Almost two months ago to the day my son was born. My first child. Now, my first ISBN was born; or, rather, the ISBN for my upcoming book, China Inside Out: 10 Irreversible Trends Re-shaping China and its Relationship with the World.

ISBN: 978-0-470-82643-0. How cool is that? I want to memorize this number. And now, whenever I walk down the streets of Shanghai or Suzhou and someone greets me, I want to reply, “ISBN: 978-0-470-82643-0″.  Actually, it was one of my nephews back in the States who twigged me onto the fact the book just became available for pre-order on Amazon. (Yes, he pre-ordered it – he said – good nephew). Except the book still lacks a cover (come on, you graphic designer!), so the Amazon page is not very attractive. You’ll find a full description of the book on the Amazon site, and on the publisher’s site at John Wiley & Sons. The John Wiley page for the book has a little tab behind which you can read the Table of Contents. I didn’t see anything like that on the Amazon site. The Asia edition of the book should be out in October-ish; the UK/USA edition the end of December (just in time to miss Christmas).

So, should you surf over to either the Amazon or the John Wiley sites to read a summary of the book, consider pre-ordering it – just takes a click of the mouse button. And a credit card. And a line of credit. I promise you it’ll be a good read.

And if you can’t recall the name of the book. Remember: ISBN: 978-0-470-82643-0 …