Automation

Two years ago, when I kicked off Brain Jar Press, I dropped a bunch of cash on tools designed to streamline my processes. It started with a shiny new MacBook Air, breaking years of I-don’t-use-Macs ideology so I could run the mac-only Vellum software. That was something like two grand of expenses right there, coupled with an ongoing Adobe subscription and access to delivery tools like BookFunnel.

I knew I’d struggle to earn back that money in the first year, and I was totally fine with that. The point wasn’t making the money back, it was making every project I took on a little cheaper to publish. For instance, there was software that did everything Vellum did, but it was a pay-per-project concern or an ongoing subscription.

There are tools that could create covers instead of using Photoshop, but those tools aren’t as advanced or had a steep learning curve. I would be investing time and subscriptions fees to get advanced features, and the net result seemed likely to deliver slightly less than I wanted long-term even if I conquered the learning curve.

You can talk people through the process of side-loading ebooks onto their reader, but it takes time and it takes tech support and I’m happy to outsource both and take the time and attention I saved to future projects.

Because I’ve had those tools in place since Brain Jar launched, it’s been easy to forget how much time they save until external reminders show up. This last week has been full of them: another indie author asked a question about formatting their digital file, and I basically blinked and realised I never thought about such things because Vellum did it for me.

Another conversation, with a non-indie author, focused on the effort-versus-reward of putting together a small passion project not in a space to pitch to publishers–by the time we’d finished a cup of coffee, I’d put together a ebook files and a PDF ready for POD. By the end of the afternoon, there were cover concepts together. It took about three hours, total, to put together the production-side of things (and that was largely because the first cover I mocked up wasn’t a good fit for the style and content).

Essentially, I’d invested a bunch of start-up cash to ensure producing a book wouldn’t take a lot of time. That makes it easier to take risks with conetent, especially since there’s no real printing costs attached to producing ebooks (and, in some cases, in putting together print editions). It’s an approach that makes it easy to try something interesting, because it’s not trying to earn back a huge amount of set-up costs or time spent away from other tasks.

That’s an aspect of indie publishing that doesn’t get talked about a lot. So many of the conversations revolve around how to use those tools to generate a profit, that the fact you can use them to be a small-time art-punk weirdo gets lost in the shuffle.