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brynwrites · 6 years

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What I learned while self-publishing.

@milkyteefs asked:

I'm unsure about the entire self-publishing world! Do you have a basic outline of the process? Some key highlights/headings of how you started and what connections you needed to make? Thanks again! <3

I went through the process of self-publishing Our Bloody Pearl this summer. Even with all the guides in the world it turned out to be a very grueling experience. I’ll be doing it again with Quasi Stellar soon, but I also hope to traditionally publish The Warlord Contracts trilogy.

First, let’s get this out of the way: Self published books are often very bad.

But they don’t have to be.

Self publishing requires you, the writer, to either wear the hat of everyone else at a publishing house, or be your own investor and pay for professionals to do the jobs you can’t. If you’re willing to put in that effort and money then you can come out with a more professional book than you might have had you published traditionally. If you’re not, then self publishing might not be the right road for you.

Now then, how do you self publish in a way that produces a professional book?

Fifteen Basic Steps to Self-Publishing:

1. Write and edit the book.

This is, understandably, the step that a lot of people get stuck at. Writing a novel is hard. Don’t worry about how or when you’ll publish it until it’s finished.

Just write it.

During this time you should also be marketing yourself as a writer. Learn more about that via my marketing tips tag.

2. Beta readers and critique partners.

Getting feedback from handpicked peers is essential for any book no matter which publishing route you choose. If these terms are new to you, learn more about beta readers here and critique partners here.

During your first book (or two) I recommend starting with critique partners and then moving to beta readers afterward, because critique partners will shred your novel down to the bare bones, which you usually really need the first few books you write. Critique partners will also generally pick at your grammar and typos though, which can be very useful at the end of the editing stage so that your manuscript looks cleaner to an editor (or agent, if you traditionally publish.)

3. Write your blurbs and summary.

While your story is in the hands of your final group of readers, you should already be working on blurbs and summaries. By the end of the publishing process you will need:

A back of the book blurb.

A one-two sentence logline style blurb.

A one page summary of the story.

Don’t put these off! They won’t get any easier if you wait. You can find tips on writing blurbs in this article.

4. Determine that you’re done making changes to the manuscript.

A writer who’s growing and learning will forever feel as though there’s something they can change in their manuscript, but at some point you have to decide that what’s done is done. You will always have another awesome book which will be even better than this one.

If you have trouble determining when this point should be, check out this explanation!

5. Make a publishing timetable.

Give yourself more time on your timetable than you think you need! Traditional publishing takes about two years for a reason. A lot of the steps below this point seem relatively simple compared to writing and editing a book, but they require you to learn new skills and spend a lot of time waiting for other people with busy schedules.

Five and a half: Start book two.

You might have already done this during the beta reading stage, but if not, start another book! Writers should never stop writing and editing (outside of planned vacations, emergencies, and mental health breaks, of course), so pick that pen back up and start pounding out another book.

6. Find a content editor.

If you ran a beta reading stage with 10-20 critical and knowledgeable beta readers in your target audience then congratulations, they served the purpose of a content editor already!

6. Find a copy editor.

A copy editor is the person who checks your grammar, sentence structure, flow, and word usage. I found my editor though the editorial freelance association directory. The main things to look for when choosing an editor:

Experience. This should include testimonies, information about any publishing companies they worked with, and the works they edited in the past. If you can’t easily access and double check these things, then keep looking.

Sample edits. Any editor worth your time will offer you a free sample edit. (For copy editing this is generally 750-1k words of your novel. I’m not sure about other types of editing.) Take advantage of this! Send the same sample to the top four or five editors who fit your price range and see who returns feedback that you jive with and feel comfortable paying.

What if I can’t afford a copy editor?

In general, you can probably get away without hiring a professional copy editor if you (a) find 3-4 solid critique partners who are willing to do a very detailed line edit and proofread of your final draft (do not take advantage of your fellow writers!! Offer them the same in return!!), (b) get free sample edits from a handful of freelance authors to see if they catch any major formatting issues you do regularly, and (c) learn what a style guide is and make at least a simple one for yourself while you do another round of proofreading.

Remember though, traditionally publishing exists specifically so that you, the writer, can get a professional edit without having to pay for it. If you want a professional book without putting in the investment, then querying an agent might be the better option for you.

7. Prepare to offer ARCs to reviewers and friends.

Getting reviews for your book is the most important marketing activity you can do. The sooner you contact reviewers about this, the more reviews you’ll have when the release date comes. Note that the large majority of book reviewers you contact will never respond. If you email 20 reviewers, expect to get one or two reviews out of it, most likely in 4-6 months. (Which is why you should email all your friends and past beta readers too.)

How do we maximize the number reviewers who will read our books?

You know those neat little lists of book blogs who will review indie books? Don’t use them. Anything that with nicely compiled and easy to get reviewer lists is going to be overcrowded with blogs who have two year wait-lists and 97% of them will never even email you back.

