Update/Announcement

The year to come

Its been about two months since my last post, so I want to give an update on I've been doing and what's coming later in the year.

As you know, for the last while I've been posting translations of different projects, specifically Gilles by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle and more recently America Against America by Wang Huning. This has been fun, but it's also been limiting. The natural problem with this strategy is that the audience for Gilles is not necessarily the same audience that is interested in America Against America and vice versa. I would also like to start publishing more original pieces. A friend of mine suggested that it would be worthwhile to write about the publishing industry more broadly, and this idea has been fermenting in the back of my mind for last several months.

All of this has led me to think that it will be advantageous to split my substack into several different newsletters. I will continue to post regular updates on both Gilles and America Against America, but they will be under different subscription plans, allowing you to opt out of one or the other as you like depending on interests.

At the same time, my main substack is going to making pivot. Progressing into 2024 I will be putting out less translations, and more original content. Publishing is a large, multi-billion dollar industry with many layers and facets, but it is also a very small industry. Five major publishing companies control 80% of all the books which are published and discussed in every given year, and most reviews and journalism discussing the state of books is directly or indirectly funded through these same mega-corporations.

So from now on I will be publishing book reviews, pieces on different designers and imprints, recent and significant events in the industry, new developments, and behind-the-scenes features on the technology that makes it all work. This will be somewhat irregular, but I will aim to have a new article out every two weeks.

With that out of the way, I'd like to talk a bit about what I've been up to this last two months. Some personal issues have interrupted my regular writing schedule, which is why I have not been active, but there are some upcoming developments that I'm excited to share. During the holidays we reduced pricing on all the books our catalogue. Now over the next few months we will be re-releasing new editions of them. The first of these re-releases, Travels in Algeria by Alexis de Tocqueville is already out, and contains some minor aesthetic changes, a new section "Notes sur l'Islam" translated from Alexis de Tocqueville's personal writings, as well as an index and twenty illustrations taken from contemporaneous art pieces. Coming next is a new edition of Asian Odyssey, which will feature an index, new cover, and extensive biography of Dmitri Alioshin, who's enigmatic life has been shrouded in mystery.

There is also a new edition of Harukichi Shimoi's The Italian War coming out soon, which I am very excited about. The Italian War was my first attempt at translation, and despite being quite rough around the edges, remains the most popular book by far which we have published. The new edition will contain biographical information about Shimoi's life (which was a storied one, beyond being a soldier and a poet, he introduced Karate to Italy's elite Arditi shock troopers, worked as a spy for Gabrielle D'Annunzio, and had an important role in promoting the popular Calpis milk drink when it first came out), it will also contain a translation of Arturo Ferrin's Rome-Tokyo Flight, an exciting account of the first airplane voyage from Italy to Japan. Some of Shimoi's writings can be read here.

There is a lot more coming down the pipeline but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Suffice to say, this is just the start of a great new year with lots of projects in the works.