Craig Mod is a writer and designer who splits his time between Japan and the US. Formerly of Flipboard, much of his writing is concerned with ebooks and digital publishing — the pitfalls the industry falls into, and how best to avoid them. His most recent essay, Subcompact Publishing, sparked a lot of online chatter last November over its vision for a minimal, service-oriented publishing future. I sat down with Mod in December during his latest stopover in Tokyo to talk about these ideas, Japan, and more.