I am Colin Neilson, owner of Spectacular Publishing. Granted I don't own much since it hasn't gotten off the ground as yet. The purpose of this blog is to detail how I set the new business up and what is happening with the business. I plan to make the start up costs as low as possible, and hope that readers will be able to take some tips from here to start up their own businesses. Responses will be open on all posts for now, as I'm quite happy to hear other people's opinions about the steps I plan to take, and hear what has worked or not worked for them.
So, the first question to answer is, why start a business and why publshing?
Why start a business? Short answer is that I have never been satisfied as an employee. I've worked entry level jobs in retail, and while they weren't horrible, I wasn't satisfied. I've worked a professional job as a teacher, in South Korea teaching English. That had its ups and downs, and was generally better than the retail positions, I still found working for someone else too limiting for me. I've worked in a management position for a small tutoring company, both as an office manager and as the owner. Unfortunately both positions had untimely ends. My boss suffered a fatal stroke a few months into my management work, and I took over the company without enough understanding of how businesses work. I ended my tenure as owner with a large debt which I have now brought down to manageable levels.
So, why publishing? Why not tutoring again? For one thing, I expect the tutoring market in my home town of Edmonton is still saturated, and so getting a tutoring company off the ground would be difficult and expensive. As for publishing, I plan on starting by publishing online only, which has a much lower start up cost. The reasons why I chose publishing are many. First off, I am a writer, and I enjoy writing. I think it would be nice to give budding authors a chance at being published, and thus getting a foot in the door of the industry. Second, I have several contacts among writers and readers. I plan on starting with speculative fiction, because that is a genere I enjoy, which covers Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror in those two fields. With the people I already know, I believe I can get enough material to make a bimonthly or even monthly publication manageable. Third, as a writer, if I do things right, I can even publish myself, and maybe make some money doing it. I'll have an easy source for filler if needed, ie me. So that will be one area I won't have to worry about.
So, that's the basics of how I got where I am now. Come back soon for more details of how I'm going ahead. Thanks for reading.
Colin Neilson
