Wintertime! TAOGOI’s yearly review!

What a time of year this has been. Allie and I have been meeting often to get the e-book polished and out; to create systems for self-marketing so that we can channel our energy efficiently into creating a community that we personally feel connected to. We are astonished and delighted to have gotten all of the work that we have done, and we want to spend this blog time looking back on where we started and what we have done to make it here.

Allie and I first connected on this project a few years ago, at a Barnes and Noble‘s bookstore near Seattle. When I met Allie she was already extremely organized and had sheets of paper with details about the book publishing and producing process. Over the next few months we gathered at her house and made plans for the artwork to be created for the book and got to creating. We would meet and refine over the next year, with some breaks in between for traveling and school, knowing that life is a journey to be lived and accepting that what plans we might make can always be adapted to the world’s happenings.

Once we had all of the artwork in place we sent off the manuscript and the illustrations to the publisher we chose to work with, which was Bookbaby. We had a few road bumps to overcome with the publisher, as our first 100 copies of a book sent to us had been actually been misprinted with some images out-of-format and covering some of the poems. Over the next few weeks, or what seemed like months, we coordinated back-and-forth with the company trying to get our vision produced, when they made a few changes to our books that we did not ask them to do. It was a frustrating experience, because all the while we were taking on the project of self marketing, we didn’t have a fully produced book to sell!

And now coming up on December 2021, we have approved our manuscript for the e-book version, and have gotten shipped a new set of 100 copies to begin selling that is all formatted and cleanly produced! We are giving huge high-fives right now to ourselves, our families and our friends who helped us create and share this poetry book. We are now on the task of creating a merchandise set for the TAOGOI community, including stickers and clothing. We are dreaming up styles and symbols to represent our reader’s passions and journeys directly from TAOGOI.

Seasons gratitude and warmth to all those who are following our story, we send our best and our light to all who are in the dark now and call on those who have walked the mountains and the valleys to share your thoughts and experiences on healing and overcoming. Thank you all.

With love,

Abby.