When you're starting a new project, such as building a house, your contractor may put forth to you the Project Triangle of options. This gives you the choice of having the work done in two out of three ways: You can have it fast. You can have it cheap. You can have it well-done. Pick two. This triangle also applies to running a business, and it has definitely been in effect for the Grumpy Dragon.
I was starting to feel really ashamed of the number of books we have in print for our two years in operation (two and a half, the half being the one book for which we have a preview copy and are making the edits to send it to press). But then I realized that we were following the triangle and choosing well done and cheap over fast. Here's how those choices are being made:
Cheap:
Our company is running out of our kitchen. And what's more, we refuse to take out a business loan. Until we get more books in print, most of our revenue is coming from writing workshops we conduct around the state at libraries. To say we are running on a shoestring budget is an understatement. It's more like a dental floss budget. And yet, because of our show of restraint in not spending more money than we have to in any one area, we are running in the black for both years that we've been in business. If you ask any business person, they will tell you that a small business showing a profit for both of its first two years is kind of unusual. Most do not. Granted, we're only talking hundreds of dollars here, but it's profit none the less. But the upshot of that strategy is that we sometimes have to delay printing more books or paying for more coverart work until we have a little more revenue in our coffers.
Well-done:
This is really the big time sink for us. There are only two of us in the company (not counting the recently acquired but yet-to-be-used interns), and one of us works full-time as a software engineer aside from work for the company. As a result, work is slow to move through our pipes, especially when we continue to deal with the steep learning curve of all that it takes to actually get a book in print. Sure, if you want to do it quick and have lots of errors you can self-publish something through Lulu or the like. But to really get a quality book out, there are soooo many hurdles to overcome, more than I ever dreamed possible. And I'm discovering that I have a wonderful talent for being overly optimistic in how long a project will take.
Here are some of the major hurdles with which we've been dealing to try to get more books to press:
Software: Guess what? OpenOffice and Word do not export the sort of pdf that performs well at the printer! So, we had to go out and acquire the Scribus package and take the time to learn it. This set us back a couple of months.
Fonts: Surprise! Not all fonts export well to a pdf, and some do not export at all if the author changed one little setting in the font's creation. We lost another couple of months to trying to figure out the legalities of those settings and how we could change them so that our books would look the way we want them to look.
Paperwork: Splat! That's the sound of the PILE of paperwork needed to set up with Ingram Lightning source, get business licenses and tax licenses, and produce royalty statements for our authors. We're learning, slowly, but the paperwork has been a massive (not to mention ongoing!) time sink.
Curve Balls: These can come from any direction and really suck up your time. Here's a recent example: The federal government recently passed a piece of legislation that will require all products intended for children under 12 to be certified to be lead free starting in early February. This appiles to EVERYTHING, including books (unless the ALA and APA convince the feds otherwise). So, our plans for books intended for "all ages" or for children specifically are now on hold until we can make sure our printers are in compliance. We haven't even started looking at our freebies suppliers of things like pencils and temporary tattoos. These may be out of the scope of the ruling since we are giving them away, but what if we ever decided to sell temporary tattoos of some of our artists' work, which is actually part of our long-term plan. Anyhow, this is just one example of things that are thrown at us that take up our time.
All in all, I can see now that we are constantly choosing cheap and well-done over fast. In the future, we're hoping to change the equation a little by generating more revenue. However, I doubt we will ever give up on the well-done even a little. We want everything that comes with The Grumpy Dragon's name on it to be, if anything else, a quality product. We take great pride in our work.
Thanks so much for all our authors, supporters, and customers for being so patient with us these first two years. We really hope things pick up the pace a litte in 2009. We'll give it our best.
Dream big. We'll help.
~~Taliesin
I was starting to feel really ashamed of the number of books we have in print for our two years in operation (two and a half, the half being the one book for which we have a preview copy and are making the edits to send it to press). But then I realized that we were following the triangle and choosing well done and cheap over fast. Here's how those choices are being made:
Cheap:
Our company is running out of our kitchen. And what's more, we refuse to take out a business loan. Until we get more books in print, most of our revenue is coming from writing workshops we conduct around the state at libraries. To say we are running on a shoestring budget is an understatement. It's more like a dental floss budget. And yet, because of our show of restraint in not spending more money than we have to in any one area, we are running in the black for both years that we've been in business. If you ask any business person, they will tell you that a small business showing a profit for both of its first two years is kind of unusual. Most do not. Granted, we're only talking hundreds of dollars here, but it's profit none the less. But the upshot of that strategy is that we sometimes have to delay printing more books or paying for more coverart work until we have a little more revenue in our coffers.
Well-done:
This is really the big time sink for us. There are only two of us in the company (not counting the recently acquired but yet-to-be-used interns), and one of us works full-time as a software engineer aside from work for the company. As a result, work is slow to move through our pipes, especially when we continue to deal with the steep learning curve of all that it takes to actually get a book in print. Sure, if you want to do it quick and have lots of errors you can self-publish something through Lulu or the like. But to really get a quality book out, there are soooo many hurdles to overcome, more than I ever dreamed possible. And I'm discovering that I have a wonderful talent for being overly optimistic in how long a project will take.
Here are some of the major hurdles with which we've been dealing to try to get more books to press:
Software: Guess what? OpenOffice and Word do not export the sort of pdf that performs well at the printer! So, we had to go out and acquire the Scribus package and take the time to learn it. This set us back a couple of months.
Fonts: Surprise! Not all fonts export well to a pdf, and some do not export at all if the author changed one little setting in the font's creation. We lost another couple of months to trying to figure out the legalities of those settings and how we could change them so that our books would look the way we want them to look.
Paperwork: Splat! That's the sound of the PILE of paperwork needed to set up with Ingram Lightning source, get business licenses and tax licenses, and produce royalty statements for our authors. We're learning, slowly, but the paperwork has been a massive (not to mention ongoing!) time sink.
Curve Balls: These can come from any direction and really suck up your time. Here's a recent example: The federal government recently passed a piece of legislation that will require all products intended for children under 12 to be certified to be lead free starting in early February. This appiles to EVERYTHING, including books (unless the ALA and APA convince the feds otherwise). So, our plans for books intended for "all ages" or for children specifically are now on hold until we can make sure our printers are in compliance. We haven't even started looking at our freebies suppliers of things like pencils and temporary tattoos. These may be out of the scope of the ruling since we are giving them away, but what if we ever decided to sell temporary tattoos of some of our artists' work, which is actually part of our long-term plan. Anyhow, this is just one example of things that are thrown at us that take up our time.
All in all, I can see now that we are constantly choosing cheap and well-done over fast. In the future, we're hoping to change the equation a little by generating more revenue. However, I doubt we will ever give up on the well-done even a little. We want everything that comes with The Grumpy Dragon's name on it to be, if anything else, a quality product. We take great pride in our work.
Thanks so much for all our authors, supporters, and customers for being so patient with us these first two years. We really hope things pick up the pace a litte in 2009. We'll give it our best.
Dream big. We'll help.
~~Taliesin
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