It’s a wrap! February 2016

February was such an exciting month. After spending a month in my bedroom due to the surgery, I jumped into February head over heels, overflowing with excitement. 

On the 2nd of February, the Kickstarter campaign for My Creative (Side) Business ended successfully and we raised €10.366, which enabled me to pay an editor, an illustrator, and a designer to finalize the book, order the first print run, and cover the shipping costs. 

Given I had so many backers from the US, I immediately booked a flight to ship their books from NYC. (Yay!) It might have been more of a hassle to go to the post office in New York given how difficult it is there (you might remember my experience from last year), but it was cheaper and also more fun, which I think is the main reason why one should do a Kickstarter project. 

As a self-publisher, your job is far from done after you’ve written your book. After we raised the money, it was time to make the most important decisions and actually finalize the print and e-book files. I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the options we had our community vote on, so we continued working on an additional option based on the feedback we received. 

For the cover, I wanted to connect analog and digital even more, so we added #smartcreatives to the title for me to be able to connect with everyone who has read the book and shared about it online. My favorite part of being a self-published author is that I’m able to talk to the people who enjoy reading my titles.

Luckily, Kickstarter and I have decided to extend my contract for another six months. In the past ten months, I focused on reaching out to potential creators, but in the future, I will focus on trying to figure out tools and strategies to increase the success rate in the German-speaking countries, a much more exciting and far more challenging focus of my work efforts.

I have also began talking to the Impact Hub Vienna team about joining them as a social media coordinator, but after joining a couple of their meetings, we mutually decided that it might not be the best fit. I’ve learned in the past that work styles must align; otherwise, a collaboration is almost impossible and given my ability to spend time with the team at their office is very limited, we decided it was best not to explore this opportunity any further. 

There are so many exciting opportunities in this world, and as fun as it would be to take on all of them, we sometimes have to diplomatically say “no” and focus on what we’re able to accomplish. In other words, if something doesn’t give you a good reference, it’s not worth proceeding. And if you don’t have the time to do something properly, it’s most certainly not going to result in the feedback you’d for sure like to receive for your efforts. 

What are you currently working on and who are you working with? Feel free to hit me up on email!