Instead, try searching for reviewers you already follow on twitter and tumblr. Look for semi-popular goodreads reviewers who put positive reviews on books similar to your own and check if they have a link to a blog, or an email for review inquiries. Find less well known booktubers that youtube links to off your favorite popular booktubers.

8. Format the book.

You can pay someone to format your novel, but its rather expensive for something that’s relatively easy to learn to do yourself using guides off the internet. Paperback and ebook formatting must be done separately, and your first time I would set aside a full Saturday to tackle each of them, just to be safe. If you have a program like scrivener, with a little tweaking you should be able to get a nice looking ebook with none of the hassle of learning html. There are many other options though. Do a little research to find the one which works for you!

(Note: If you’re printing a paperback you cannot get a paperback cover until you’ve formatted the book and know final page count for your print size!)

9. Hire a cover artist.

The book cover is the most important part of your book, so far as sales and success are concerned.

There’s a huge trend in self published books to skip this stage and work with photoshop or cavna instead. I would not recommend this. Cover artists for professional books do what they do full time. They know the market. They know what sells. So do some writers, but the truth is, many of the writers who think they can design covers, turn out the sorts of designs that are easily pegged as self-published books.

If you want a professional looking book that pops in the amazon charts, hire a professional.

There are a multitude of ways you can go about this. Some large cover art sites like damonza offer bundles which can get pricey, but let you back out with no charge if you don’t like their first drafts and include unlimited changes if you commit. There are also many freelancers who specialize in book covers, for a wide range of prices.

What if I don’t have the money to hire a cover artist?

If there is anything you don’t want to go cheep on, it’s your cover art. But let’s say you absolutely have to get a cover for cheap or free. There are people who do cover designs for $5 on Fiverr, and I think some of them actually turn out half decent covers for very specific genres, but its a gamble. A couple writeblrs do cover design as part of their day job and might be willing to do something cheep or for a trade. You could also learn how to design covers yourself, but if you want to compete with books whose designers went to school just to do what they now do full time, you’ll either have to put in a lot of time or be lucky enough to have a very good, easily executed idea for your particular novel, and hopefully not one with requires any stock photos unless you want to purchase rights to them.

Now, there are some exceptions. Some writers have a natural design brain, and some writers are in fact designers themselves. Sometimes you write a book where the perfect cover design is very simple and easy to produce yourself. But that won’t be most people, with most books.

So far I have seen exactly two of the hundreds of self publisher made covers I’ve seen have actually made me want to buy the story. I’m not trying to be mean. It’s just the truth.

10. Offer ARCs to more reviewers.

Now you have a nicely formatted book and everything! Who can resist that?

11. Do a cover reveal, and during the cover reveal, offer everyone there an ARC.

Cover reveals come in many different forms. Some writers just post the cover on their blog, some do livestreams on facebook, some do question and answer sessions leading up to the reveal, some even go all out and have other writers come talk about their books on their site for a full day prior to the cover reveal.

Do whatever works best for your schedule. The goal is to attract attention for the book, so make sure you link to anything you’ve already set up from #12, so people can easily find your book when you release it!

And, as always, give out ARCs.

12. Get your book and author profile set up on everything.

Prior to your book’s release you should have a goodreads author page, an amazon author page, and a bookbub author page, all with your book attached. You should also have a website and a mailing list (linked to via your ebook), prepared release announcements for every social media site you work off of, and be ready with attractive and easily noticeable links to the book’s sale page off your tumblr blog and website.

Keep in mind that some of these things will take a decent chunk of time to set up, and a few of them require a live human being to confirm you are who you say you are. Start them as early as possible!

13. Release the book!

Time to actually put the book out there for all to buy. You can do a similar hype release as you do with a cover reveal, if you so desire. Make sure you remember to post all your announcements and put up all your links.

Try not to check on the book’s sales until the following day! It does not help their growth or your mental health to constantly be haunting your sales charts. When you do check them, keep in mind that a book which sells two thousand copies in its entire life time has done well, all things considered.

The fantastic thing about self publishing is that you never have to stop selling your book. If you sell fifty copies your first month and then twenty the second and then five the third, you can always dive back into marketing, run a discount, apply for a bookbub ad, focus on marketing yourself as an author and gaining followers. You chose whether your book is done selling.

To offer pre-orders or not?

This is a toss up. In my experience, pre-orders aren’t a good idea for your debut self-published novel, even if you think you have a large audience who will buy them, because they take away from the sales you could have your release week, and the boost those sale give you on the amazon charts. If you do wish to offer pre-orders though, try going through ingramspark instead of amazon advantage, to save yourself tears and heartache.

To go amazon exclusive or not?

Many authors claim that you have to try both to know what’s right for any particular book. Do your own research and decide what you think is best for you.

Thirteen and a half: Start book three.

At this point you should already have finished at least the rough draft of second novel, so don’t forget to start your third book at some point!

14. Offer people read for review copies.

Especially if your debut novel is aimed toward broke teenagers and younger adults, there will be a lot of people who are interested in the book but aren’t motivated enough to actually buy it on faith alone. By offering free ebooks on a read for review basis, you...

