It’s been almost a year since we started developing the original idea for what turned into The Consistency Journal. This post is intentionally brief and incomplete:

Sometimes an experiment needs months or years to work out. Taking on work outside of an experiment can buy the time and relaxation you need to sustain it. It reminds me of how the Pokemon Company sustained itself by doing services work while making its first games, which delayed the process.

Part of this practice involved not engaging deadline pressure.

We made the first sample last September, and took photos in October. But it took a few rounds of revisions, as well as feedback from showing the sample to friends and family in-person, until late May to finally get it to the place where we felt good about it.

The first run of this is a proof of concept. It would be nice to make some money from it, but that’s not the main goal.

We ordered 300 copies for this first run. The margins would’ve been better with more, but ordering 500 or 1,000 felt uncomfortable. The intuitive, gut-level, reaction was to stick with 300; it felt recoverable.

Shipping is very expensive, so it’s critical to get this right (both shipping inventory inbound to you, and then out to customers). Packaging is also a factor. Those eat into margins. At this volume, free shipping is not a perk we can afford yet.