As many know, I get busy and fall off the radar around this time every year. For five years now I’ve been doing seasonal SCUBA diving work. As interesting as that might sound, it’s anything but glamorous — chiefly, I pull weeds out of marinas and swim areas. It’s strenuous, exhausting, dirty work, and I’ve enjoyed every minute. I thought I might show a little of that — here are some pictures from the most recent job I was on pulling weeds and garbage at a swim area …
Empty tank — time to get a new one … and a sandwich!Time to pop back in…This looks so Baywatch — right?!This was at the end of the day — my boss asked me to do surface work, which involves swimming around and catching picked weeds floating around that didn’t get collected in our bags while under water.Get your mask in the right spot and don’t get water on the inside … it’s quite preferable!I usually work in the water for 4-6 hours — moving efficiently is key — even when swimming without gear.No matter how efficient one works, at the end of the day it can be difficult to get up and out of the water.
So why do I disappear in spring? Frequently, this work takes me away from the Whidbey Island Baking Company headquarters. The jobs are in the spring, so I have to go do the work when I can get it. Between jobs I’m busy staying on top of everything else. This keeps me a bit too involved for my Recipes Of The Month and working on my books … but it’s good to get away from time to time, right?
Summer is coming, and one of the things that comes with summer is vacation in all its forms. Whether you call it vacation, holiday, break, or retreat, it’s a great time to dust off your daily routine and exercise your sense of tourism. Take off to that place you always wanted to go to, attend that annual festival you never miss, visit those friends and relations you’ve been meaning to spend some time with, or escape to that quiet out-of-the-way place you’ve heard about. Take a book, and get a souvenir — or better yet, buy a book as a souvenir!
Pulling over and blocking the road just to take pictures of cows …. that we don’t appreciate quite so much. Seriously folks … it’s just a cow.
Here on Whidbey Island we know tourism — at a certain point in spring it turns on like a fire hose! Suddenly we go from being a rural island to having people EVERYWHERE! We appreciate that you want to come to this somewhat out-of-the-way rock of ours — we are off the beaten-path, so it’s flattering that you thought to come here and visit little-ol’-us. With any luck, about now you might be asking yourself, “Well, if I visited Whidbey Island, what would I do — where would I go, what would I see???”
The historic Deception Pass Bridge located at the north end of Whidbey Island
Of course, I’m biased — I’m going to tell you that if you are visiting Whidbey Island to go drop by one of the shops carrying my book. Frankly though, that’s not just a plug for my book — I’m suggesting these shops because they’re in great locations that I believe you will enjoy, and these shops are are operated by delightful people.
If you take the ferry from Mukilteo to get on the island at the south end in Clinton, just go a little ways up Highway 525 and you’ll see Goose Grocery on the right in Bayview.
Kingfisher Bookstore
A curvy-road-ways after Highway 525 turns into Highway 20, you’ll come to an intersection with a foot-bridge crosswalk, a gas station, and our hospital. Turn north to visit historic Coupeville and find The Kingfisher Bookstore located overlooking Penn Cove on Front Street. They have a local-authors table that includes my book. Ask for Meg or Brad and tell them I sent you.
(Read my recent blog post about Kingfisher Bookstore.)
I AM PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE …
Yes, it’s formerly a firehouse
Last and certainly not least … As of Today I am once-again doing business with The 3 Sisters Farm Market, located at 779 N Holbrook Rd, Coupeville, WA 98239 — that’s on the north side of Penn Cove on the south side of Highway 20 — red building, you can’t miss it. Visit the 3 Sisters Market — their farm is the biggest producer of food here on the island and everything in their market is local-Local-LOCAL! Pick up a copy of my book, show it to the clerk at the register, and tell them that “Don The Author sent me!” You’ll probably also want to tell them that they have a great shop … why … Because They Do, hands down.
Geoff Castle’s 2013 Celtic Xmas Concert in Anacortes, WA – photo courtesy of Chris Terrell
Lately I focused some of my time on studying how to build oneself in the business of self-publishing books — in other words, marketing.
When it comes to gaining attention, my knowledge-base was born out of the music industry — promoting bands, representing albums, and selling my services as a solo Highland bagpiper for people’s life events ranging from weddings to retirement parties and of course funerals. I applied this DIY gumption and (albeit subtly) my rock ‘n’ roll marketing approach to period of my business when I was producing baked goods, and I have been continuing this into this new endeavour of writing and self-publishing recipe books.
