Remember that news i was eager to talk about a few months ago? Well, here it is: Kodansha, Japan's largest trade book, magazine and manga publisher will be publishing a Japanese language edition of Megatokyo Volume 1in the coming months, as well as an extensive preview in the next issue of FAUST magazine. Here's a link to the press release:

Kodansha to publish Megatokyo in Japan

You can also read the article at Publishers Weekly Comics Week that covers this news.

Obviously, i'm very excited about this opportunity to present my work to Japanese readers, and I am very curious to see what the reaction will be. I'd like to thank Kodansha and Ohta-san for their interest in Megatokyo, and Lance over at Dark Horse for helping make this come together.

I'll post more on this when i get a few moments to collect my thoughts. :)

Sarah and I have been working very hard over the past few weeks to sign and ship orders placed during our special promotion at the Megagear store. As i mentioned in my last rant, the number of orders far exceeded our expectations and we have been struggling to fill them since we got home. We have also had more than the usual problems getting merchandise from our suppliers (for example, our shipment of Megatokyo Volume 5 did not arrive until last week).

We apologize for the time it is taking to get these orders out and appreciate your patience. Also if you have not received a response to inquiries regarding your order, please know that we are doing the best we can to respond.

With over 2600 books and almost 2000 posters to sign (when you add the posters all together), i've been signing like mad. One thing i didn't think about when we did this promotion was that i would be spending so much time signing that Sarah would end up doing all of the packing and shipping by herself. Since many orders contain both a poster and a book, it takes twice as long to pack and ship because each order is essentially two shipments (package and a tube). Even the tubes, when dealing with this many, take time to assemble and load with posters. It all adds up to delays that we did not anticipate. Remember, there's just two of us, and given Sarah's condition we're doing the best we can.

Oh, and by condition i mean that Sarah and I are expecting our first child early this December. :) Or sooner. Or later.

Since we're going to Otakon next week we felt it was a good time to let everyone know before the rumors abound. ^_^ This is, of course, one of the few things for me that trumps the news announced above, and we've been keeping it to ourselves long enough.

As always, thank you for your support and understanding as Sarah and I wind our way through what is turning out to be a very interesting year.