Grow your reviews.

Create fans out of people who may have never read the book otherwise.

Have higher paperback sales, because readers who loved the ebook you gave them may decide to buy themselves a paperback.

15, unto infinity: Keep promoting your book into the sunset, while writing new books!

The time to stop promoting you book is whenever you feel you’ve had enough sales and reached enough readers. Until you reach a point where you’ve published so many books that you can’t handle marketing them all, you should still be trying to expand your readership!

And don’t forget to have a little bit of fun along the way. You worked hard for this. Celebrate it.

But what if I just want to get a book out there?

If your goal is not to publish a professional looking book with will expand your fanbase and set you on a path to full time authorship, but rather to have a piece of your writing available in a book format your friends and family can buy, then there’s no reason not to publish exactly how you wish to.

Are all these steps really necessarily?

I believe they are, at least for a debut novel. In fact, there are probably more steps which I missed entirely. But, if you can find multiple self-published authors who went through a less rigorous publishing process and still received hundreds or goodreads reviews, then by all mean, follow that process instead (and let me know about it!)

So which book did you self publish?

This one here! You can support me and my ability to keep giving writing advice by purchasing a copy today =D

#writeblr #writing resources #writers on writing #writers on tumblr #self publishing #authors on tumblr #writing tag: publishing

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williamjharwick · 7 years

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Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3]—Prototypes

Welcome to the third installment of the Physical Product Experiment! If you missed the previous two installments, go back and check those out first before reading on. You can find those posts here: Physical Product Experiment [PPE #1] and Physical Product Experiment [PPE #2].

In this installment, Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3], we’re exploring prototypes! But first, here’s a quick recap of where I started and where I am today:

I am experimenting with a physical product: a productivity calendar I hope will be like nothing else out there. In the first post in this series, I shared details about the product itself, and where I’m starting my research. In the second post, I discussed how I am going to be reaching out for validation and feedback.

Regarding that validation and feedback, I mentioned in the previous post that we were hoping for twenty volunteers to help us test out the calendar with an actual, real-world task: writing the draft of a book in ninety days. And guess what? We have our volunteers! We were grateful to receive more than 120 applications, and then whittled that down to twenty-one applicants who had a wide variety of backgrounds with a wide variety of reasons for achieving the same goal: writing a book. That variety is best for testing too. Although I wish I could have picked all 120+ applicants, the cost and logistics of shipping the prototype package (more on that below!) would have been a little too much to manage at this beta test stage.

For the twenty-one applicants we picked, we’ve already sent you an email announcing your part in this exciting experiment! But I wanted to also mention you here, as I truly appreciate your support in this! The twenty-one volunteers for the beta stage of the Physical Product Experiment are:

Gina

Jess W.

Barbara C.

Alex S.

Greg S.

Benny H.

Nakita R.

Mary J.

Stacy B.

Kristie W.

Kristen D.

Jeremy C.

Bree K.

Jeremy

Kelsi M.

Shannon K.

Russ K.

Laura

Jami B.

Alina

Nick H.

Thanks for being willing to go on this journey with me!

For the others who reached out, thank you so much. Unfortunately, we had to limit the number of volunteers, so some of you didn’t make it. But I truly appreciate your amazing outpouring of support. That, in and of itself, is validating for the experiment. Thank you.

Now, there’s a reason why we limited this volunteer group to twenty-one, besides the cost. With small groups, you have a more controlled environment, which is better for communication. With larger groups, it’s more challenging to keep on top of all of the feedback—you risk miscommunication, focus is split between too many people, and you tend to lose sight of the goal. In this case, the goal is to determine if the physical product will help you with your desired outcome.

The product needs to serve its audience.

That’s the whole purpose of this experiment—to create a physical product that will be a game-changer in the lives of those who use it. With a smaller, more focused group of “beta” testers, we can avoid creating something like the universal remote—with hundreds of buttons and a minuscule percentage of useful ones.

The MVP Stage

Right now, we’re nearly at the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. We’ll soon have the basic components of the product—a prototype—to ship to our volunteers so they can start testing it.

Once the MVP is complete, we’ll share that with our volunteers so they can go through the process of engaging with and actually using the productivity calendar to help them write the first draft of their book in ninety days. And, as the first-round test group, the volunteers will be taking notes of what works well and what needs improvement, from the concepts to the workflow. As I mentioned before, I want this productivity calendar to be the tool to help engaged and aspiring people to achieve targeted goals. If the volunteers think otherwise, we need to remedy that until it does help!

Now, one really cool aspect of this is that the volunteers signed up, for the most part, because of an expressed interest in getting unstuck. They’ve wanted to write the first draft of their book, but have struggled to finish, find motivation, or lacked the accountability to cross the finish line. My goal is that this physical product will be their winning system, their blueprint for success.

Productivity Calendar Prototype Components

My team and I have devised three components to this physical product, all designed to work with each other as part of an integrated method for being super productive and achieving goals. Those components are the calendar, the workbook, and the community.

