Brian Jaeger in Japan

I was searching for an article I'd written and ended up finding my Japanese Amazon page again. I remember setting it up so that I could sell books to another market. It was kind of fun to create the author page, since it was all in Japanese, and I had no idea what I was clicking on. Eventually, I got it to list the right books, but I'm not really sure if I have ever sold any books there. I know, I should pay more attention to analytics, but I seem to get $5 to $30 a month in Kindle sales, so I'm just not making a huge effort to make it big in other countries if I'm not selling big in America. The point is that it's all set up, just in case there's suddenly a Japanese market for American satire, short stories, screenplays, or even poetry. I added photos of me playing baseball, since that might help in Japan, as well as a photo of me wearing a sombrero, just in case that helps.

I remember being surprised by the number of Japanese tourists in Canada's Prince Edward Island, looking at all the LM Montgomery attractions. When we asked about it, we found out that Montgomery's books were wildly popular over there, even as they'd declined in popularity in the US and Canada. Maybe it's because someone finally got around to translating the books, or maybe they were considered good books to use in order to help teach young readers English. Since I'm not planning on translating my books, I figure the Japanese people might just want to read a contempory American author in English. Who knows!

When I look at the top grossing movies in Japan, I can see that the people might want to read my books. They liked Spirited Away, Titanic, Frozen, and Harry Potter. Other top grossing movies include Howl's Moving Castle and Bayside Shakedown II. Those sound like quality films. I can tell from the list that Japanese people enjoy American stories, so why not throw a few awesome American tales their way?

If you are a professor teaching English at a Japanese univeristy, go ahead and check out my books. You might find something that you can use in the classroom that will be a bit more fun than an old LM Montgomery book. If you are a student of American culture, there's no better way to learn than read American writing.