A lesson for this week...

Step right up Nighthawks!

Right this way!

The moment you’ve all been waiting for…

The biggest publishing flub of my career!

(Don’t worry there’s a lesson in here for you too)

Now look, publishing books ain’t easy.

You’ve got the writing, the editing, the formatting, the design, and so much more…

There’s a lot that goes into publishing, a lot of eyes pass over your work, and a lot of desks it sits atop.

Not only do you have to put your heart on the page but you have to do some math.

How much do I spend on editing?

How much do I spend on formatting?

What will ads cost?

And what do I price the book at?

There’s one very important thing that you need to do during this process… figuring out your profit margins.

In the mess of all that is publishing, my creative side chose to make the companion guide to The Courage Method a 52-Week program, full with weekly checkpoints, daily reflections, and exercises—not to mention the monthly guidance on building habits, finding a therapist, building community— it’s all there.

It’s a lot of stuff… right?

And… it’s a lot of paper.

Now when you figure out your profit margin, you need to know your printing cost, and your printing cost is mainly driven by number of pages.

What’s a page…? Apparently it’s a BACK and a FRONT of a piece of paper.

I overthunk (new word!) the whole process and figured they would want to know how many slices of paper they would need to print on. Are you picking up what I’m putting down.

When I priced out the cost, I put in 250 pieces of paper, and saw that my profit margins were within limit.

But what I didn’t understand was that pages meant BACK AND FRONT.

I had 500 of those!!!

So when I was about to launch the companion guide a few weeks ago, I set my price.

I would need to sell it for $25.00 and to pay for printing and Amazon to take their cut. I’d walk away with zilch.

Back to the drawing board…

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been cutting and slashing to make my 52-Week program and a 21-Week Program… which will probably make any reader happy.

So…what’s the lesson?

SLOW THE FUCK DOWN.

I am so passionate about what I’m doing with publishing that it’s all I want to do. I want to be able to quit my day job and make a full-time living as a writer. I’ve been moving so fast so that I can hit that goal. So fast that I slipped up on my projections. So fast, that I haven’t taken the focus required to make my first book profitable, although it is growing. And so fast, that I’m missing the journey a bit.

As my Sifu says, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”

I should listen.

The moral of the story is… where are we rushing off too?

Life is happening here and now in every moment.

We often find ourselves striving for some better, greater future.

But what if that future is now, what if everything we’ve worked for in the past brought us here. And we are living the dream we created and fought for?

What if…?

Live it,
Dylan

P.S. I will keep you up to date on the companion guide as we get closer. If you know anyone that is suffering with depression or having a rough go of things, go ahead and send them this book, it’s there to help.