Each of our twenty-one volunteers will receive a package, shipped to their physical address. The experience will start the moment they open the box, which will include the calendar, workbook, and a welcome sheet that will explain how this experiment will work, when it will start, and a thank you message from me. It will be an exciting unboxing to kick off the goal-seeking journey with a bang.

Let’s look at each one of the prototype components individually.

1. The Calendar

This whole journey began with the idea of creating a better calendar for planning projects and improving productivity. In its original form, it was going to be a large, mostly blank wall calendar to incorporate whatever projects or tasks you would have within your life. Since then, the idea has grown into something much more targeted: a calendar that will be used in conjunction with a workbook to help guide a person through the process of achieving a very specific goal. The first goal we are tackling is writing the first draft of your book in ninety days. This is just one of many goals that there will be workbooks for in the future. (We’ll get to the workbooks in a minute.)

When the testing starts with our twenty-one volunteers, the calendar will be what we call a medium-fidelity version, between low-fidelity (a simple sketch or wireframe) and high-fidelity (fully designed from top to bottom). This medium-fidelity version will allow the volunteers to do what they need to do, but the product itself won’t be in its 100 percent finished design in terms of final colors, fonts, and material.

As for the size and shape of the calendar, our vision is to have a giant wall calendar. But we still need to determine the precise size and shape that will be best for the people who use it based on placement (it shouldn’t take up the entire wall!) and usefulness (giving people room to write, place stickers, engage with their goal in a meaningful, structured way).

A big reason why I think the calendar is extremely important is not only for its tracking purposes or goal-setting capabilities, but for its place as a daily reminder. The calendar itself will be quite large. So, when you put it up on the wall in your writing cave or office, you will have that tangible, in-plain-view reminder every time you sit down, which I hope will be an excellent motivator. At least this is what I visualize in my head.

It’s like what Hal Elrod talks about in his book, The Miracle Morning, when he describes the SAVERS method of establishing a miracle morning. The “V” in SAVERS stands for “Visualization.” Another way to put it is to imagine (visualize) how you want things to pan out in the future. That’s a big motivator for me.

When I was writing Will It Fly?, for instance, I loved the idea that readers would be going through and finding value in the book’s exercises. I was motivated by visualizing people reading the book, going through the exercises, sending me messages about how the book helped them. It may have never happened, but the idea that it could motivated me to keep writing. But guess what? It did happen, and I receive messages from readers almost every day!

The same is true for this physical product. I’m super motivated by the idea that this productivity calendar and workbook will help people achieve their goals. And, for those using the product, the calendar itself is a visualization exercise. When you see your goals and dreams in plain sight on the wall, your daily reminder to work on specific tasks in order to achieve those goals and dreams, it makes it easier to make those visualizations become a reality because it’s there in a place where you see it every day. It’s the classic power of positive thinking: you envision your goals, which helps to reinforce them and keep you on track to achieve them.

I am so excited to see how you use the calendar—putting it up on the wall, how you interact with it on a daily basis, and the reactions shared with me and the SPI community as a whole. That’s what truly motivates me to make the best possible product that I can.

2. The Workbook

The workbook will be more than a blank journal. I love those type of journals and others like The Five Minute Journal, which you know I rave about. They’ve helped me immensely in my business career, and as a writer. But I wanted to create something that stands out. That’s one of the reasons why we’re calling it a workbook as opposed to a journal. This workbook will have more structure, with both journaling opportunities and instructional exercises geared toward the specific goal it’s addressing. It will include guidelines for people as they progress through the ninety-day timeline of writing a first book draft.

My team, especially Matt and Janna, are seasoned writers who have a lot of experience in writing and editing, in addition to helping authors and author-entrepreneurs with strategy in the areas of book publishing, book cover design, and brand voice development. Matt, who’s the CEO of Winning Edits, helped on the editing and content strategy of my first book, Let Go. I connected with Janna through Matt. Her experience in running a literary magazine (Under the Gum Tree), and overall editorial strategy is also a necessary addition to this experiment.

So the workbook will be a companion to the calendar, a tool to check in with yourself and reflect on what is working, what isn’t working, and take notes on potential blockers or distractions. It will include a daily tracking element that will correspond with the calendar. It will also be an integral tool to help people overcome the biggest struggles associated with the goal they are working toward. Each workbook guide and goal we tackle with this product line will have its own section dedicated to overcoming the most common struggle people have while working toward that goal. It’s another differentiator for these workbooks, and it could mean the difference between someone actually pushing through versus not moving forward at all.

For this product prototype, the workbook will help people overcome one of the biggest struggles of writing a book: writer’s block. Yes, that dreaded writer’s block, the bane of every writer’s existence, the thing that keeps you from doing what you want to be doing: writing! But, the good news is that the workbook, along with the calendar, will guide you past it.

The last aspect of the workbook I am really looking forward to seeing how people use is the stickers. Yes, the workbook and calendar will come with stickers to add that visual oomph to your daily productivity.

