I honestly don’t have a great reason why pamphlets, why books. Or not a single, great reason. I just like them. They’re fun to me. I like holding them in my hand and marking them with a pencil, and of course I’m not alone in this.
So yes, I’m exploring publishing, which means the behind-the-scenes stuff: finding authors whose voices I want to help amplify, helping them shape their words into a compelling and useful form, deciding what physical form that will take (and having some other company print it), and connecting that physical thing with people who find it similarly useful and compelling. In short: acquisition, editing, layout, production, and marketing.
At the same time, I’m also exploring bookmaking: folding, scoring, creasing, playing with paper and printers and staplers. Blades and bindings. Fun stuff, physical stuff.
Call it prototyping. I certainly don’t want to make all books by hand that I’m going to publish. One of the fun things about business is scale: making enough of something at once that each thing is affordable. Enough that it can reach a lot of people, be recommended and passed along, gotten as a gift. Enough to spread a little of what seems to be missing sometimes: love, hospitality, playfulness, depth. (Or whatever it is you’re hoping to spread in the world.)
There’s this idea from Lean Startup methodology called Minimum Viable Product (MVP). It’s one step above slapdash, and has to do with putting skin and bones on an idea and seeing how the world interacts with it. Then, it will be time to iterate: change this or that aspect of the product, and send it out into the world again.
That’s part of what this blog is for: to show the process, regardless of the end result. (Where even is the end?) It may be a risky move–should I do all the creative, iterative work in private, and then pretend like the finished product just sprouted up fully formed? I, for one, tend to forget that no creative thing is like that. It’s always a process.
And as someone who values connection over content (and I loooove content), I’m hoping that this ongoing log (web-log, blog) of the process will connect with you, if you are interested in doing something at all similar. Like any creative pursuit, this one (including the learning, trying, failing, iterating, re-doing, learning, etc) is a little terrifying. Destabilizing. Delightful.
Onward.