NYC Pricing Workshop for Creatives - Tuesday April 9, 2019

As I mentioned in my last post, I understand how difficult it is for some people to dedicate time and headspace to working on their pricing.  Yet, I also know how empowering it is when people finally do make that time and space to dig into their numbers and get clear on how everything needs to pan out.

This may be the only NYC in-person pricing workshop I can offer this year between my travels.  So, if you know someone who feels like they aren't making enough in their creative business, or is afraid to get started because pricing is overwhelming, this is the perfect workshop for them.  It's a full day workshop hosted in the middle of Manhattan.  There are only 12 spots in order to give each person the individual help and attention they may need.  I hope you'll pass the info along to someone who needs it!  If they can't make the workshop, you can always recommend they get the Pricing Workbook for Creatives to try on their own!

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The Pricing Workbook Editing Process

In my fantasy version of life, a book agent would have recognized my prolific ability to write at any point in over a decade of sharing deeply meaningful personal blogs here or concise business advice written over on PhotoLovecat.  I fantasize that an agent would have seen some kind of raw talent in my writing and suggested the perfect book that I could craft to meet market demands- but no, that was not my journey.

I have heard of those journeys and admit to being more than a little jealous of people who have had supportive ushers for their creativity along the way, while also reminding myself to keep that comparison mindset in check so that I don’t lose sight of what I am uniquely learning through my own journey.

What I have learned by not having a red carpet rolled out for me is how to carve my own path and press-on in spite of any obstacles that arrive.  I’ve learned how to gather my own resources and how to find great people who have been willing to help.  I’ve learned that life is too short for me to dwell on what I don’t have, when I could just use that time to move forward and make it happen on my own.

Part of what makes the journey worth it for me is sharing the process along the way.  So, here's an inside look at the process I've gone through to help refine the content and clarity of the Pricing Workbook for Creatives...

The first round of editor comments and suggestions came from people who actually went through the process of applying the workbook material to their life and business.  I wanted to know that people could successfully complete the workbook in DIY format, so I offered to let over 25 people access the material for free.  I wanted to make sure that it would be good enough to stand up on its own without any additional material or hand-holding so I could make sure it was possible to make relevant and meaningful to different creative lives and businesses.

Out of those 25, there were only 2 people motivated to get through the material on their own.  This didn’t surprise me, since most of the people in my network who offered to test the material are already business owners and have little to no need to actually go back into their numbers and start from the beginning again.  When the “need to know” factor is low, so is the motivation to actually go through the process.

The 2 people who dug into the work, Eve Klein - Textile Audio, and Stacey Natal - Life Happens Now, are both smart  multi-passionate creatives who intersect several different disciplines.  This was a great creative match and challenge to put the workbook through. They have been able to apply the process of the workbook to their own creative life and business with really no hand-holding or help from me, and they provided great feedback at just the right points in the book.  They asked all the right questions that I was hoping could be intuited and considered by the prompts in the material.  They also helped me understand that the material in the workbook was easy to understand and that the work itself wasn't holding anyone else back.  Everyone else wasn't being held back by a lack of clarity or understanding, just a lack of motivation.  This is actually an expected problem around self-motivated learning and why a lot of people go to workshops or classes to learn- many people just aren't motivated to do the work themselves.  So, I feel lucky that I had a couple self-motivated learners who were willing to test it out.

I could have stopped the editing process there and probably been just as happy, but I’m a bit of a perfectionist.  I also know that I have a tendency to assume things are easy to understand, so I wanted to enlist even more critical editor feedback to make sure everything appeared clear and easy to understand, as well as grammatically correct.

Finding a couple extra editors turned out to be easier than the recycled printer part of the process, and much more affordable than I expected I might need to encounter.  Thanks to the B-School Facebook Alumni community of people looking to trade services for each other, I was able to find an editor and writing teacher, Rachel Van Horne who could bring a fresh eye to the workbook to edit for clarity, and in trade, I could help her get clarity and focus on moving her own creative business forward.  It was a win-win and we were able to trade our time and guidance for each other before the deadline for publication.

Even though that probably would have been enough, I went even one step further and asked my mother, a professional editor for a publishing company in a former life, also go through and do all the nit-picking work that I knew only she could do and not hold back on.  She’s been so kind as my mother not to correct my daily instagram post errors, but I had a feeling that if asked, she would really put the workbook through the gauntlet.  Gratefully, she offered to do this for free, and she was just as brutal as I hoped she’d be.  In turn I only made her slightly upset by choosing not to use a few of her professional editing notes for personal style and format reasons.  (Thanks for forgiving me, mom!)  I also found it hilarious that she edited out her own name as a listed editor.  She says she doesn’t need to be recognized, but I secretly wonder if she doesn’t want to be held professionally responsible for the suggestions I didn’t take. ;-)  

This week I reviewed all of the combined edits and made the relevant updates to the material.  So now I can officially say that the written part of the workbook is done.  Any edits that I make from here will come after publishing the material and receiving questions and feedback from the first year of people working through the workbook on their own.  I feel confident at this point that the work is good enough to stand on its own so that if I died tomorrow I wouldn’t feel like I left anything out or that it was incomplete.  If I find that there are some common misunderstandings or confusion after the first year, I’ll revise the material to make sure it’s easier to understand and apply to various situations.

