

“The Next Generation”

If Seidensticker cultivated the image of an outlaw, Keene went out of his way to appear to be a good guy. Still hearing, it seems, the accusing tones of an unidentified voice, he enters this plea (On Familiar Terms, pp. 283–84). “I do not think I have ever ‘sold out’ to the Japanese in hopes of a reward or even merely of being liked; if I have made mistakes they were what my temperament dictated, not what I thought would bring me advantage.”

Elsewhere he wears the hat of a fundraiser: “I hope that the Japanese government, recognizing that Japan has no better friends abroad than the Japanologists, will enable young people to create a fourth, a fifth, and many subsequent generations” (The Blue-Eyed Tarōkaja, p. 81).

The academic and publishing worlds in which Keene has pursued his “missionary” goals are very political, and no one survives without bartering interests. From the very start of his engagement with Japan, Keene—more like Reischauer than Seidensticker in getting along, being accepted, and cultivating followers—has clearly leveraged his fame and popularity to bring advantage to himself and his causes.

Thanks to Keene’s diplomatic skills, learned while growing up and polished during his earliest sojourns in Japan, Columbia University has become the largest hub for Japanese literature studies outside Japan. The Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture was established there in 1986. It is supported by endowments from several institutions with interests in promoting Japan—including Shinchosha Publishing, which provides fellowships and sponsors a professorship.

Judging from the Keene Center’s website, the center’s supporters are rather adept at scratching each other’s backs. Yet it is fitting that the Shincho Japanese literature chair created for Keene is now held by Haruo Shirane. Shortly after birth in Tokyo in 1950, Shirane accompanied his physicist father and pianist mother to the United States, where they eventually naturalized. Raised in English, he went to England to study English literature, but discovered Japanese literature in translation, and went on to get a doctorate at Columbia.

A protégé of both Seidensticker and Keene, Shirane is the chief editor of Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600 (University of Columbia Press, 2006) and Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900 (University of Columbia, 2002). These thick compendia have essentially replaced Keene’s epochal compilations, now half a century old—Anthology of Japanese Literature: from the Earliest Era to the Mid-nineteenth Century (Grove Press, 1955) and Modern Japanese Literature (Grove Press, 1956).

In the caption to a photograph in Tokyo Central, Seidensticker describes Shirane as “one of my most gifted students” (facing p. 59). Keene and Shirane were featured speakers at a February 2008 event held at Columbia University called “Edward Seidensticker (1918–2007): A Celebration of Lifetime Achievement in Japanese Literary Studies.”

Japanese Language School

Even before the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Japanese had become a strategic language for the United States. By the end of the nineteenth century, the U.S. had purchased Alaska, annexed the Hawaiian islands, and also nationalized the Philippine Islands. Shortly after Japan’s victory over Russia, the U.S. government set up a three-year language training program in Tokyo for foreign service officers and U.S. Navy personnel, out of which came the Hyojun Nihongo Tokuhon (The Standard Japanese Readers) by Naoe Naganuma, who had became the school’s chief instructor.

The school was pulled out of Tokyo in 1940 as diplomatic relations grew tense. After trial relocations at Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley became its new home. In June 1942, however, the school, called the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School (JLS), moved to the University of Colorado in Boulder, as most of its instructors had been declared “enemy aliens” and, had they stayed, would have been interned in relocation centers outside the West Coast military zone.

Keene gives six pages in On Familiar Terms to his experiences at JLS at Berkeley, where his class matriculated (pp. 14–19). He makes no mention of the fact that his class moved with the school to Boulder and graduated there. At the time of the move, Seidensticker was working at the library of the University of Colorado, his alma mater. He would never have studied Japanese had JLS not moved to Boulder. In Tokyo Central he expresses “astonishment” that Keene failed to mention “this event of such major importance to me [which] seems to have meant nothing at all to him”—and that “neither Boulder nor Colorado is in the index” (p. 19). Keene, as though he had never read Tokyo Central, retells in Chronicles of My Life essentially the same story he told in On Familiar Terms—again with nary a word about Boulder or Colorado (pp. 31–35).