3. The Community

We have the calendar and the workbook. The third component is the community, an element that is obviously really important when you’re doing any sort of beta launch with a founding group of volunteers because you want a place for them to leave feedback and to express what they’re going through so that you can understand how they are using your product and what is going through their mind.

The community component will also be a part of the final product launch, which is not something you see that often. Typically, community aspects of launches are part of the beta or testing period only. But I think it’s massively important to keep for the public launch too. In my experience, a group working toward a common goal has a greater chance for success. There’s more accountability and camaraderie in a group setting—like the gym partner who cheers you on during that last rep. Plus, having a community creates a space to ask questions, get feedback, and even provide a little bit of friendly competition!

We’ll also be testing out a platform for housing the community. Something different from what I’ve used in the past for other launches (but I do use it regularly with my team). That platform is Slack.

If you’re not familiar, Slack is an amazing and powerful communication tool that can be used to create and foster conversation around specific topics or projects. A lot of people are using Slack nowadays for hosting their communities and it has a lot of benefits. My team uses it internally and I know a number of other teams who use it as well, but I’ve been noticing that a lot of people who sell products offer a Slack community so that their customers can communicate with one another and the product owner as well. That’s pretty cool, and I want the same for this calendar product.

There’s also a cool tool for managing Slack communities called SlackPass.io, which seems like it will become an important part of the administrative process for my team. Some companies that charge for the communities also use this tool to collect payments and manage membership.

Slack comes with a number of advantages. It has an intuitive, and easy-to-use interface. And, one of my favorite features, you can archive conversations, which is something that cannot be done with Facebook Groups, for example. Facebook Groups are great, and they are popular right now, but they may not be best suited for longer term, goal-related processes like this. Slack, on the other hand, empowers everybody in the community to engage on the level that suits them best. And, for me, as the one overseeing the community, I can separate conversations into channels based on certain topics.

For example, there may be a channel specifically for questions for me to answer. There could be a channel specifically related to wins that people can share. There could also be a channel specifically created for all of the random conversations, which is fairly common. For Team Flynn, we have a similar Slack channel called “Giggles” and that’s for posting random funnies and silly gifs within the team without getting in the way of other SPI business-related conversations.

The Slack component for the beta volunteer group is going to be important because it’s going to help us validate whether or not it’s a viable option for hosting a large community working toward a common goal. I do feel like it’s a great option with a lot of upsides in terms of cohesion and inspiration, but we won’t know until we test it out. Of course, people are used to Facebook—I have Facebook Groups for specific products I’ve created—but I wanted to test out Slack as an option and this is the perfect opportunity to do that.

Branding the Physical Product

The final thing I want to talk about is related to the branding of the physical product. My team and I have been going back and forth a lot on the branding, but we’ve come to what we believe is going to be the final brand name (not the product name, but a name for the whole brand):

Atlas

We chose the name Atlas for this product line for a number of reasons. By definition, Atlas is a collection of maps, tables, and charts designed to help guide someone, so it makes sense for a collection of workbooks that will help guide people toward a goal. And who can forget Atlas from Greek mythology? In the mythic stories, Atlas is a Titan who revolts against the gods, but is ultimately forced by Zeus to carry the burden of the heavens on his shoulders. You know the sculpture with the figure holding the planet. That’s Atlas, a perfect metaphor for the strength and resilience required to accomplish a sometimes daunting goal.

For this brand, you can think of Atlas as the parent company or publishing imprint, and each of the individual Atlas products will have its own name. We are essentially creating a new business unit within the SPI universe that will have its own line of products. We’ve been throwing around a number of different ideas for actual product names and some are very obvious and very clear, some are more clever than clear, and some are more brandable than others.

The truth is, at this point, product names don’t really matter. That’s an important lesson for us to realize. We can still accomplish our goal of testing this product and seeing if it’s viable based on the feedback from our beta volunteers. That’s the key right now. Getting the beta product into the hands of our volunteers, getting feedback on specific problems, and finding solutions for those problems. We can’t put the cart before the horse, which is a thing that happens all the time in online business. Starting your own thing is a really exciting prospect, and coming up with a name for your business, creating a website, ordering business cards—all of this is about getting too excited for how your business looks, and now how it serves.

A prime example of this is Instagram. Before it was Instagram, it was Burbn. Yes, after bourbon, the beverage. Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, is a fan of Kentucky whiskeys, so he called it Burbn. Back then it wasn’t what Instagram is today. It was an app that enabled users to check in at particular locations (à la Foursquare), plan for future check-ins, earn points for hanging out with friends, and post pictures of their meet-ups. Fast forward to today, and we have Instagram—a completely different name, and a mostly different app—primarily because the Burbn feature that people raved about the most was the photo filters. See how that worked out?

I’m not saying that Atlas will be the next Instagram-level product. I just think it’s a fascinating look at how things change over time based on the market, feedback, and testing. The name itself, Burbn, was probably far less important than getting than app out there, seeing how people used it, what they liked about it, and what they didn’t like about it.

