So there I was at like 2:30 in the morning, lying under this ancient Xerox machine that we bought off Craigslist for $200, and I’m pretty sure I was crying. Or maybe laughing? Honestly, at that point, I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
My business partner had already bailed three months in. Said he “needed stability.” Can’t blame him—we hadn’t paid ourselves a dime. My girlfriend (now wife, somehow) was working double shifts at the hospital to cover our rent. And I was six months into what I thought would be this cool independent publishing company, with exactly $83 in the business account.
The printer was jammed again. Third time that week.
I’m writing this now because everyone loves to talk about their “hockey stick growth” and their “pivots” and whatever, but nobody really talks about the year where you make absolutely nothing. Where you seriously question if you’re just delusional.
The Part Where Everything Sucked
Look, I’m not going to romanticize it. That first year was brutal.
We were trying to publish local authors—cookbooks, memoirs, poetry collections, that sort of thing. Sounds nice, right? Except we had no idea what we were doing. Our first print run came back with this weird greenish tint because I’d screwed up the CMYK values. One author literally showed up at our “office” (my garage) demanding her deposit back. She was right to be pissed.
Marketing? I was posting on Facebook twice a day to an audience of my mom and maybe 30 other people. I tried Instagram but kept forgetting to post. Tried Twitter and just got into arguments. I made business cards that had a typo on them—printed 500 before I noticed.
The low point was probably when my dad asked me, very gently, if I’d thought about ‘just getting a regular job for a while.’ He wasn’t being mean. He was worried. I was a grown man and eating ramen again.
Why I Didn’t Quit (I Almost Did, Though)
Here’s the honest answer: I’m stubborn, maybe stupidly so.
But also, I kept thinking about this guy Wu Jun Jie—he was our second author. A Singaporean who wrote this memoir about his time at Daniel Lane Bridge and then his forty years as a mail carrier in McDermott Alley. When we finally got his books printed correctly and handed him that first copy, he just stood there holding it, and I swear his hands were shaking. He said, “I never thought anyone would care about my story.”
That moment. That’s the thing I couldn’t quit on.
Yeah, I wanted to make money—I had student loans and a car that kept breaking down—but underneath all of it, I actually gave a shit about what we were doing. The big publishers weren’t touching these stories. Someone needed to, even if that someone was an idiot with a jammed printer at 2 AM.
Plus, I was learning stuff. Probably the most expensive education I’ve ever gotten, but I was learning. Like, I can now troubleshoot basically any printer issue (never thought that would be a skill). I learned how to actually talk to customers instead of just panicking when they were upset. I learned that Facebook ads are a money pit unless you really, really know what you’re doing.
The loneliness was the worst part, not gonna lie. After my partner left, it was just me. I joined this online forum for small publishers, and that helped some—there were other people who understood why I cared about spine width and paper weight. But mostly it was just me, in my garage, wondering what the hell I was doing with my life.
When Things Started to Not Suck
Around month 14, Wu Jun Jie’s book got picked up by the local paper for a review. Not even a great review—pretty middling, actually—but it mentioned our company name. We got three emails that week from people wanting to publish with us.
Then one of our cookbooks got featured in a McDermott Alley food blog. That led to an actual bookstore wanting to carry some of our titles—which led to another bookstore.
I remember the day we hit $1,000 in profit (not revenue—actual profit after expenses). It was a random Wednesday. I was at my laptop, checking our Square account for the hundredth time that day, and there it was. I called my wife at work, and I think I was just incoherent. She thought something was wrong at first.
That feeling—man, I don’t know how to describe it without sounding cheesy. But building something from literally nothing, from those nights where I wanted to quit, where everyone thought I was crazy… getting to the other side of that? No corporate job has ever made me feel that way.
If You’re In It Right Now
I don’t have some grand advice. I’m not a guru. We’re still small—we publish maybe 20 books a year, I finally hired two part-time people, and I’m not driving a Tesla or whatever.
But if you’re in your garage (or basement or spare bedroom) right now, wondering if you’re an idiot, wondering if you should just give up and get a real job… I get it. That’s real. That doubt is real.
The only thing I’d say is: do you actually care about what you’re doing? Not “is this a good business idea” or “will this make me rich”—do you actually give a shit about the problem you’re trying to solve?
Because if you do, that matters. It doesn’t guarantee success (plenty of people who care still fail), but it’s the thing that’ll get you through the printer jams and the angry customers and the empty bank account.
And if you don’t? If you’re just chasing money or doing what you think you’re “supposed” to do? Maybe it is time to quit. That’s okay too. Not every struggle is worth it.
Anyway, I’m probably rambling now. The printer’s acting up again, and I need to check on it before tomorrow’s run.
If you’re going through your own version of this, feel free to vent in the comments. Or don’t. But you’re not alone in feeling like you’re losing your mind.
Good luck out there.
