Announcement: tenkara - the book

0:00Hey everyone, Daniel Tenkara USA here. I have an announcement to make. Today I put on, I went live with a Kickstarter campaign for my book, Tenkara the book I'm calling it right now. And this is something that has been a long time coming. Most of you already know a little bit of my history, but I started Tenkara USA in 2009. been going back to Japan, learning Tenkara directly from all the masters of Tenkara in Japan, if you will. And for the last seven and a half years, I have been introducing the method here, sharing the Tenkara story, teaching Tenkara to people all over the world. And in the meantime, I have been working on a book. Seven years in the making, in a way, but really about three and a half years that I have been working on it. and I've had a few false starts. This was actually the result of the third draft that I started from scratch. I have the manuscript all ready. We actually met with my designer, Jeremy Shellhorn.

1:08We even did a mock-up of the book. I'm a very visual person, and now I'm feeling like I have something that has come a long ways, and it's getting close to getting done, but I need your help so this announcement here is to announce that there's a kickstarter campaign going on just went live today uh to help fund the book and now you may ask why do you need funding for the book you know you guys are a company and that kind of thing it's like well there's a lot of reasons uh you know this is uh something that personally has been you know a huge project and it's not completed yet. There's about 5% of the book that has to be completed, and that's primarily videos, a few images that have to be taken, a couple of little pieces of writing that I still want to include. And there's two main reasons that I'm doing a Kickstarter campaign to release this book. One is because it takes a lot of money to publish something. We need to help offset some of the costs that are taken in producing the book, like actually printing hard copies of the book, as well as creating all the videos that I still need to create. I need help to get those done, and I do need to pay for help with that. So Kickstarter, in a way, it's of course a really good way to help fund the book. It's a little bit of a pre-sales tool. You can secure your copy of Tenkara the book. It should be coming out in January and you know that way I can get the book done to the best of our ability. You know we can do something really really cool by having the funds up front that we can fund all the cool stuff that I want to do with it. The second reason that I want to put this book on Kickstarter this time is really to give me a little bit of a kick in the butt and this is a little bit uh you know it's it's something it's being interesting because i i did this manuscript probably about a year ago i finished it and this last five percent of the book has been like hanging over my shoulders like a big monster and i'm constantly thinking about it constantly stressing over it and honestly there's not that much to get done i mean i know exactly all the pieces that have to be uh completed but i think i need a little bit of that motivator and that is going to come from you.

3:43I need a little bit of that kick in the butt to be like, hey, Daniel, a lot of people want to buy this book. Get it done, damn it. So Kickstarter, I'm using that as a motivational tool for myself to just get it done. There is no logical reason why it's not completed yet. So I know it's going to get done. I know it's going to get published in time. And I just need your help to get it done. both in terms of helping me get some motivation, some energy kind of coming from you, as well as, of course, the funding of the book. And lastly, of course, a third reason that I didn't think about until now, but it's something that I've thought about in the past, it is a really good way to get the message spread out and to get the story and the really cool project spread out to your friends. So Kickstarter has been a really cool way of generating buzz, and I thought I'll tap into it and see what happens.

4:46So I went live with the campaign about an hour ago, I think. It was about 5.30, went live, and I'm absolutely stoked to report that we are over 25% of the way funded already, which is awesome. So that motivator right there is amazing, you know, to know that there's so many people that want to be buying this book. So I really appreciate all of you who have already supported the Kickstarter campaign. It's been live for just about an hour, and we've already had so much support from you guys. All of you who have pitched in, bought a book or bought three books. Some of you bought signed copies of the book as well that I'm making available. Thank you so very much for all your support. Let me talk a little bit about the rewards that are available through this Kickstarter campaign right now. They're really cool, actually.

5:48So, of course, first and foremost, I'm making the copies of the book available for presale via Kickstarter. So if you pre-purchase it now, you're guaranteed to get one of the first copies of the book. So that's really cool. all by itself. There's also an option, I'm making just a few of them available that are signed books. You know, I don't have that much time to be signing every single book. I wish I did. But that's an option for the reward program. A couple of really cool rewards that we're doing is bundling our current products with a book as well. So if you have been looking at getting a tenkara rod or maybe getting a new tenkara rod for a friend of yours uh we're going to be also making available a complete set including the rod and you have two options you have the either the iwana or the sato as the rod options uh along with a book so that's really cool and that's going to be coming out pretty soon here uh you know with uh you know as a whole package and last but not least, I'm making a few exclusive rewards available, which give you an opportunity to fish with me. I'm not a fly fishing guide in a common sense of the word. I do teach a lot of people.

7:07You know, I do take friends when I get a chance. And if somebody, you know, is around and I'm available, I'll be taking people out. But that doesn't happen very often because I'm fishing for myself. I'm doing other stuff. Guiding is not necessarily something that I wanted to do on a full-time basis or anything but i have always been asked like very frequently to be a guide for people to take people out and teach them everything that i know about tenkara and through the kickstarter campaign making available the guiding days essentially where i can take you out fishing and there's going to be four people that can claim that reward of taking a day out with me and going fishing here in Colorado. So you just have to get yourself here if you don't live around here, but I'll take you pretty much anywhere within a couple hours of Boulder to take you fishing. And last but not least, a grand claim here, something that I've been wanting to do for some time, but I thought this would be the best way to do it, which I can take you to Japan to teach you Tenkara and to show you everything that I love about Japan for a whole week.

