When Dave Selden ordered 1,000 copies of his self-published book last year, the Portland graphic artist figured he had enough friends that he'd eventually sell half of them.

A year later, the figure is closer to 20,000 copies of "

," a slick, little chipboard-bound notebook with room for tasting notes on 33 different beers.

It didn't hurt that mega-brewer Guinness bought a few thousand copies and co-branded them as part of a promotional campaign for its reintroduction of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout. Or that software maker Adobe Systems co-branded another 500 to give away at trade shows. (Adobe's developers came up with a "33 Beers" Android smart phone app -- an iPhone app is reportedly on the way, too -- that allows users to jot their tasting notes on their phones.)

Selden has sold books to restaurants to aid in staff training, and more than 50 retailers in 20 states and Australia now sell "33 Bottles of Beer."

What started out as a small side venture has been so successful, in fact, that Selden already branched out beyond his beverage of choice, designing and selling "33 Bottles of Wine," with a coffee book due this month and 33 Cheeses after that. Books for chocolates and whiskey are on the to-do list.

"If I was really a good son, I'd finish 33 Cigars in time to give one to my dad for Christmas, but that's not going to happen this year," said Selden, who spends his days as creative director at interactive marketing company Pop Art Inc.

"This thing has taken off beyond all my expectations," he said. It's also been a lot of work, much of it on a steep learning curve.

"I think everybody in marketing should start up a business of their own," Selden said. "It's like an MBA in a box."

At the heart of all this bustle is a deceptively simple design. "33 Bottles of Beer" is the size of an index card and sells for $4 apiece, or three for $10. Each page has space for beer name; brewer; price; rating; and date sampled. There are places to list alcohol content and hoppiness; check boxes to indicate if the sample was on draft or cask, or from a bottle, can or a growler, a 1-gallon container filled from a beer tap.

The salient feature is the flavor wheel, or spider graph, as Selden calls it. It's a circle graph on which you rate 16 different components on a scale from 0 at the center to 5, at the perimeter. The spokes include flavors such as alcohol, dark fruit, citrus, hoppy, floral, spicy, herbal and characteristics such as astringency and body. Connect the dots, and you have a map of each beer.

The book itself is printed on recycled paper using ink made from U.S. grown soybeans -- suitably modified. "I add a little beer to the ink," Selden admits. "Not enough to taste it or smell it, but enough to say I did."

Selden got the idea for "33 Bottles of Beer" at last year's Great American Beer Festival in Denver. That huge festival offers as many as 1,600 beers for the sampling, an embarrassment of riches that soon bogs even the most careful taster and note-taker. Most write fairly legible notes for the first four or five beers, then just the beer names for a while, and then they eventually omit even that rudimentary step.

Selden was no different, except that after he returned to Portland -- and heard a printer talking about making small, sustainable books -- he came up with the idea for his elegant little notebook. "There's nothing really new here," he said. "I just combined the elements and designed it to be easy and quick to use. Within a week, I sent the design files to the printer, put up a website and the orders started coming in."

The first was from Carl Singmaster, who owns the Southeast Portland bottle shop,

.

"I saw it and loved the retro-cool aspect of it; how it's kind of like a Scout handbook," Singmaster said. "I'm the kind of guy who has a barely-smart phone and still travels around with scraps of paper for notes, so I love the idea that you can jot down your notes for a tasting or a beer festival and file them away. We've sold hundreds of them, and they're a great impulse buy or a stocking stuffer."

Selden says he, like many business people, has ideas for new projects or products all the time.

"But I don't always act on them," he said. "I'm glad I followed through on this one, because it's been an amazing experience."