Article on Chubasco Publishing

Chris Ahrens lives in the kind of house any surfer would love. It's on the hill above Cardiff, with a view of one of the best reef breaks in San Diego County. Wetsuits are drying on the front deck, surfboards are leaning against the walls. The doors and windows have been thrown open as if the occupants would really rather live outside anyway. Yard chores like sweeping the walks have been put off until the south swell fades. Ahrens, a happy, compassionate soul of forty-seven, has long black hair and an irreverent sense of humor that he's quick to use on anything or anybody—but most of all himself. "I got into publishing much the same way I got into writing, thinking it would be a good scam that would allow me to keep surfing," he says, sitting down at the kitchen table he calls "the world corporate headquarters of Chubasco Publishing," a micro publisher with just two books. Chubasco is one of perhaps 150 small publishing companies in San Diego County. These micro publishers, with only a handful of books in their catalog (many of them self-published works), are multiplying as quickly as micro beer breweries, and for some of the same reasons: consolidation of the mega corporations has created a craving in the marketplace for diversity, and new technology has made it possible for the micros to survive. "I first started writing while I was traveling and surfing in Australia," Ahrens says. "I sent stories to a surf newspaper there called Tracks. That money allowed me to get to the next surf spot, and I figured the more I wrote, the better places I would get to see. It hasn't quite worked out that way." He eventually became editor of a now-defunct surf magazine, Breakout. Then for years he wrote a surf column, called "Water Spots" for the Blade-Citizen in North County. Later yet, he became editor of Longboarder, a slick surf magazine. Along the way he discovered that surfers cherish bizarre characters, and they love to tell and hear stories. If you put three surfers in the water, between sets they'll be huddled together and one of them will be telling a story about the time his ex-girlfriend stole his dog, or whatever. With the aging of the surf population, there's more talk of old exploits, and with each telling the waves get bigger and the heroism more grand. Eventually, Ahrens realized he had enough stories he'd already published in surf magazines to put together a book. But how to get it into print? Self-publishing seemed to be the answer, but he knew nothing about it. "You know how impractical writers are, and how impractical surfers are?" Ahrens said. "You combine the two in one person and you have a real basket case. Fortunately, my wife is much more practical than I am, and she's very supportive of what I do. She learned about typesetting and layout on a computer. An artist friend of mine, Michael Cassidy, did a painting for the cover. I knew something about color separations. Every night there would be four or five friends here at my house reading stories, helping edit, giving me info. The whole process was really a lot of fun." Along with the flourishing of small publishers, there has been a growth in printers who specialize in catering to them. Many of these printers are in the Midwest, where paper and labor costs are cheaper than they are on either coast. Chris Ahrens, though, found a printer in Anaheim, KNI, that specializes in short-run books. "They guided us through the whole process, held our hand, and made us not feel too stupid. We muddled our way through, and in the end, we realized it wasn't all that hard to publish a book." The result, in 1994, was Good Things Love Water, a humorous and sensitive collection of surf stories. With 3,000 copies in print, and a sizable investment to recoup, he announced the book with a full-page ad in Longboarder, as well as free promo in his surf column. "The whole surf community was so supportive. So many people came to my aid, saying, 'Just tell me what you want me to do! Should I call everybody I know and tell them to buy the book?' Every day was like the lottery. People would be calling us and writing us, and every day we'd get money in the mail. So the scam seemed to be working!" After his book had shown a profit, Ahrens went to work on a second book, The Surfer's Travel Guide, published in 1995 [now out of print]. He had intended it to be a more practical book, and it is, yet each page was woven with equal parts of wit and wisdom, as well as personal stories depicting his love of surfing. Though it, too, has been well received by the surfing community, Ahrens says, "In a way I wish I'd put together another book of stories. That's what surfers were asking me for. They look at my travel guide and say, 'Well, this is nice, but when are you going to write more stories?'"
	a humorous and sensitive collection of surf stories	Joyrides by Chris Ahrens was published in 1988.
Surprising everybody, perhaps even himself, Ahrens spent the next year writing a book that had nothing to do with surfing. "It's a novel about Los Angeles before the freeway, a story that's dear to my heart, about my grandfather, who I have come to think of as a metaphor for what Los Angeles used to be. He was a hard-drinking Mexican man who married an Apache woman. In his twenties he became intoxicated on tequila and passed out on the train tracks. The train creased his forehead and left him with a cheerful disposition, as well as a spiritual belief built around Jose Cuervo, The Union-Pacific Railroad, and the Virgin Mary." Meanwhile, Ahrens would love to stay in the micro publishing business. "I really like going around to the small bookstores and talking to people there. They're so much like small publishers, and are so supportive of us. It's amazing how many of them will look at a book from a writer they don't know, say 'I'll take six of them,' and write a check right there." Ahrens also enjoys the small daily tasks of a micro publisher. "Sometimes I get calls from people asking for the shipping department, or the president of the company." (He laughs at this.) "I don't tell them Chubasco Publishing is just me sitting at my kitchen table. But I really like taking an order for one book, signing it, maybe writing a little note, putting it in a package and walking it down to the post office. I think it balances the impractical side of me." Ahrens hopes the day will come when Chubasco can publish the work of other writers, though he can't afford that luxury yet. "I think people with the power and the money should listen more to the ideas of people who don't have anything to do except sit on the beach and throw rocks. Who else has time to think anymore?" Perhaps the biggest reason Ahrens enjoys being a small publisher is that, "I can't imagine having a job where I couldn't look out and see an endless horizon." And looking out his kitchen window, he sees that the late morning breezes haven't blown out the surf at Cardiff Reef. It's the kind of day answering machines were invented for.