E-Readers
Thanks Aleta!
As you will recall from my 07Nov2017 blog post, an online friend — Aleta — generously offered to send one of her earlier e-readers to me. She wanted to support my plan to turn my first recipe book into an e-reader edition, and it helps to have a device to view your work as you are converting your book file into an e-reader file. As I have been learning about the conversion process I have also started learning about other authors publishing and marketing their e-books. Much to this voracious reader’s joy I have also learned about free e-books! Among these I have found books and articles on marketing. This morning I read a marketing article that enhanced both thoughts and plans I already had…
How to Turn your Book into 18 STREAMS of Income
by Kary Oberbrunner
Kary Oberbrunner … we haven’t met.
Go-getters, movers and shakers, creative people, and artist have at least two things in common — we all have great ideas to work from and we all make mistakes. When we learn from our mistakes or learn about mistakes to avoid and-how we all grow!
Kary Oberbrunner’s article “How to Turn your Book into 18 STREAMS of Income” points out marketing mistakes for writers to avoid (like thinking of books as business cards) along with options and opportunities that they may have not realized. Some of what Mr. Oberbrunner presents in his article I am already familiar with and is parallel to my direction — other elements have shown me new ideas or ways to think differently about things I already know.
His main focus in this article is for writers to turn their books into an income stream. One morsel — section 2 on ebooks, suggesting why most (every?) author should turn their printed book into an e-book — particularly resounded with my plans and I had an AH-HA! moment. The gist of the writing was …
“Ebooks are as close as your smartphone. You can read an ebook while standing on a subway, sitting in a doctor’s office, or waiting in line at the grocery store.”
Relative to my recipe book everything before ‘grocery store’ made sense once I read ‘grocery store‘.
Recipe Books — JOY JOY JOY!
Folks haul their phones everywhere, and often folks with e-readers haul them everywhere, too. They might have 100+ books on their e-reader but they don’t haul 100 books everywhere. Most of the books I have put on my phone duplicate to my e-reader and vice versa.
While I have queried and found that most people prefer to NOT cook or bake working from recipes on an e-screen, it could still be beneficial to have your recipes — or preferably My Recipes (<– I am not above shameless self promotion) — on your phone or e-reader. Folks don’t haul all their recipe books to work where they think about what they are going to make for dinner, and then haul those books to the grocery store where they double check ingredients they are going to buy.
The big AH-HA! I had was…
I had already planned to convert my book to an e-book, but now I am thinking — PLEASE put my recipe book on your electronic device. If you don’t want to work in the kitchen from an electronic screen, I understand — to each their own — but bring it with you when you shop, or when you are going to be thinking about what you’re going to make for your friends or family. Or what you might make for the hottie in the accounting department at work whom you just landed a date with!
Does it make sense for me to convert my recipe book to an e-book?
Do you ever find yourself in your kitchen making something tasty thinking to yourself “You know, that one thing that I do in my kitchen is a good idea and other people would benefit from knowing about it.”? Yeah, me too. Well, here’s your chance!
Over this past weekend while doing a little baking I thought of something I might add to my current in-process baking book — KITCHEN TIPS! What’s a Kitchen Tip? Well, one of my ideas — and I would hope this should be obvious — is to always keep your oven mitts or hot pads in a consistent place so you’re not scrambling for them when the timer rings. I thought up & wrote down about another 5 and then I thought “ENGAGE YOUR PUBLIC” — so……..
WHAT ARE YOUR BAKING-RELATED KITCHEN TIPS? Comment below ….. yes, I’m actually going to allow comments for once. These would be suggestions related to setting up your kitchen for baking or around the process of baking (etc). Write your tips, hints, & ideas here — they might get included in my baking book!
“Collect your cookie crumbs – they go great on top of ice cream! For best results, serve soon.” Marion C. – Milwaukee, WI”.
If I publish your idea I will try to let you know in advance. Also, I would like to put your name & location as written above. Now, I should also say — while I like this idea for my book, I’m not sure how I might include them. My original idea was to disperse these notes throughout my tome but that doesn’t fit with my mental image of the contents – so these might end up as their own section instead.
