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The Quake Book – Interview with Our Man in Abiko I read about the Quake book on a one of the countless website that’s publishing about the disaster. This one caught my eye since it’s not a long form story book, but one using social media as the content aggregator. It’s speed of being made – one week sounded astounding and as I researched further, past GR contributor, SF Bay area resident Dan Ryan is one of the volunteers for the project. He began his contribution as editor and PR person just by sending an offer to help. Now on the verge of being released, this publication is rich in stories of the quake and it’s aftermath. The short texts are touching and include words by GR friend William Gibson. This will probably be the first of numerous books related to the quake and it’s process of involving social media couldn’t be more apt. GR: You’ve sort of kept your identity mysterious, why? OMIA: Several reasons. The first, is that this is a collective effort for charity. It seems immoral to take credit for something that, yes, I started, but has directly involved more than 200 people around the globe in an effort to help people really suffering from the devastation caused by the earthquake, tsunami and radiation disasters. Everyone in the project has given their time for free. This is not my story, it’s Japan’s story. A secondary reason is I don’t want to subject my family to the glare of the media. To be clear, I’m not so much hiding my identity as choosing to adopt the pen name and persona of Our Man in Abiko, a redundant British agent who has found his voice in defence of Japan. It wouldn’t be hard to find my true identity, but I ask you not to. It’s more fun this way. GR: Publishing at this speed is amazing but it seems to be with some problems. Which were most frustrating? OMIA: The frustration comes from completing a draft book in one week, which is what I promised (and we delivered by Jove!) and then finding that it’s taken us over two weeks to get it published. The book world is not used to working at our pace, and it has struggled to keep up. But, it has been worth the wait because now, rather than just sell a few thousand copies from our own blog, we have the potential to sell hundreds of thousands from Amazon, who have promised to waive all fees, which is amazing and understandably took some maneuvering for their organization, which takes time. (this is just the bottom half of the book cover – the main image is the top) GR: I know one motivation is to help via book sales, but what do you think will happen when people sit and read the stories? OMIA: Of course we want the book to sell oodles and boodles (that’s a technical term) but that wasn’t...
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