a few months ago, someone contacted matt sly and i about doing a radio documentary about people who wrote letters to their future selves, and futureme was featured throughout. it came out this week. if you have a spare 30min, it can be found here. being there when people opened letters from past selves to get reactions was a nice touch.

it’s definitely not as shiny as the american version, but it’ll do. the paper airplane to nowhere (the future?) is a nice touch.

from my publisher:
“Unfortunately the royalty statements reflect sell-in (which was great) rather than sell-thru (which has not been as great), so the next time you receive a statement, you may see a lower number, depending on returns.”

glossary:
sell-in — total number of books sent to bookstores
sell-thru — total number of books sold by bookstores to consumers

i figured something was amiss.

the thing about blogs is that it’s easier to post a correction than rewrite the original entry with slightly corrected information/a new punchline. also, i love being wrong and then correcting myself. not kidding. wait, let me amend that: i love being wrong. period. wrong = potential for a good story. right = boring.

i just got the sales report for dear future me (the book you’ve been meaning to purchase but haven’t gotten around to doing yet). matt and i guessed that we’d sold something like 200 books, including friends and family and people who actually have letters published.

turns out we guessed wrong, unless i’m misreading the sales report, which is completely within the realm of possibility. if i’m reading it right, we sold 4,200 books. i’m going to do some more investigating because it kind of sounds like a) bullshit and/or b) maybe i don’t understand how book sales work.

i meant taiwan. i didn’t look at the contract carefully. and while i’m pretty sure that china still has her eyes on taiwan, taiwan is still her own entity. so yeah, taiwanese publisher translating the future into chinese.

i got home from work today to find a really thick envelope waiting for me from my publisher. in it was a copy of the contract that they had signed with a chinese publisher to translate ‘dear future me’ into complex chinese. i always thought that chinese publishing employed liberal use of a xerox machine, since i’ve read that the copyright laws there aren’t always well-enforced. i guess i was uninformed. and i think they’re sending me a check in february, though the letter didn’t say for how much. thanks, china!

as of 5 nov 2007 at 10pm, our amazon ranking is ahead of jane austen’s letters in the books › literature & fiction › letters & correspondence category and behind letters to penthouse xv: outrageous, erotic, orgasmic!

i mean, looking at the numbers, it would seem that if jane austen’s letters was titled jane austen’s letters: outrageous, erotic, orgasmic!, it might be doing better. or even, jane austen’s letters: hopes, fears, secrets, resolutions. jane austen was always shit at snappy subtitles. i think that’s what always held her back.

foregoing the falsely modest preamble:
today amazon started shipping a book of letters that i co-compiled and co-edited, aptly titled and oddly subtitled ‘dear future me — hopes, fears, secrets, resolutions’. the content of which was taken from the public (but anonymous) emails written to a website that i co-own called futureme.org.

i wish that i could read this book for the first time so that i could get some sort of sense of whether it’s actually good or not, but i can’t because it still feels like i’m editing. this is completely terrifying, as i’m a reader and not a writer. however, instead of stressing about the first customer review that’s going to pop up on amazon, i’m focusing on the fact that the publisher did a really beautiful job on the cover/interior design. i mean, what else can you do?

the book:
http://amazon.com/futureme
(i get a short url because i work at amazon.)

current amazon.com sales rank: #46,064 in books. and rising!

when you haven’t posted in a while, there’s a lot of stuff built up and you don’t really know where to start so you feel like you have to wait for an event or something big so that the small things don’t feel bad that one small thing got chosen over another. small things understand their place next to big things. sometimes there are lots of big things that hit all at once like clash of the titans and you gotta just bullet-point ‘em.

big things, bullet-pointed:
- we have arrived in the new place, which is quiet. the quiet is scaring mia, poor little lamb.
- my brother and his wife arrived in time to help us move this past weekend.
- my first fifty-mile week in a while arrived two weeks ago and then we moved and i gave all the fitness back.
- the end of my 33rd year arrived; i have arrived at 33% done-with-living.
- the book arrived!

in case you’re wondering: yes! the cover is a shiny shiny silver-on-silver. you know, like the future. also, yes! it has metallic print on the inside, too. insanity.

these pictures make my thumb look fat and creepy, respectively.

and ready to hit the printer. here’s the introduction and stats stuff if you want to check it out. should i be doing this? not sure. but i feel like sharing, so i’m doing it. this is NOT final, but it’s close. i am assured that it’ll be much more handsome on your coffee table. the stats need work (they’re on it) and maybe something else? back cover? and it won’t be blurry. sorry, i’ve had to improvise because i don’t have photoshop on this new machine yet.