The day before I left, Lew made up this tiny little book, about 1½” x 2″ and it’s been a huge (sic) hit with everyone I’ve shown it to. When I showed it to publisher/media guy Richard Nash a few hours ago, he was delighted and said, “Dude, that’s publishing!
We’re going to print up a passel of them when we publish the book.
Got in on Jet Blue red eye at sunrise. I never can sleep on planes, so got to my hotel at 35th and 6th Ave groggy and yes, a room was available at 7AM. Bliss! It’s the Hilton Garden Inn and I got a rate of $209 due to publishing friends’ corporate discount, it’s a place I would never have chosen, and it turns out to be perfect. Halfway between the Village and the park, nice room on 21st floor (window looks out at Empire State bldg.), cool staff (let me carry my own bags), Le Pain Quotidien for breakfast a few blocks away…
After showering and resting a bit yesterday, I headed uptown on 6th Ave. Got to Bryant Park, and the noise of birds in the trees was surprising. Hey, am I out in the woods or something? At the same time, cabs were hurtling down 6th, busses roaring.
San Francisco is my city and I love it for its beauty and variety and clear ocean air, but this here is the big daddy, the big sister, the Big Kahuna. Nothing like it. Something else fer shure. Each time I get here it grabs me.
I have with me in NYC, a K2 scooter, which I took out yesterday afternoon. (don’t understand why more people don’t get around this way.) I rode up to the park on 6th, then down to the Village on Broadway, using the green bike lanes in the street, or riding on the sidewalks. I can cover 2-3 times the ground I would walking, and it’s fun! Because of the handle, I’m a lot more secure than on a skateboard, plus it’s got a brake (press down on rear wheel fender). I fold it up to go into a store or restaurant.
Washington Square is really torn up right now; most of it is under construction and fenced off, but in a small section was an old guy on guitar, young harmonica player, sounding good. “Your mama can’t dance, and your daddy can’t rock and roll.” (Oh my!)
The city’s an energy infusion. Just walk out into the street, turn in any direction, and vwooom! The sights, sounds, smells, people, store fronts, the endless images — brain goes into overdrive. There’s a level of, what to call it? — maturity — here not found on west coast. Window displays, quality and variety of the shops, faces in the street, newspapers (Village Voice compared to SFWeekly), the CBS TV city newsroom anchors, the culture in general — it’s just the Big Time. There’s depth.
We were 2 days without electricity. At night we used this great candle holder (from Lehmans — I heartily recommend getting their Lehmans Non-Electric Catalog — especially if you are homesteading or gardening or pursuing the home arts).
Finally hooked up our Honda 3000 generator to get the office computers going. (This model is as silent as generators get, and has an “eco-mode” that conserves energy.) It’s kind of a shock to realize that our publishing business is pretty totally dependent upon electricity.
There’s something nice about candlelight and no TV, staring into the flames of the fireplace, the silence. One of my friends used to say, about being off the grid, “no 60 cycle hum.” But the reality is, our mail order book business and most of our publishing communication is electric, as well as electronic.
Also on Sunday, a tree fell on the only road into and out of town, so I couldn’t get up to Sebastapol Sunday for a screening of the 6-minute documentary on our homestead.
I do an irregular email newsletter called GIMME SHELTER and send it out to about 600 people in the publishing business, friends, acquaintances. Here’s the latest:
https://www.shelterpub.com/_gimme/_2011-01-12/gimme_shelter-2011-01-12.html
Also, our iPad Stretches has been nominated in the non-fiction category by Digital Book World Publishing Innovation Awards.
“The Publishing Innovation Awards will recognize the best ebooks and book apps based on their merits in the areas of origination, development, production, design, and marketing.”
It’s free and so far we have had over 19,000 downloads.
https://www.digitalbookworld.com/2011/2010-dbw-publishing-innovation-awards-longlist/
Of interest to marathoners (or those who want to run their first one): Shelter Mac wizard Rick Gordon has just finished preparing Jeff Galloway’s revolutionary marathon training book for both the iPad and the Kindle, and I kid you not, it really looks good. It makes the majority of iPad books look dowdy. The graphics, colors, and tables are elegant.
It also works on an iPhone: you can carry your training program in your pocket. Marathoners. click below for more info.
SHELTER from Jason Sussberg on Vimeo.
In April, Jason Sussberg, a documentary film graduate student at Stanford, along with friends, made a 6-minute film of us and our home. They shot the film in 16mm film — pretty unusual nowadays. I asked Jason why film, and he replied:
“It was shot on 16mm color celluloid and telecined (scanned/color-corrected digitally) and edited in a Final Cut Pro (a non-linear editing software). The 16mm color film fits the subject and architecture quite well– both filmmaking and DIY homebuilding are beautiful artisanal crafts that are fighting for survival in a changing world. Film just looks better– better colors, textures, motion interpolating and feeling!”
It has been shown at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Fest, San Francisco Documentary Festival, Big Sky Film Festival, Cinequest Film Festival and Nevada City Film Festival.