The fact is, with this physical product of mine, you never know how it’s going to go. Maybe the calendar is the highlight for users, and the workbook is less of a draw, so it becomes a bonus add-on. Or maybe it’s the workbook that people like, and the calendar isn’t used at all. You never know. That’s why launching this first go-around with a small group of people is the right move.

What’s Next?

The plan now is to validate this product with the twenty-one volunteers, and to start designing and building out the products, which is going to be a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to that. But, most importantly, the experience that our volunteers have during this initial phase will be crucial to the product’s design and look.

After that, we’re going to run three to four more goals (similar to writing the first draft of a book in ninety days) through this calendar/workbook/community product before we fully nail it down. We’ll also work with other influencers who have goals that their audience may want to achieve that may be suited for a system like this, and reach out to those who may also want to be a part of this. Obviously, there are higher-level business decisions to be made with that and partnerships involved and that sort of thing, but that’s how I hope this will scale.

We are currently considering holding a Kickstarter campaign in November, when there may be four or five different goals that people can choose from initially. And then, if that works out well, possibly add on other goal ideas. The sky’s the limit! This could potentially become something that could house hundreds of goals down the road and become a subscription model where people would pay annually to get access to the library of goals that they can achieve every quarter using the calendar as the foundation, and then mapping their new goals on top of it every time.

It’s really exciting. It’s really fun. It’s different. It’s challenging. But we’re trying to take it one step at a time. The first step is getting our twenty-one volunteers through the process and collecting their feedback.

Yes, we’re eventually going to have to design the thing. We’re eventually going to have to figure out how to manufacture it, ship it, fulfill it, store it, and all of that. The materials of the product will also be important. What is it made of? How will it be manufactured? What will the cost be, and are there ways to save on cost without compromising quality?

These are all important questions and should definitely be thought about early in the process when you’re developing a physical product. But, at the same time, we are still focused on just proving the concept. Materials and manufacturing are important, but without a working prototype, that stuff can wait. Throughout this testing process, there will definitely be opportunities to try various types of calendar material. For example, dry-erase material versus one that’s also magnetic, and taking into account multiple use, versatility, durability, and cost.

But, if there’s one thing I’ve learned since starting my businesses, it’s this: before you spend a ton of time and money on what people use, it’s always best to focus first on why and how people use things. We’re on our way to figuring out those things, and our twenty-one amazing volunteers will help us get there. Let’s prove the concept of the product, let’s nail down the solution, and then we’ll go from there.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for an in-depth look at branding in Physical Product Experiment [PPE #4]!

Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3]—Prototypes shared from David Homer’s Blog

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andrewmrudd79 · 7 years

Text

Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3]—Prototypes

In this installment, Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3], we’re exploring prototypes! But first, here’s a quick recap of where I started and where I am today:

Gina

Jess W.

Barbara C.

Alex S.

Greg S.

Benny H.

Nakita R.

Mary J.

Stacy B.

Kristie W.

Kristen D.

Jeremy C.

Bree K.

Jeremy

Kelsi M.

Shannon K.

Russ K.

Laura

Jami B.

Alina

Nick H.

Thanks for being willing to go on this journey with me!

The product needs to serve its audience.

The MVP Stage

Right now, we’re nearly at the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. We’ll soon have the basic components of the product—a prototype—to ship to our volunteers so they can start testing it.

Productivity Calendar Prototype Components

Let’s look at each one of the prototype components individually.

1. The Calendar

2. The Workbook

3. The Community

Branding the Physical Product

Atlas

What’s Next?

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for an in-depth look at branding in Physical Product Experiment [PPE #4]!

Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3]—Prototypes originally posted at Homer’s Blog

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judithghernandez87 · 7 years

Text

Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3]—Prototypes

In this installment, Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3], we’re exploring prototypes! But first, here’s a quick recap of where I started and where I am today:

Gina

Jess W.

Barbara C.

Alex S.

Greg S.

Benny H.

Nakita R.

Mary J.

Stacy B.

Kristie W.

Kristen D.

Jeremy C.

Bree K.

Jeremy

Kelsi M.

Shannon K.

Russ K.

Laura

Jami B.

Alina

Nick H.

Thanks for being willing to go on this journey with me!

The product needs to serve its audience.

The MVP Stage

Right now, we’re nearly at the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. We’ll soon have the basic components of the product—a prototype—to ship to our volunteers so they can start testing it.

Productivity Calendar Prototype Components

Let’s look at each one of the prototype components individually.

1. The Calendar

2. The Workbook

3. The Community

Branding the Physical Product

Atlas

What’s Next?

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for an in-depth look at branding in Physical Product Experiment [PPE #4]!

Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3]—Prototypes originally posted at Dave’s Blog

0 notes

davidmhomerjr · 7 years

Text

Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3]—Prototypes

In this installment, Physical Product Experiment [PPE #3], we’re exploring prototypes! But first, here’s a quick recap of where I started and where I am today:

Gina

Jess W.

Barbara C.

Alex S.

Greg S.

Benny H.

Nakita R.

Mary J.

Stacy B.

Kristie W.

