It is odd that, as a business analyst and strategist, I am great at telling other people how to run their businesses, but bad at taking my own advice.
Part of the reason I started Precinct Omega Limited, though, was to begin walking the walk, and part of the reason for this blog is to share my experience of that journey.
A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in a deep funk about my inability to jump-start interest in Ballmonsters! more dramatically. Which led to a bit of social media vaguebooking, which caused some interesting conversations. Long story short: sometimes, a depressive episode (which was what it was - I am occasionally plagued by that black dog, but lately he's become clever so I don't always notice he's there) can have positive outcomes.
I was approached by a small but reputable business with a proposal. The details don't matter, but what did matter was that one aspect of that proposal would have involved me breaking my contractual arrangement with Osprey who publish Horizon Wars. I contacted Osprey and they were quite positive, but didn't want to be left with stock on their hands, so offered me the chance to buy out the remaining stock for about £5,000.
To be clear: I don't have £5,000. And although - for about 24 hours - I contemplated attempting to crowdsource that money, I realized that it wasn't worth the hassle. What I did realize, though, was that by trying to make my other products - Over the Horizon and Zero Dark - "perfect", I was doing what I always tell businesses not to do: I was leaving money on the table.
That is, there are people out there who actively want to give me money for these books and, by holding onto them, all I'm doing is putting an unnecessary gap in the period in which their money becomes mine. This led to me to realize two things: the first is that I should stop messing about and get the manuscripts finished and up for purchase in PDF form; the second was that, as a designer, I should avoid talking publicly about games I'm working on until they're nearly ready to release, in whatever form.
Now, I am going to wait long enough to publish to put some photography together. But no longer than that!
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