The Taipei Report
Hello everyone,
Coming to you from a small bed in a hostel - which I accidentally booked instead of a hotel - in downtown Taipei.
So, this week I have been in Taiwan for the Taipei Art Book Fair. Taiwan is a place I’d visited once before in 2015 where I had a blast, mainly because I ended up staying at a hostel where there were lots of under-employed Taiwanese people my age and we became good friends, played a lot of music and hung out talking trash. So, armed with great memories I was excited to come back.
And I have to say that it’s been a pretty good visit.
The Taipei Art Book Fair is perhaps the most over-the-top fair I’ve ever attended. Most book fairs are fairly calm and sedate affairs, talking about books, taking it easy, maybe there’s some background music playing, but they are fairly straightforward events.
In Taipei the tables are made from cardboard and egg cartons, there’s a live DJ at all times, there were a few tattoo artists at the fair, someone brought a BOAT to the fair, there were dozens of dogs, it was pretty full on! The most DIY, community spirit fair I’ve attended. And it was really fun.
In addition to being fun, I actually sold some books. Compared to Singapore and Paris I had lower expectations for sales at Taipei and yet it was actually fairly successful. To customers I sold 25 books over three days, so just a smidge above my '1 book per hour’ metric. However a store from Tokyo also bought 6 books before I left, and I was able to deliver 14 books to a store in Taipei that I work with. So if we include those I shifted 45 books over the weekend, which is pretty nice!
So where does this leave me?
Well, I think that I have one month left in my experiment of working for myself and, unfortunately, I have some whopping bills coming up. I need to fix my airconditioning at home - that’s $6000 right there - I need to pay for the printing of a book we’re releasing in 2025, that’s $10,000 right there - and I also need to pay for some branding work as well. While I could technically pay for all of those things and not have $0 in the bank, I think that I need a top up of cash, at least until I have my next product to sell.
Which means that I will be doing some fill in/substitute/supply teaching work in December, January and February.
I’m a bit reticent to do this work as it’s fairly dull and I sort of can’t be bothered, but I think if I use it to fund the next upgrades for the business then I shouldn’t need to tap into that work again. For those of you who I new here I used to be a High School teacher and burned out badly, so badly that I occasionally have dreams about how noisy classrooms are and things like that, 6 years after leaving the profession.
On the other hand, it’s very well paid for very little effort and if I go in basically just taking it easy then I’ll have a bit more of a financial cushion without really expending much effort, and kids can be quite fun and energising too sometimes. I also learned a lot the last time I did this work and it’s now mostly based in an app which makes booking and organising the casual work a lot easier.
Otherwise, I’m ready to be home.
I’m looking forward to 2025 - we have some good books, good workshops, good exhibitions and a lot in the works. I feel that I should prioritise Asia and the USA as places to sell books, and leave Europe for the times it makes sense to visit. I have learned a lot on this trip and am coming home with loads of thoughts and things to work on.
I’m still trying to work out the money side of selling books, and who are customers really are, but on the other hand we are shifting books and I feel more confident moving forward that I know what to work on.
So, this week, after getting back to Melbourne, I have a bunch of work for my dingo project, a few medical things, a huge photo shoot to do, plenty of exercise to catch up on AND I’m teaching a workshop on the weekend.
Over summer my priorities will be:
Earning some extra cash
Continuing the re-brand we’re working on - which I should probably write about next week instead of hinting at it randomly here and there
Taking January ‘off’ - a holiday with my girlfriend
Designing my next book, as well as 1-2 others for 2025
Getting quotes, timelines, etc for our products in 2025
Scheduling workshops for 2025
Making my garage a studio or finding some studio space - I have some leads on good space BUT I’m a bit wary of committing to the money, but one spot looks pretty good and may allow us to host retail events/book launches/etc
Preparing two exhibitions I’m in during the first half of 2025
I want to see my friends :)