Kristen D.

Jeremy C.

Bree K.

Jeremy

Kelsi M.

Shannon K.

Russ K.

Laura

Jami B.

Alina

Nick H.

Thanks for being willing to go on this journey with me!

The product needs to serve its audience.

The MVP Stage

Right now, we’re nearly at the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. We’ll soon have the basic components of the product—a prototype—to ship to our volunteers so they can start testing it.

Productivity Calendar Prototype Components

Let’s look at each one of the prototype components individually.

1. The Calendar

2. The Workbook

3. The Community

Branding the Physical Product

Atlas

What’s Next?

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for an in-depth look at branding in Physical Product Experiment [PPE #4]!

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kinosternon · 7 years

Text

(CW: abstract discussions of abuse, several heaping spoonfuls of new-adult angst. Also, length—this is like 2,000 words lol)

This particular story, such as it is, starts with me chatting with a very close friend of mine over Skype, and looking through my email at the same time. (Me and this friend are the type of close where we Skype once a week and they play video games or code while I browse the Internet and watch whatever they’re up to, so a certain amount of multitasking is par for the course.) I’m a big fan of StoryBundle and related stuff, so when I came across their Write Stuff 2017 bundle (https://storybundle.com/writing), I remember that I’d bought a similar bundle of theirs last year, and went to check it out.

It actually wasn’t the first time I’d looked it over. I’ve been trying to give up writing for the past several months, and been through a similar cycle several times: get fed up with the pressure of writing, decide to give up on writing altogether, feel a lot better, start thinking about writing again—without so much as opening a document or a notebook. Reading the descriptions for the bundle got me thinking about the whole pattern, and I said out loud to my friend, “Reading about writing feels like looking through an ex’s Facebook.”

Then I stopped and thought about what I’d said, because it did. That was exactly what it felt like. So I started to wonder why.

As a white, male, able-bodied 20-something in the United States who attended a liberal arts college and tries to be at least politically aware, if not politically active, I find the narrative of abuse survival to be one that’s ineffectual to apply to myself. Have I been in some shitty situations with people?

…Yeah. I have.

Have I caused some shitty situations? Without a shadow of a doubt, though I’m pretty hopeful about the idea that I’ve never been outright abusive. Certainly I’ve never been so intentionally, but intention can only get a person so far.

I struggled for a long time with the idea that I may have experienced abusive situations in my childhood and beyond, and now I’m more or less at peace with the idea that abuse is a narrative that I don’t feel comfortable applying to my life experiences so far. I heard a lot about abuse growing up—which is good, it’s absolutely vital to spread that knowledge—but not a lot about what to do and how to go forward when a relationship is just shit, and that left me stuck for a while. It really wasn’t fun.

Still, eventually, I figured out an answer to the latter question I’m comfortable with. I don’t need to be able to prove, to myself or anyone else, that a relationship is abusive for me to want to leave it. I think more people out there need to remember that, especially because the myth of needing proof is often used by abusers themselves.

To believe and be properly sympathetic to people who had undergone abuse, I had to understand that their concerns were not my concerns—that I am not, in my head, part of the “survivors of abuse” identity group. Anything else was harmful to me, and both disrespectful and detrimental to the people I might encounter during my attempts to be a good ally.

Abuse, at the moment, isn’t a helpful way for me to frame my relationships. Negativity and toxicity, on the other hand, absolutely are. I started feeling a lot less anxious when I started applying more shades of subtlety to my emotions and experiences.

Time and circumstance can change relationship dynamics a lot. Lately, I’ve reconnected with a friend whom I’d labeled “toxic” pretty vibrantly in my head, and whom I’ve got a complicated history with. I turned the idea over in my head for months, dismissing it as a bad idea with more and more reluctance each time. In the end, fairly sure of the reasonableness of the idea, I followed through on the impulse to contact them online. Turns out the friend was not only still happy to hear from me, they were in a much better place than they’d been back when I cut off contact. And I’m in a better place now, too. They don’t test my boundaries anymore, and even if they did, I’d feel much more sure about enforcing them.

Having this friend back in my life has been enjoyable and enriching. Another source of support in life is always welcome.

I’ve made some new friends, too, and both reconnecting with sour friendships and making new ones that I’m okay with require a certain amount of emotional resilience. I’ve been trying to cultivate a strong sense of self-worth, agency, and self-reliability independent of those friendships, and it’s been helping.

I’m not quite sure what to call the more welcoming side of those efforts, though. Tolerance, forgiveness, and patience all have different undertones. I think it’s somewhere between the three, and I’m still testing out the way those nuances shift depending on the specific circumstance. And they all start with an awareness of my own limits, and the feeling that I’m always allowed to stop and walk away.

Anyway, this was a story about writing. Setting boundaries for yourself is important, I thought, as I considered where the thought of “writing as shitty ex” had come from. If I kept shying away from writing all this time, then maybe it really was a toxic relationship.

