I always wanted to publish a book. Because I love beautiful books and I am a multi-disciplinary designer.
When I was living in Warsaw I was learning from local self-publishers. Some of them influenced me a lot. And I started to work on two book projects at the same time. Both books are partly "mine". There is no "client" in these projects. It is a business project with a profit planning approach and it is a project for my soul. It is the thing I wanted to do in my life.
The first project was the diary-based book (named "Lili") which still was in process of writing by my wife. I invented the second project (named "Pralinarium") myself.
I thought that the content, we made for the Academy could be transformed into a book format. After this transformation, the value of this content would increase. Why? Because in 2019 everyone still loves printed cookbooks if they are beautifully crafted. At the same time in 2019, there are plenty of online courses and no one gets if this one "online course" is good. There is a great mistrust and there is a great overestimation of the term "online course". Is it a waste of time and money or is it an investment?
Compared to this, a printed book is always an investment.
I started to work on both projects at the same time while I became an inexperienced father.
As in our previous Academy projects, I continued to do everything by myself.
I did some research, then designed a book, then found a typography partner, and did other product research. Finally, the first book was (self)published.
From that moment, LIMA became an independent publisher.
The first book was sold without distributors. It was an important part of the business model. I was pushing the "drop" model which was used by young independent clothing brands. I saw a lot of similarities between hoodies made by Anti Social Social Club (or Supreme, or Yeezy, or any other brand) and the book made by independent influencers.
The first run of the first book ("Pralinarium", English, ~310 copies) printed copies was sold out 20 minutes after the announcement. It was fun. We were celebrating.
The most comic thing was that we sold the books planning to send them to the customers ourselves. Like a family bookshop :).
It was not fun :).
The only partner was DHL Express chosen for the delivery service. After the experience of sending 310 copies to different customers around the world, I realised that the logistic process should be improved or delegated :). I started to work on it.
Five months later, I made the second edition of the book with minor fixes, production tweaks, updating the cover etc.
The edition increased to ~660 copies. I found a logistic partner who was able to send a large amount of sold products in a short timeframe.
The second book drop took about six days before the total sold out.
I faced a bunch of problems with logistics (synchronization of logistic platforms, customs, delivery and e-commerce services). It took a month to make the whole process work smoothly.
During this period I saw a lot of examples of how big companies struggle with minor mistakes of "end" workers (delivery guys, expeditors, managers).
I understood why big companies work hard trying to unify everything and why they describe the whole process for every single person in the working chain with such attention.
At the same time, I also understood that this DOESN'T WORK in reality. If only the company has no VIBE or FAMILY values inside.
You can read about the VIBE and FAMILY in my own story about co-founding LIMA Academy.
To support the hype around the book I made the third edition with multiple covers named "Golden" and "Black" editions.
A total edition of 660 books was published again. This time everything went smoothly, and the logistic chain was working acceptably.
Sold out in three weeks.
At the same time, I finished working on the diary-based book my wife wrote ("Lili", Russian, ~500 books in total, available also as e-books).
The project could be described as our family side-project, the project of our young life. We made it the way we feel it, without any research. The result is a three-volume book plus a separate cookbook.
While working on this, I delegated a lot of processes. From logistics to proofreading. And in the end – the design. I became an art director for my projects.
In 2021 I decided to write my book. The result was a small edition of the small book named "How to travel with your baby and don't go crazy" (~110 copies, also available as an e-book).
Augmented Reality
I thought that it was a good idea to add augmented reality to the book we had published.
We had a lot of video content which was available in our online courses, we had printed books. The idea to make video-content show up when you read the book was the idea on the surface.
Another few months and here we go. We published another edition of 600 copies of the same book "Pralinarium" but completely redesigned and revisioned. It has an augmented reality layer of content.
To make augmented reality work I made an iOS app with the same name "Pralinarium". I published the app to AppStore.
Again everything by myself, but the AR project was possible only in partnership with the start-up "Visionar" creating AR experiences. I didn't have enough experience to make it fully myself at that moment. The augmented reality layer of content has hundreds of AR targets and additional content.
From this moment we also started to distribute the books using worldwide distributors using the classical model of selling books. We quit the drop model we used at the beginning.
You can buy the book here or you can download the iOS App here
The last project for today is the bookset of three books named "Superpralinarium".
It was published in 2021 (English, ~1800 books in total, sold out). And it restocked in 2022 with an augmented reality layer of content (EDT 2, ~300 books in total).
Today when I say to someone "I make books" I don't think about it on the scale. Truly I made ~4.5K books myself for today.
All books are designed in a way that you have never seen before. I love them, and I am proud of these projects. I like to see big opened eyes when I show these books to people from the industry, then when I show AR features, and then when I say that I made it myself.
I never thought it was possible to make that on such a scale. I believe it is the higher point for me as an individual working on it. I believe it is a good moment for me for another career jump. What could it be? Who knows :).