Professional book packagers would be aghast at the way I put together a book. Assemble material (photos and text) for over a year, store in file folders, then at certain point pull best material out and begin laying out a spread — 2 pp. at a time. Random, no order. No plan or outline, no idea how things will fit together; just here the requirement that shelters be under 500 sq. ft.
It’s a wild mix so far — about 40 pages roughed out — and the book has now got its first trace of a mojo workin.
Book starting to run through my mind all the time. I’ve read how novelists get into a thing where they (authors) are just transmitting what their characters are telling them. Or maybe it’s muses at work. It feels a bit like that now, a natural process, a seed growing. Exciting! This is the best part of my job, watching all this unfold.
I send out an e-mail newsletter called Gimme Shelter whenever I get time. The mailing list includes people in the publishing business and friends. It used to be about monthly, but since I’ve been blogging, it’s been less frequent. You can see the latest one at: https://www.shelterpub.com/_gimme/_2010-07-29/gimme_shelter-2010-07-29.html
The heart of my work will always be the physical book, but I’m loving the blogging (and tweeting) process. Starting with a high school journalism class, I’ve been trying to communicate what I see going on out in the world. I’m some kind of combination naif, Pollyanna, and communicator, and can’t wait to tell people what’s out there. I don’t need to tell you this is a golden age for communicators. As soon as I post this on my blog, it’s out worldwide — it’s staggering — especially for someone who started out in the world of hot lead type.
I’ve got revolutionary avenues and tools of communication available now: The WEB — hoo! And tools: big Mac Pro desktop honker in office, scanner, great Epson pro 4800 printer, plus Road Gear: MacBook Pro laptop, 3G iPad, iPhone, 4 different cameras, not to mention GPS in truck and satellite radio. An “…embarrassment of riches.” I better do something with all this!
For 4 decades it’s been nip and tuck. We sure ain’t in it for the money. In years past we had to borrow to pay printing bills. When Random House was our distributor, they handled reprints of our most popular books. They’d pay the printers and eventually deduct it from our quarterly check — 6 months after the bill was due. It was a great deal. When things got tight, they’d give us an advance on sales. When Random House got conglomerate-ized, we switched distribution to Publishers Group West, and it was a match made in heaven. As years went by, we got slightly ahead of printing bills. We even had a nest egg of about $130,000 3 years ago and bingo, bankruptcy by parent company Advanced Marketing Services wiped that out. Now we’re rolling with PGW again, but still tightrope walking. We need to sell enough books in the next 6 months to stay afloat, until we get the tiny houses book out there, which I suspect is going to be successful. Keeps us on our toes.
We’ve sold rights to the new edition of Stretching in Spain, Brazil, Korea, China (complex and simple Chinese), Viet Nam and have offers from Germany and interest from Japan. (Stretching is our flagship, the only reason we’re still afloat.; the new edition has sold 18,000 copies in the US and Canada in 5 months.)
The event got so big it couldn’t be accommodated in Hopland, so it’s moved to the Ukiah fairgrounds, September 25-26 this year. My favorite fair. We have a booth and always sell tons of books. Info: https://www.solarliving.org/display.asp?catid=62&pageid=217
I arrived a few hours early for my presentation at Gravel and Gold in San Francisco’s Mission District. I had a problem: my new MacBook Pro laptop wouldn’t accept the plug-in from my Epson projector. I’d been to the Apple store on the way over, and couldn’t find the right connector. The three owners of the store, Cassie, Lisa, and Nile weren’t dismayed. We tried all kinds of variations, but nothing seemed to be working. Lisa kept saying, “Don’t worry we’ll figure it out.” I wasn’t so sure. Finally she took off in her car and came back with a borrowed projector. We transferred the data to one of their laptops, then couldn’t get the projector going. We tried various combinations, with me having my doubts, but Lisa saying, “We’ll get it working.”
Finally one of their friends came in and knew just what to do, and 10 minutes before starting time we were in business. I started by talking a little bit about the first Whole Earth Catalog, and how it and the Dome Cookbook by Steve Baer were my inspiration for getting into the publishing business. Then I showed slides from the three main builders featured in Builders of the Pacific Coast. Finally I showed some slides of tiny houses, the subject of my next book. (Actually, in retrospect, these were photos I grabbed at the last minute and they weren’t really representative of the great material I have for this book.)
For me it was a pretty wonderful evening. The store is unique, with eclectic clothing, art, jewelry, crafts, and items you’d never think of until you see them there. Good vibes. The median age in the audience was, I’d say, 30. It’s great to be connecting with this generation. Someone asked what I thought of Dwell magazine. I said I couldn’t figure out who lives in those houses, but there seems to be no warmth or soul (or funk) evident in the Dwell style. Further, that people like us are interested in shelter that is full of life and warmth and the touch of the human hand.
Gravel and Gold has been mentioned in the New York Times and Vogue magazine and seems to be catching on. It’s at 3266 21st St., between Mission and Valencia in San Francisco. Website here. Blog here.
Photo by Evan Kahn