This week I also sponsored a short 90min workshop for a group of young NYC musicians to begin to apply this workbook to their creative life.  I did a lot of hand-holding and prompting around what average costs would be in NYC because many of them had never really taken control of understanding the financial situation they’d need to manage to work independently as a creative.  It reminded me of where I started- before I had any experience taking everything into my own hands and learning how to control it all.  I remembered how confusing and confronting it can be to look at everything that needs to be taken care of and getting overwhelmed.

Based on working through a lot of my own issues and working with other people on their issues around money, I know how emotional money can be.  One little word on a page that needs a number can completely shut someone down emotionally because it’s something that triggers a fear, an unsolved need, or brings up extra baggage and issues that haven’t been faced.  I get it.  I've been there and learned how to take back the fear and regain control.  The process in this book is a large part of how I did that.

Being in the room while the emotional money stories start to unfold is always insightful, and gives me a chance to do some empathetic hand-holding and encouragement that the future can be better than the past.  When we know better, we can do better.  Sometimes we all just need that little bit of extra support and dedicated space to face the issues we need to face in order to get on the other side of being in greater control of it all.

Because of this week’s in-person workshop experience, I definitely see the need to offer a few more workshops so that I can help people face those issues head on in a way that helps them have greater confidence in their ability to move forward and do the work.  Eventually this may lead to an online help group or a more robust series of coursework, but I’m also trying not to get too far ahead of getting the workbook published on deadline.  If you’re interested in a future workshop around the workbook- you can sign-up for workbook news and updates at http://pricingworkbookforcreatives.com.

The next steps from here are moving the workbook from its format from Google Docs to the Kindle & KDP Print-on-demand format.  I wish it was as easy as just exporting to PDF format, but there are some page numbers that need to be moved around and some extra pages added for the print version that don’t need to be in the e-book version, and a book cover that needs to be laid out.  It seems like this should be an easy thing, but I’m slightly terrified of screwing it all up, so I’ve hired a designer to help me make sure it doesn’t get messed up.

Self-Publishing & Eco-Friendly Printing

When I decided to self-publish the Pricing Workbook for Creatives instead of trying to go through traditional publishers, one of the things I also retained control over was how it would be printed, and who it would be printed by.  Of course, control also means added responsibility and workflow steps to make it all happen, but after so many years of running an entire creative business largely on my own,  I'm no stranger to managing a lot of things.

Luckily I didn't have any expectations of how long this process would take.  

I knew some things would just take time, and getting paper samples from a variety of printers has certainly taken a bit more time than I might have guessed.  In some cases, samples arrived in one week from contacting a printing house, in others, it was three weeks just for paper samples to arrive for testing as workbook paper to write and erase on.

I care about how it feels to actually do the work and write on the paper, and I want to make sure it's a good experience that feels good to keep working on, no matter how many times it needs to be erased.

There have also been about 50% dropped inquiries, where I've requested a quote and received half follow-up on a quote or total radio silence.  Obviously I'm going to give my business to the responsive printing companies that care about communication, rather than those that don't follow-thru.  I also learned that some paper samples looked really promising online, but once I had them in my hands, I realized they weren't going to work due to the actual texture and surface of the paper, which is exactly why I needed to make sure I received some samples and not just price quotes.  Apparently I'm super picky about paper!



(Paper sample from Rolling Press based in Brooklyn, NY.  Great for writing & erasing on!)

I would like to be conscious about my printing options by choosing recycled paper products and non-toxic soy-based earth friendly inks.  

Unfortunately, these options are still more expensive than traditional options with less recycled content and toxic inks.  Luckily, I think the material in the workbook is valuable enough to make it worth the cost of paying more to be earth conscious.  I would certainly sleep better at night knowing that people are writing out their future dreams for a passionate creative life on the recycled papers of old corporate reports full of wasteful ideas that require squashing people's dreams for corporate profits.  OK, that may be just a fantasy version of recycled paper use, but it still feels so much more satisfying than thinking about ripping a bunch of old trees out of Indonesia.


(Paper sample from Greener Printer based in Port Richmond, CA.  Better for magazine style photo printing with satin surfaces than for gritty workbook printing.)

The hardest part is the financial sustainability of printing on eco-conscious papers while also working with traditional publishing and distribution options.  

One printing quote I received from a shop in Los Angeles that had been recommended by a New York art book printer was so high that I literally think I lost my ability to breathe when I looked at the quote.  They were 3x more than any other quote- which meant they were 9x more than traditional book printing, and I wondered who they are actually working for at those rates?  Maybe they've cornered all the Oscar and Grammy printed program business?  I don't know... but I do know I can't choose a printer who will make the workbook unaffordable to access, just so it can be printed sustainably.

