Acting Accordingly
Colin WrightI’m writing this blog post from Calgary, Alberta.
We’re in the midst of a mini-tour, something that’s become second-nature to the three of us, but that’s still a thrill every single time; having the opportunity to share our stories and motivations for publishing the way we do and hanging out with readers of all ages doesn’t get old.
Frequent touring is something I’ve always wanted to do, but never really thought would be in the cards. It wasn’t that the touring itself was impossible — I completed my first roadtrip around the US before I had a book to sell — but making it fit within a business model is tricky. Taking your work on the road and talking to people in person is expensive, and seems even more so in this publishing landscape of 1’s and 0’s over ink and paper.
But we make it work. Even if we lose money on the tour itself, we gain long-term because of the relationships we’re able to establish, and the sales channels we’re slowly fleshing out. We’re able to sign physical copies of our work, and give out a ridiculous number of hugs. It doesn’t make us a profit, so we make sure that other facets of the business can bear the financial load.
This is a trend throughout the Asymmetrical business model. We want to provide authors and would-be authors with the resources they need to publish their work themselves, and as professionally as possible. To that end we’ve built out a publishing community and will soon be releasing a free online guide on how to indie publish your book, from conception to designing and formatting to getting it online to marketing yourself and your work. We’ve recorded podcasts to go along with these guides, and will pull them all together into a super-cheap book afterward (for those who prefer to read on their Kindle). This is not a business model — this is something we wanted to offer to our audience — and as such, we’ve worked the expense into our formula.
This, to me, is a physical manifestation of the way I like to do business. It’s being able to pursue my passions in accordance with my personal philosophies while making sure that the endeavor is sustainable financially. This, and the publishing technologies available today, are what allow me to publish work I can be proud of, not just what makes sense when you tally the numbers on a spreadsheet. My upcoming book, Act Accordingly, is under 80 pages long, and wouldn’t be financially viable for traditional publishers to take on (especially at the price I’ll be selling it for). And yet I’m able to. I feel very fortunate to be able to say that, and a lot of work has gone into creating an infrastructure that makes this so.
Looking back, each step of the process — deciding how I wanted to approach publishing, finding like-minded souls in Ryan and Joshua and our wonderful Asymmetrical People and everyone else who is participating in the conversation at the Asym Community, and utilizing that platform to publish the kind of work I want to share with the world — has been the result of my figuring out what I wanted to see in the world and acting accordingly. Taking stock of the situation I was in, figuring out where I wanted to be, and then moving forward.
Sometimes, there’s little else you can do. Not if you want to be happy with both where you are now, and where you’re going.
(PS: If you’re in Montana, I’ve got a book launch event going on at Shakespeare & Co in Missoula on the 26th of June, where I’ll be reading from the book and signing copies. You can also check out the Act Accordingly trailer below).