EclecticGuy

Here it is, my new book! It went to press on Friday and it will take about 5 weeks to print. With its completion, I’ve fulfilled one of my personal goals – to write a how-to book. I’m not sure why that has been a goal, perhaps it has something to do with being a fan of the second Bob Newhart show, “Newhart“. In this series, Bob played an innkeeper and a do-it-yourself book author in Vermont. Throw in fly fishing and it would be a perfect life!

I approached writing The Reelsmith’s Primer exactly like I approach building a new software product or company. The basic steps were almost exactly the same and I used social media and “crowd sourcing” to help with the content, design, and now, marketing and sales. I did all of the writing, although it would be interesting to engage the community to help with the writing next time. Since this is the first book ever published on building fly fishing reels (as difficult as that is to believe!) there would not have been a lot of experienced contributors. My follow-on will be  a different case. I already have a thriving community of over 100 new reelsmiths from all over the world participating at The Reelsmithing Forum.

The basic process was something like this:

1. PHASE 1 – PRODUCT DEFINITION: First, I developed the “product” out of a perceived need and personal desire. At the time, very little information on reel building was available. There were no books and a Google search only turned up a reference to an article in the January 1951 issue of Mechanix Illustrated magazine. There were also a few photographs and forum posts here and there but no concise overview on how to build a reel or even how to get started. I realized that there was very little information available on building reels and there were lots of questions posted on forums asking for information on it. It was not clear what the right “delivery vehicle” for this information should be, but it was clear that there was some interest by other anglers.
2. PHASE 2 – MARKET RESEARCH: Having built a few reels and testing them on the river, I posted photos of them on several fly fishing related discussion forums. The response to these posts was surprising! I was bombarded with emails and PMs (private messages) asking if I would show the sender how to build a reel. There appeared to be interest and demand for instructional material on reelsmithing.
3. PHASE 3 – PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: My original idea was to set-up a reelsmithing discussion forum and share information there. I had not considered how I would monetize the forum feeling “if I built it, they would come”. Several very large fly fishing forums have developed in to money makers from simple grass roots efforts. I should also say, it was not really my goal to get rich from this effort! It was more about creating a community, sharing knowledge, setting up the technical infrastructure to support it, and leveraging social media like Facebook, Twitter, and this blog to promote it. Really, more as a learning experience for me in “putting it all together”. I started by quickly creating a set of tutorial emails I could send to interested people. Rather than just send the entire set of tutorials at once, I sent them one at a time to make sure the receiving party actually had some skin in the game and would build a reel. I did this by sending out an introductory email that listed and described the materials and tools that would be needed. I provided sources for these as well and asked the reader to assemble their materials and then request the next tutorial. The goal was to get 5 reelsmiths to complete reels using my instructions and techniques. I required that these early adopters provide their feedback on the process in order to get the next email in the series.This was remarkably successful. With just a little up-front product development investment (the emails) I was able to engage 20 individuals. Closing the loop with their feedback was essential. So many how-to books read like the author never tested the instructions with anyone. As the feedback came in, I iterated on the tutorials to clarify tricky areas and incorporate improvements I and others developed. When the user base reached 20, it became too large to manage via email, so I investigated options to start the forum and develop a community. I wanted to leverage open source software whenever possible, as part of my learning. I chose phpBB for The Reelsmithing Forum. The forum has been a great venue and a great little community is starting to develop. Folks are sharing their ideas and photographs, asking questions, and providing input. Out of the forum came several requests for a package with all of the materials needed to build a reel. That led in to a new opportunity. I now assemble the materials and sell them on my Web store www.EclecticAngler.com (more about how that was put together in a future post). It is a natural fit – readers of the book will need materials to build their reels, the materials can be sourced from several vendors or the a convenient material package can be purchased. As things progress, I will offer some materials a la carte also. The “product” (book) is now complete, so I am entering the next phase.
4. PHASE 4 – MARKETING: To some degree, the marketing is more my publisher’s domain, but we are in this together and I intend to use my knowledge of marketing and social media to help promote sales of the book (and materials packages). This phase is really just starting since the book is not printed yet, but pre-orders are being taken by my publisher (The Whitefish Press) with a target of early March for availability.

I’ll be blogging more as things evolve. For now, it is very exciting to have the book at the printer and getting started on the next phase!