Yet Keene could not have forgotten the move to Boulder. The Interpreter—the newsletter of The Japanese Language School Project at the Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries—carries a letter from “Donald Keene (JLS 1943)” that begins: “I am sending you some of my official papers as a naval officer. They are extremely boring, but perhaps they may be of use if anyone is interested in tracking where language officers went” (No. 68, 1 October 2003). An earlier issue reported that Seidensticker had begun depositing his papers in the library archives (No. 21, 1 March 2001).

Connecting the Dots

Truth is not something one expects of an autobiography. Honesty is enough. And both Keene and Seidensticker are scrupulously honest in their quests to make entertaining sense of their lives as they age, alone, in their different public and private worlds. Autobiographies open journals and scrapbooks, drop names of friends and foes and famous others, disarm critics, set records straight, wax nostalgic and ideological, crack some private doors, conceal others. All of Keene’s and Seidensticker’s more personal commentary do one, some, or all of the above. But plunging into their books about themselves and Japan is to enter a bilingual hall of mirrors, some warped or broken, others attached to windcocks. A few stories change from one book or edition to the next, and a version in one language may be rephrased or censored in the other. And neither writer is an exception to the rule that authors should not be taken at their word, especially when reflecting on their own lives.

Keene grinds fewer old axes and is less gossipy, but depends on a faulty memory unaided by a diary. Seidensticker, consulting his diaries, thrives on repeating what he recorded others had told him, and is more anxious to settle old accounts. Although both wrote compulsively, Seidensticker’s stories have more narrative bite than Keene’s, more vicarious thrills per pound of pulp through tabloidesque exposé of the “nastiness” (Tokyo Central, p. 185) he witnessed behind the polite facade of life and academia.

Someone who never met these remarkable men might want to read their personal commentary in order to understand the ordinary human flaws of two individuals who seem, by their many contributions to the postwar development of Japanese literature in English, to be superhuman. For the present generation, their autobiographies are a bridge to a period when there were no laptops or cell phones, no on-line linguistic and bibliographic aids, no half-day trans-Pacific flights, and no college courses on manga.

Anyone who has learned Japanese in a classroom, at least in North America, or has studied anything about Japan in English anywhere, stands on the shoulders of luminaries like Keene and Seidensticker—or others who graduated from JLS or other such schools, or who benefited from government-sponsored programs established in the name of national defense or international relations—or on the shoulders of their children or grandchildren. Missionary roots also tangle with the lines that connect the historical dots of conflict and commerce between nations. Those of lesser stature who have crossed fleeting paths with such giants live in the shadows of their reflected glory, and sneak bits of their own stories into the legends.

Originally published in the SWET Newsletter, No. 121 (November 2008), pp. 12–23.

My resistance was low. Possessed by some demon or other, I wrote:

“I believe that in fifty years breast feeding will be much more common than it is today due to two factors. The first is that advances in medical technology will make it possible for men to nurse as well as women. The double-breasted suit from C & R Clothiers will be a much different affair from today’s version. Power lunches will include a shot of brewer’s yeast and other substances believed to increase milk production.

“The other reason that breast feeding will be more important in the future is that this country will have had almost seventy-five years of uninterrupted Republican rule, a leadership which has nearly completed the elimination of the single-breadwinner family and the dismantling of what few family support services created since the New Deal still survive. This and the support of the monopolization of food production now in progress will mean that the American child will be breast fed until he or she is old enough and earning enough to be able to buy his or her own meals at the local MacDisneySears.” (11/13/90, revised slightly)

Midway down the page the instructor scrawled in the margin, “You’re serious?” There was a second question to the exam which I answered more sanely and she gave me an A.

But that’s not why I saved the thing. I save all sorts of writing. I came across it recently when going through papers from that time and laughed out loud when I read it. I saved it because I thought it was funny. And I still think it is funny. And despite my mis-prediction of presidential elections, I think it remains true in spirit.

With my writing I’ve had to be patient. I’m just now placing poems written ten and fifteen years ago. Some of them are real world travellers, having crossed the ocean dozens of times. I may no longer feel much emotion when I look at them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t exactly what some editor might need for a particular issue. Or that they won’t affect readers seeing them for the first time.

And even the goofy answer to a long-ago exam can find a path to a few more readers.

