When it rains, it pours. Since returning from Patagonia, I’ve done several talks and have several more on the way, including this one with CPAC. I’ve been a fan of CPAC for years, and especially like their program centered around United States military veterans. We ask a lot of our veterans, so anything we can do to help them out is a good thing. As you can see, this talk is about self-publishing, a topic that always comes with excitement, trepidation, misinformation, disinformation, historical heaviness, and wild freedom and abandon. (I like this last part the best.)
When I talk about these things, I often come from a direction that surprises people.
I try to spend as little time as possible on things like software, color management, etc, and I try to dwell on things like telling a good story, choosing the right materials, setting a realistic goal, and experimentation. Funky beats perfect any day of the week. The difference between an artist-driven book and a story-driven book, how to build a real audience, and how to unlearn what holds us back. Authors were self-publishing before they were publishing, a fact that gets lost on people. Self-publishing your work is but one option, but with today’s tools, it offers an incredible range of possibilities.