U2-A Diary

I did an email interview about U2 – A Diary with Terapija, a music wb site in Croatia. (Terapija is the Croatian word for “therapy.”) They’ve just posted it on their web site. If you’ve been reading the blog, you’ll have already heard some of the Q&A about the book, but they also asked some other questions like favorite U2 songs, favorite books/movies, and so forth.

I mentioned in the previous post that I sent a video to Croatia that was aired during the launch of their translation of U2 – A Diary. My original video ran about 11 minutes, but was edited down (thankfully) to five minutes for airing during the press event. My son, Sean, actually found the edited video on YouTube, and I figured I’d post it here for anyone interested in hearing what I said. (Remember, it’s edited, so some of the context of certain comments may be lost.)

How cool is this? The third translation of U2 – A Diary will be a Croatian version that’s due in stores on July 15 — just a few weeks before U2 brings the 360 World Tour to Zagreb in early August.

I’ll never get used to seeing my book in different languages.

The translation is being published by Menart, which I understand to be a music/record label that has just started translating and publishing books, too. And “U2 Dnevnik” is the first book they chose to translate! What’s really amazing to me is how incredibly enthusiastic Menart is about publishing and promoting this book. Get this:

• Just yesterday, they hosted a U2 Warm-up Party which included a DJ, a U2 tribute band, and “U2 Dnevnik” — all of this on an airplane, it seems! not an airplane, as Marin says in the comments below. Thx for clarifying that, Marin.
• On July 9, Menart is hosting a media event announcing the book. They invited me to attend, but it’s way too expensive to fly to Zagreb (about $3,000 USD) so they’ve asked me to send a 10-minute video answering some questions that the press might want answered. They say the video will air on Croatian TV (I’m not making that up) and during the press event.
• They’ve signed on Vecernji.hr as the media partner for the book launch, and they’re doing a contest where U2 fans will send in questions, they’ll pick the 10 best for me to answer, and when the answers are published, the winning fans get a copy of the book and a CD. (Presumably No Line….)

Is that amazing, or what? And to think that I couldn’t even convince my hometown newspaper to do a writeup on the book….