Of course, without a commercial publisher, all the marketing has to be done by the author - this is one of the drawbacks of independent publishing. But so many of the little tricks mentioned in the “get your book out there” advice on the Web are useless if you live outside your main target market. “Get on your local radio talk show”, for example. Useless here in Japan. Kathleen Morikawa’s book is excellent, but many of the promotional tips seem a little more directed to non-fiction than fiction.Yes, there are local English-language newspapers and periodicals - and I have yet to send review copies to them, since the price of buying copies and getting them shipped over has been prohibitive up to now, and it would hardly have been worth it, compared with the potential local sales (if the current figure is anything to go by!). However, Lulu has reviewed its shipping prices somewhat, and I can now actually get the US trade edition for significantly less than the Amazon Japan price, so I may well end up ordering a batch for review, etc. and even have a few left over for book events or whatever[1].
Many of the textbooks and gurus on Internet marketing talk about improving your Google rank. Now for non-fiction books, this makes perfect sense - after all, if you are looking at (say) repairing and customizing your 1972 Chevy and you need the book to help you, then you look for the relevant terms, and hopefully, Chester Bludgett’s Make that ‘72 Chevy really SHINE! pops out of the search engine. Even if it’s a self-improvement or health-related or inspirational (Linda Whelkclencher’s How the Spinach Diet and Meditation Cured My Agoraphobia) - and these are some of the most popular genres in self-publishing right now - a high Google ranking will be a great boost to awareness, and maybe even to sales.

But who goes window-shopping for fiction? Especially when it’s a slightly off-the-wall subject like mine (alternate history, a 1920s Confederacy, airships, Nazis, etc. etc.). Unless you knew such a book existed, how would you ever go about looking for it? Well, the answer seems to be linking, but getting your way onto other people’s sites seems to be tricky. I have a few mentions out there, and the site describing the book gets several hits from these each day, but if the links only live on other low-ranked fiction sites, this doesn’t help.

So you can take your book to special interest groups, like (in my case) alternate history groups, airship enthusiast sites and so on. But people don’t like comments on their sites that are too obviously there to sell a product or service. So it takes time to be tactful and ease your way into sites (SWET, for example, has pretty much zero tolerance for such comments, even when they’re on target).

Even when they get to your site, they have to be persuaded to buy your book. I could start selling from the site, I suppose - it’s not something I really intended doing when I started out, and it’s probably better for me to do what I have done - put up links to the book’s pages on the various international booksellers. Is there a better way?

I knew that marketing my book was going to be the hard part of self-publishing - and I knew it wasn’t going to be just a matter of building a pretty Web site and watching the orders flood in. But it does seem to me that fiction is somewhat of a rara avis when it comes to sales on the Internet - the books are just a little too expensive to be an impulse buy, you can’t kick the tires (i.e. read the product specs) and though you can provide excerpts, you can’t really provide a demo like the software makers do.

So - I am genuinely looking for ideas and support to get the book out there into people’s hands. I still have enough faith in the book and the writing to want it to go there (apparently, my 13-year-old nephew thinks it’s a great story, and it’s started him writing his own book!). Comments on how to market (including “you’re doing all this completely wrong”) are welcome.

[1] If you think you’d like to order a copy through me, I think I can deliver within Japan for ¥2000 - Amazon price is about ¥2600. I guess it will take 2-3 weeks to deliver. I can take payment by Paypal and you can contact me through the Web site. Hey, if you order this way, I might even sign the copies I sell to you!

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When we got home there was a little note from Marilyn Johnson. She is one of the editors of Pearl, a literary magazine published in Long Beach, California. They wanted to use one of the poems I had sent them a few months ago in an upcoming issue. She needed to know if it was still available or had it been accepted or published by someone else since I had sent it to them. I sent an email letting her know the poem was theirs and I was happy it had found a home. So I’ve got my first pending publication for 2010. A nice little welcome home gift.

But Pearl and I have history and I want to talk about that in a roundabout way. About twenty-five years ago, I began writing poems again after many years of writing almost nothing. Most of them were pretty terrible and I knew it, but once in a while, one would click. This was enough to keep me at it. But aside from entering a writing contest run by a local community college, I didn’t try to get anything published. Then, about twenty years ago, I moved to Long Beach to study music and Music Therapy at the Cal-State campus there. At the urging of a friend, I began attending a poetry-writing workshop led by Richard Garcia at the Long Beach Museum of Art.