Submit your ideas & you just might get your name in print!
Enjoy ~ Don
Yesterday was a big day, and today has been at least as big.
Around November 2015 I came to realize a number of issues for me/WIBC to continue doing business as it has during the past year+. To this end, I identified that I wanted to keep going with a baking business in a different form and would need to cease my production of baked goods. Yesterday & today I informed the managers of the various businesses WIBC sells product through, and today I’ve made my first general-public announcements. It is my aim to transition (or in business language “pivot”) WIBC into a company that is about baking & other food preparation.
A number of things have gone very well for WIBC as a production baking company – particularly for being in business just over a year. Of these attributes I have brand & product recognition, a loyal customer base, and the company has broken even. The challenges, on the other hand, are numerous – and every new business has these – and as a small business owner you keep your chin up, eyes forward, and you constantly exercise your resourcefulness muscle.
In my case & for WIBC, there are a few primary issues and myriad secondary issues. More than anything, based on hard data & my objective considerations, the company is not making enough money to be able to grow both as a company and to where I can help provide people in my community with much needed employment (these are related). Additionally I have found the demands of this particular form of business to be very ‘grindstone’ – my passion for cooking lays in creating recipes and sharing the enjoyment of good food with others, and the labour involved in mass production leaves little time for any of this.
As said, I look to turn WIBC into a company ‘about food’ sharing my passion for creating recipes & the enjoyment of good food – but what does this mean & how do I intend to do it?
My plan is to start with producing cookbooks* and grow into presenting cooking videos and classes. Since my November awareness I have started work on my first cookbook and I am PLEASED to say that this is already going very well! At present it will feature the recipes for all WIBC products along with the recipes I had intended to bring to market – around 50 or more recipes along with other interesting beverage & cooking to-dos.
Some individuals may view the changes I am making to WIBC as meaning that the company has somehow failed or been unsuccessful – that would be a mistake, short sighted, and even to say dismissive. In no way do I consider the past year, three months and three days to be in any way bad, in error, or failed – horrendously challenging at times, sure, however never unsuccessful**. I am glad to have tried my hand at making a production baking company; I believe I have developed as an individual, a professional, and as a business person. Also important to me, given the ingredients I chose to use and not use in my WIBC products, is having to helped further the local food movement both in content & concept. From these past 428 days I have many experiences that I am grateful for and willalways remember.
In practical terms ceasing production is relatively easy – on the day I determine as my last I will discontinue baking & deliveries, pack up my kitchen supplies and go home. On a personal level however, while I see ‘brighter horizons’ ahead, stopping what I have been doing is not without difficulty – I have a lot of time invested in WIBC, enthusiasm for the products I have brought to market, and the relationships that I have built with others are significant to me. While I am not closed to the idea of some day re-launching as a production baking company – it all depends on where my ‘about food’ cookbook-etc approach to WIBC leads and what looks like I will enjoy doing. In the mean time as an accent to the new direction of WIBC I may consider re-launching as a cottage business – for now, however, my focus is on everything ahead & I am excited however about what I’m going toward.
As I worked toward launching WIBC I referred to the Journey song “Don’t Stop Believin’”. I had a dream of launching a baking business – and I’ve done it! Now it’s just changing. I am thankful for the support I have received from my customers – individuals who I share the view with that food should be tasty, healthy, and made locally – and I am grateful for the loving support my friends & family gave me when I started this venture and that they continued to give me when I said that I am looking to modify WIBC. I will be pleased to have each of you join me as WIBC grows in this new direction.
Don’t Stop Believing – I still do!
All the Best, Don
Whidbey Island Baking Company – Owner & Soon-To-Be Author
* Before anyone (else) says something about the amount of effort and the years of work it takes for a company to begin to see a profit OR that you don’t make any money off of writing – trust me,I know already.
** Consider what I have done leading up to and during this production period of my business…
Founded a business with name, logo, and image
Developed & brought to market an array of original products
Established brand & product recognition in the market
Website development & online marketing
Managed all financial aspects of the company including purchasing, accounting, and taxes
Cultivated personal business relations with outside companies
Lead my business & support staff to markets & sales events
Contributed to local food banks & connected with military service personnel & their families by offering a military discount