The problem is, writing isn’t a person. I don’t ascribe very hard to any one particular class of thought or pedagogy when it comes to writing, either, so as far as I can tell that isn’t the difficulty. It’s still possible that outside influences are building up and forming an unpleasant imagined persona, like an unwelcoming audience. But for a little while now, I’ve been trying to curtail instances of random exposure to the displeasure of strangers, and by now that influence has noticeably lessened. So what was going on?

When I thought about it in those terms, it wasn’t too hard to reach a perplexing conclusion: I’m in a bad relationship with writing, and I’m the only person in that relationship.

I’m all the moving parts. Just me. Which led me to wonder, what am I doing to myself that I haven’t consciously realized?

I recently started tutoring a couple of kids in creative writing through Skype call. (Someone thought it was a good idea to put an advertisement on a freelancing website, instead of a tutoring-specific one, but that’s another story, and one that I know very little about.) The first couple of lessons were a little bit awkward, until one of the parents clued me in to the idea of working through prompts in class, instead of assigning things and providing feedback. Then a couple of online resources mentioned the idea of working along with the kids on exercises, so I tried that, too.

I would’ve figured it was a bad idea, putting them on the spot or accidentally showing off, but so far both strategies seem to be working. It’s been good to show that even a teacher can’t think of everything on a tight schedule, that what I come up with is imperfect or incomplete. And better still, I’ve gotten into the habit of waiting a little longer for answers, continuing to ask prompt past the first, dubious or hesitant response. I’ve been asking a lot of “Why?”, and making games out of brainstorming. It’s been fun, and I’d like to think I’m not the only one learning.

I think I’ve forgotten how important patience is in writing, as in many other things.

One summer, between semesters of college, I tried living with friends. It was a lot of fun, but there were parts that were very stressful—specifically, the coming-up-with-rent part. I managed to land a decent ghostwriting job, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with bills, not by a long shot. (I was extremely privileged to have parents that were willing to come up with some of the difference, without which I would have been very ill-advised even to try.) So I tried to balance an internship or two alongside it, which ultimately led to me keeping abreast of chores and stressing instead of working on everything else.

Near the end of the summer, desperately trying to make up a huge word deficit on a ghostwriting project, I set myself a goal: 24,000 words in 24 hours. A quota of 1,000 words an hour, with permission to do whatever I wanted each hour, after hitting that point.

I managed it, almost getting to the end of the piece. I don’t think I so much as opened the document for eight weeks afterward. I blew far past the intended deadline, and in the meantime, my client moved on to greener writing pastures. I was never paid for that project.

I didn’t realize until years later that ever since then, something related to the writing part of me has felt injured—that it feels like something got sprained inside.

People talk about their inner editors. Whatever that particular force in my head is, I’m not sure it counts as just an editor anymore.

My editorial sense is just fine when it comes to other people. I like providing developmental edits. I’m good at line-editing and formatting. I’ve interned at a literary agency, and, as mentioned above, worked as a ghostwriter before that. I occasionally beta-read fanfic and/or critique friends’ work for fun. I like fixing other people’s writing, and I like meeting them where they are in their efforts to improve their technique.

Moreover, I’m pretty confident of my technical writing ability. I know how to put together a sentence. I’m as susceptible to typos as the next person, but otherwise my error rate is pretty low. I’ve got a working sense of structure, pacing, and style. I actually know how to format dialogue correctly, how to use a long dash and a semicolon, and the difference between a too-long sentence and a run-on.

That doesn’t mean I don’t still have a long way to go—that’s the nature of writing. (See: I write long sentences even when I shouldn’t, and I’m far too fond of italics.) But I’m not all that self-conscious about any of that, really. It doesn’t bug me.

No, I’m just completely certain of my inability to have ideas. Or, having miraculously had an idea that I didn’t immediately tear to pieces, to actually sit down and start. Or, having started, to muddle through the middle, let alone finish. Or, having somehow finished, to have the self-discipline to do any revision whatsoever.

I “know” these things just won’t ever happen—that I “can,” but that I won’t. And I “know” that I shouldn’t give up on one of my most-developed skills. But when I finally gave myself permission to give up—to move on to something I haven’t built up to be so utterly wraught—I felt a lot better. And thus the cycle began.

Even getting to that point—feeling like I deserved a chance to walk away—was in itself a kind of growth. But I think I’m ready to try moving beyond it. I’m just not sure what direction “beyond” will be in.

I’m slowly circling around a choice. Like water spiraling around a drain, or one of those pennies in a black-hole model at the mall. (Anyone else remember those?) I could try to break free—I’m fairly certain that I can, to whatever degree I want, though there would be parts of it that would hurt. But I don’t think I want to.

I’m not going to let writer-me take over my life again anytime soon. I don’t want to give him any power, because or the past few years he’s done the opposite of earn it. But I might be willing to get back together with him, for a bit of a trial run. The equivalent of a re-friending on Facebook and maybe catching up over coffee.

I find myself curious as to how it might go.

#abuse cw #physical injury cw #(mild metaphorical mention)#rambling about writing #but I guess it counts as #my nonfiction

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