8:23So that's the grand reward that we're making available through the Kickstarter campaign. If you're interested in that, check out our Kickstarter campaign. You can find it through our homepage, and you can just go there, claim that, and I will take you fishing in Japan. You have to get yourself there, but I'll take you around for a whole week to my favorite spots in Japan. I'll show you my favorite foods, my favorite spots to fish, my favorite hot springs. Perhaps we might be able to get to fish with some of the Tenkara Masters as well. I haven't talked to them about that yet, but usually we do that. But regardless, we're going to fish some really cool places, and I'm really excited about that. Just a little update here. So it's nine minutes that I've been talking in this podcast. It's 6.40 Monday evening. The project has been live for, I lied, I said it was like an hour a little bit ago.

9:24It's almost two hours now, an hour and 40 minutes. The project has been live for an hour and 40 minutes, and we're just about to hit 50% of our funding goal. So it's absolutely amazing, guys. Thank you so very much for the support. All of you who are backing the project by pre-purchasing copies of the book and that kind of thing. We already have somebody taking me up on the opportunity to go fishing with me in Colorado. Nobody has taken me up on the opportunity to go fishing in Japan yet, but I suspect that's going to come soon because I've been requested that very often. So in any case, without too much more talking, I wanted to make this relatively short, just an announcement that our Kickstarter campaign for Tenkara the book is out. You can find that on our homepage, tenkarausa.com. If you scroll down a little bit, it's going to be a quarter of the way down. It's on our blog post as well.

10:24If you go to Kickstarter and you type tenkara-thebook, you'll find our project and you get an opportunity to find that. So thanks so much for listening. if you have noticed that I've been kind of quiet both on a podcast as well as on social media and that kind of thing this book is big part of the reason that why I've been kind of quiet I've been working on it just trying to get things done with it so thanks again for listening thank you so very much for the support of this really cool project it's gonna have I didn't even talk about the book that much actually, but I should talk a little bit about what the book is going to contain. I don't have a script here with me, so I tend to forget things that I intend to discuss. But a couple of really cool things about this book. For one, this is the first book, the only book on Tenkara that's written from somebody who's gone and learned from a variety of different masters in Japan, who has continually gone back over to learn the method.

11:29I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. I'm trying to get the essence of the method from all the different teachers that I've connected with over the years. And this is the first book that has that background, that's gonna have the perspective of tenkara anglers in Japan. So that's a really neat thing in itself. Another thing that I do in the book is throughout the book, I have short stories that illustrate how I learned different things about Tenkara. So I've been going to Japan for about eight years now, once a year at least. And there's a lot of stories. Like, you know, maybe one day I went fishing with Dr. Ishigaki and we saw a particular kind of pool, you know, like where the water is flowing really slowly. And I kind of learned a new technique that I invented myself, actually. Or there's another, you know, like story that I share where I asked Dr. Ishigaki, why did I miss so many strikes? You know, like, and he was fishing downstream from me. How come was I missing so many strikes that day?

12:30You know, I asked him over dinner after a day of fishing. And then he explained to me that he was observing it. And my flyer was kind of getting out of the feeding lane of the fish just as they were about to strike. So I kind of elaborate on that story a little bit of how I learned different insights. So around the book, we're going to start with a quick start to Tenkara. It's going to be a few pages with graphics that help any of you who are just starting with Tenkara get your bearings and get fishing. And then I'm going to talk a little bit about the history, both the history of Tenkara as well as my history with Tenkara. And then I talk a little bit about philosophies and that kind of thing. And then I go into the how-to part of the book. That's the meat of the book, which is going to be very instructional. And one really cool thing about that part, or two really cool things about that part. For one, I do a really good job at keeping the essence of simplicity. Instead of trying to teach you a bunch of different knots and talking about entomology and that kind of thing, I really come from a pure Tenkara perspective.

13:36And I talk about the things that really need to be discussed. And no more. I don't give you a bunch of Latin names and physics classes to learn how to cast and that kind of thing. But the other cool thing that I do in this book and why I need your help as well in this Kickstarter campaign is that throughout the book, especially in the how-to parts, there's going to be videos that are going to help enhance the book. So you're reading, let's say, about the part about casting. and you can read about it and you can see the really cool illustrations that jeremy shellhorn helped me design for the book but there's no substitute for a cool little video so what we're doing in this book throughout the book there's going to be what we call qr codes quick read codes i think they stand for and i give you instructions in the beginning of the book but we just recommend that you download an app on your phone for reading qr codes have your phone next to you as you're reading a book. And when you come across the QR codes, you quickly snap a little photo of the QR code. It takes you to the webpage that contains the video that shows you exactly what I'm talking about. So that's a really cool thing, trying to make the book interactive, multimedia, so you can learn everything you can learn about Tenkara. Now, I mentioned keeping things simple but I should mention as well that I do go in depth into the advanced kind of aspects of Tenkara. One of my favorite things about Tenkara is that it's incredibly simple to learn but what has kept me really engaged with the method over the last seven eight years is that there's a lot of stuff to learn. So I kind of go into all these advanced techniques all the things that you can look for when you're not worrying about gear but you're rather you know thinking about the fishing how do i improve my drift and that kind of thing so i talk about that how do i get better landing the fish you know and there's a few tips and tricks and secrets that i uh that i share in the pages of the book so a lot of really cool stuff there um i think this book this book brings together the eight years of learning tenkara that i've experienced along with all the cool content that I've created over the years, like multimedia content, and just puts it all in one really cool package. So that's enough. I think you can learn a little bit more by visiting the Kickstarter page. Look up Tenkara, the book. You can go to our Facebook page. I mean, I just put it out there so you'll be able to find it pretty easily, I think. And you can learn a little bit more about it. And of course, I cannot give you everything right now in this audio podcast. Most of it you're going to see when a book comes out. So thanks for your support.

16:21Thanks for making this book happen and I look forward to putting a copy in your hands pretty soon. Thanks guys.