Double is triple
My plan, this year, with Tall Poppy Press, was to publish four books spaced out over the year. One in February, one in June, one in September and the last in November.
However, for a few reasons that plan changed and two books are broadly being published at the same time. While initially I thought 'well this will likely be a bit easier, I can condense my work and marketing and all that into a shorter period' I actually found the process harder. Sometimes doubling the output triples the work.
The two books that are coming out - With and For and Ambient Pressure - have both largely been fun to work on but both hit big snags with printing. Ambient Pressure, a book we wanted done, printed and sitting at my house ready to launch hit a major problem when the printer we wanted to use just could not match the quality of printing necessary. We scrambled and luckily found a printer that could do what we wanted, but that change and subsequent quality control meant weeks of back and forths that were necessary, but did mean that the books only arrived yesterday.
There were stressful moments, for sure.
But we got there and we're launching that book on Saturday, and if you're in Melbourne you should come. Check it out here: https://www.perimeterbooks.com/blogs/program/rebecca-najdowski-ambient-pressure-melbourne-book-launch
With and For, on the other hand, had fewer snags, but because the artists I'm publishing live far away from Melbourne, it was tricky for them to see the print quality. Which meant a ton of online meetings, photos, videos, questions, etc. It was a very draining process for me because I'm not always very good at the details and the usual process I use to correct printing wasn't suitable for the artists I was working with. Which made things harder because I want to help, but not every method of helping works for each individual, so that's tough.
But if I'm going to be really honest, the most stressful thing for me is trying to reassure and calm my collaborators. Print and production problems stress me out less because really there's often few choices to make, so you just work out which makes the most sense and go for it. All the possibilities are arrayed in front of you: binding doesn't work? Choose another. Image looks too dark? Lighten it. Paper isn't thick enough? Change stocks. These situations have options and moving forward is at least tractable.
On the other hand, I really pride myself on being collaborative and trying my hardest to enable the artists I publish. Some artists really want to be involved in the process, which is great, but at times it does become crucial to reassure and rebuild trust. I'm not always that good at those things, I've never been very successful at calming people feeling anxiety, whether they are family members, students I work with or peers, it's just something where I get more stressed rather than anyone getting calmer.
This is the sort of thing that's no one's fault, really. Anxiety or nervousness is a product of people caring and wanting things to go well, and that makes a lot of sense. Still when two projects are throwing challenges at the 11th hour it's like arghhhhh shit, and then not being able to dedicate my problem solving to one project but having to split it across two, wow!
I was also overseas on a holiday and that made things trickier for sure.
Actually, it was interesting talking with my girlfriend the other day, I sort of asked her - do you think I was making mistakes or not communicating well? Was there something I did wrong that led to two simultaneously stressful situations? She helped me realise that the norm is for projects to experience set backs. After all, each book is making something that has never existed before, so while we're using machines and processes that have been tried and tested - the exact combination of images we're printing, paper we're using and all that is completely unique - so it's not that one can anticipate a SPECIFIC problem, but that there are always likely to be SOME problems to overcome. I think I can do a better job of sharing that with people I work with moving forward.
I've found that doing two things at once makes some things easier and some things harder, but ultimately releasing books at the same time makes more sense for me. Just because it allows good planning and then more time off between books to work at my day job and make my own art.
I think of this as a bit of a 'seasonal' model where I can publish 2-3 books at a time, launch them around the same spot and have a concentrated period of printing, launching and selling, with longer breaks between publishing to focus on the next books, take a holiday and all that good stuff.
So from next year I'm going to take the experience from doing these two books at once and try and make that happen more regularly. It might produce some short term stress, but maybe a few weeks of frantic problem solving twice a year will also free me up mentally to focus on the rest of what I do.
At the end of the day I love publishing, I think starting Tall Poppy Press has been one of the best things I've ever done. This sort of confession email is really just about learning to go from great to amazing, which is a pretty good spot to be.
Hopefully, if you're a fan of what we do, I'll see you Saturday. Otherwise, until next week :)