A Year of Living Instantly

Image via Ruthi Auda; link appears below the text of this post.

INSTANT: THE STORY OF POLAROID was published a year ago this weekend. (I can’t put my finger on the exact date; it was either September 26, 27, or 28, pushed up at the last minute from October 2. I remember it as a Friday, which would be the 28th, but Amazon says the 26th, so heaven knows.) The day after publication, Princeton Architectural Press and I got a huge jump-start thanks to Scott Simon and Weekend Edition, and I realized that people might actually read  this thing.

So, once more, thank you to everyone who contributed to my strange and excellent experience this past year: interview subjects, supportive family and friends, people who wrote nice things about the book, everyone at P.A.P., and all of you Polaroidland visitors, who have helped this weird little volume get out into the world and into its third printing. It has sold very nicely, well enough that it should help the my next book proposal find a publisher. More about that soon.

Book news is scant these days, since things have slowed down lots, but here’s a little something: Translations for Taiwan, Japan, and Korea are in the works. I am tickled at the prospect of seeing myself write in Japanese, and about the new cover designs, and I’ll post about them as they appear. Interestingly, they happen entirely without me. My only involvement has been one e-mail exchange with the Taiwanese translator, who asked me to clarify one English phrase he didn’t understand.

(Photo, and nifty cork Polaroid camera, comes from Ruthi Auda.)