Work Notes  

Self Publishing Class this weekend March 7 at 9am PST / 12pm EST (Recorded with lifetime access if you can't make it live) $55

The Practice of Attention Study Group : Sundays at 5pm EST April 12 - May 31 Join the Waitlist 

Cody's Clubhouse (working title): Writing Group beta test Join the Waitlist 

Dear Reader,

As I prepare for the official release of my next book, I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences in traditional publishing vs. self-publishing as well as the efforts that are similar.

I love books, I’ve made six now, and each one has its own special feeling. Some are catalogues and some are long form writing like The Practice of Attention.

In my process of making and putting books out, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. From printing to marketing to publicity, some pivots have cost me nothing, and some have cost me seemingly everything.

Today I wanted to break down my true costs on both ends of the book-making spectrum - traditional and self-publishing, and my most expensive pivot to date.

Fantasy #1
Traditional publishing = the publisher pays for everything.

Fantasy #2
Self-publishing = cheap and easy.

Neither of these is actually true. Every book costs something.

Money.
Time.
Energy.
Attention.

There are two real questions:

What does it cost to flop?

What does it cost to succeed?

Over the past decade of making books, I’ve experienced both sides of this spectrum. From crowd funding to pre-orders : books I self-published for almost nothing. Books that cost a lot of money to create but nothing to distrbute.

And now, a new book with an indie/traditional hybrid publisher that has its own completely different economics.

So today I want to do something writers rarely do publicly. I’m going to break down the actual costs.

What I spent.

What I made.

And what I would do differently.

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