The best eco-friendly printers sent not just paper samples, but entire book samples of products that were similar in shape, size, and binding to the one I'm creating.  

Huge kudos to the book printing houses below for following up on my request for a quote and samples with not just paper samples, but full size workbook samples similar in size, paper type, and binding type to what I was requesting, based on other projects they've already printed in their shop.  I think they know that if we have a great relationship right out of the inquiry gate, I'm going to do all of my follow-up book printing with them- so it's smart move to go a little further up front.


(Book & Paper Sample from Bookmobile based in Minneapolis, MN.  Maximum 30% post-consumer waste paper options.)


(Book & Paper Sample from Thomson-Shore based in Dexter, MI.  Offers 100% post-consumer waste paper options as well as FSC certified mixed PCW options.)

The biggest financial sustainability challenge is combining the cost of eco-friendly printing with Amazon online distribution.

Once I finally got to a place of finding some good potential printing options and selected my ideal printer based on the printing samples, I started pricing out the costs for the printing and shipment, and how much it would leave remaining after Amazon takes their own cut of a book.

This is where Amazon starts to look like the big bad wolf blowing everyone's houses down.  Amazon is a double-edged sword.  On one hand, they cut through a lot of the hassle of working with traditional publishing houses and they give authors more control over updates and changes on their books as well as reaching international markets online.  On the other hand, Amazon is taking 65% of each e-book sale, and about the same percentage after all is said and done of each Print-on-Demand book as well.  Ouch.  This margin is still better than what a traditional publisher would take for a traditional book sale through hundreds of different retail stores, so to an Author, it might also appear to be a better deal than not self-publishing.

Cha-ching for Amazon!  Ouch for the Environment.  

There's also no option to request eco-friendly Print-on-Demand options.  If this was addressed, it could be a huge shift in publishing house practices to make the demand for eco-friendly papers, inks, and binding options more affordable if implemented at the enterprise level of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other print-on-demand providers.  What a massive social change that might create to also make it profitable to employ more people to do more waste-recycling efforts around the world.

If Amazon can't print eco-friendly, I thought, what if I skipped the traditional Print-on-Demand and sold the book as an Amazon FBA seller?  The Amazon cut would be less than the Print-on-Demand option, however, the added cost of using an eco-friendly printing option PLUS the Amazon commission and storage of a large print run of books actually makes it financially unsustainable to work with an eco-friendly option while distributing with Amazon.

FFFFFFFFFFFUCK.  
There goes the eco-friendly print plan for online distribution with Amazon.

If I were going to print a bunch of eco-friendly books, I'd have to find another way to sell them.  I'd have to find a way that didn't take such a large cut of the remaining profit margin after printing them with sustainable papers and inks.  Essentially, I'd only be able to sell environmentally friendly editions as part of workshops, conferences, classes, or learning experiences where I'd haul a bunch of them to provide in person.

I have no plans to become my own distribution center for one-off purchases of a book.  

This is how Amazon and Print-on-Demand options end up winning the online book game and the book profit game in the end, and how they force more books to be printed on papers that are not FSC Certified or post-consumer waste content, with inks that are not environmentally friendly.

Even at the price of a $35 book, it is financially unsustainable to print an environmentally friendly workbook and make it available for distribution through Amazon.  There needs to be enough profit margin to buy the next round of books to be printed as well as shipping, and with Amazon, that's simply not an option.

However, if doing an in-person workshop, where the book is just part of the workshop materials, it's sustainable to go with eco-friendly printing because the only other cost to consider is shipping and it can be folded into the cost of goods to produce the workshop or class, which would definitely be more than $35 in order to be sustainable to run as an in-person workshop.

The unhappy ending.

Since I will be traveling internationally the first year that the Pricing Workbook for Creatives is in production, I will not be able to manage storage of printed books, nor will I be offering workshops in person that will need bulk printed copies of the books.  I'll be giving in to Amazon's business engine, because it's what is going to help the most people while I travel, but not being able to print environmentally friendly is the part that makes me sad.

Hopefully, hearing stories from people around the world who use the workbook to launch their dream projects will make me hate Amazon less.  I hope so.  I need some light at the end of the Amazon distribution tunnel.

I promise to continue fighting and finding a way to make eco-friendly printing easier to access.  

This blog post is just the beginning of the journey to sharing resources around how we can overcome the financial issues involved with eco-friendly printing and focus on finding a better way toward greater financial sustainability with options that offer environmental sustainability.  For now, I have to do what I can to make sure the first year of this book is fiscally sustainable so that it can support the artists and creatives that it needs to serve.  My hope is that next year, I can focus more on workbook offerings that make use of eco-friendly printing sources, as a way to inspire others to do more of the same with the work they create.

The Pricing Workbook for Creatives is scheduled to be released in Kindle format on May 5, 2019.
Sign up if you would like to be on the early release notification: http://pricingworkbookforcreatives.com