This was a wonderful experience, although it didn’t always feel that way. The group met once a week, mostly on Saturday afternoons. Garcia, now in South Carolina, is a talented, widely published poet and a gifted, hard-working teacher. The group was a cantankerous mob of egomaniacs who squabbled and snarled and carried on, and occasionally produced some remarkably good work.

After I had been working with this group for awhile, writing and revising poems and taking them back to the group for further kicking-around, I began to think I should do something with the poems which seemed to be pretty good. They weren’t doing much sitting a folder at home. At about the same time I read somewhere that the mark of a professional writer was a hundred rejections. I loved the irony of the statement and it gave me a perversely achievable goal. I could do that, I thought to myself, I could be a professional writer. I could get a hundred rejections.

And so I started to send out poems. I set a goal of at least one submission a month. I sent them to the “big” little magazines like Prairie Schooner and The American Poetry Review. I also sent them out to the “little” little magazines and the “tiny” little magazines. Often these brave little efforts were (and are) no more than a few photocopied pages folded double and stapled. But they are where people can start publishing careers. I learned about the various magazines from publications like Poetry Flash, a San Francisco Bay area journal, and Poet’s Market, published by Writer’s Digest Books.

The “big” little magazines were unimpressed with my work and I began to rack up my rejections. (An aside: For the most part, they remain unimpressed.)  But to my surprise and excitement, some of the smaller venues began to accept and publish my poems. In a sense, these little successes were a setback—after all, my goal was a hundred rejections. But I could live with it. And I started to keep track of my acceptances and publications.

Some months into this project I had a problem. The end of the month was coming up and I still hadn’t sent anything out. And I didn’t know where to send. I had poems out to most the places I thought I had a chance. Or at least a chance of a fair read before the “Thank you for showing us this work. Unfortunately…” note went into the return envelope and mail.

For some reason, Pearl came to mind. I knew the magazine, had read it, and had an outsider’s surly attitude about it. It was the local version of The Establishment.

Pearl started in Long Beach in the 1970s, went dark, and was revived in 1987. It had become the local powerhouse, publishing Charles Bukowski, who also contributed drawings, Billy Collins, Dorianne Laux, Frank X. Gaspar, Denise Duhamel, Gerald Locklin (one of the funniest writers alive), and any number of “real” writers and poets. It was Big League. I wasn’t. And they seemed to publish a lot of their buddies. I wasn’t one of those, either. So it appeared that this was a perfect place to to go for my next rejection. But I didn’t want to. I was afraid.

Now, I hadn’t been afraid to be rejected by the majors far away. I mean, so what if they don’t like me in Philadelphia? I don’t know anybody in Philadelphia. But this was different. This was local. I probably wasn’t going to meet anyone from the Swanee Review in the supermarket. But I had a fear of being known as a loser in my own neighborhood. I didn’t want to put myself at risk.

But my twisted ambition, the desire for one hundred rejections, got the better of me. I made up a packet of poems. Knowing Pearl wasn’t going to like anything I sent, and since it was a free-verse magazine, I included a formal poem. I knew they wouldn’t like this quiet little love meditation since their content tended towards social commentary and they favored an in-your-face style. Rejection was guaranteed.

So I was stunned a few weeks later when I got a little note saying how much the editors liked “From A Doorway at Angel’s Gate,” my little formal love poem, and could they use it in an upcoming issue of Pearl, please? Recovering quickly, I wrote back, Yes they could and that I’d be very happy to see my poem in Pearl.

And I was. And I continue to be. Over the years they’ve published seven of my poems. I send them a packet of poems every two years or so and they usually accept one. Although I have since met the editors, I’m not one of their buddies or part of the “in-crowd.” I am simply someone who writes poems they tend to like.

One of the odd things about submitting, even to a magazine which has used my work before, is I never know what editors are going to like. I hate to admit this, but I’ve even been so presumptuous in cover letters to suggest which poems might be especially good in their magazine. Never has an editor agreed with me. I’ve grown up and quit doing this. These days I simply offer my goods. The editors choose or choose to pass. 

I reached my goal of a hundred rejections long ago. Now the goal is a hundred publications and I’m almost there. But Monday is the end of the month and I haven’t made a submission yet. It’s time to get busy and get a packet together.