My dirty MFA motivations
Why I self-published a scandalous art book
In 2017, I wrote a short scandalous memoir called Pros Before Bros. Although I was a published author several times over, I decided that this time around I wanted to do my own book, my own way. (In my work with publishing houses, I didn’t even have control over basics like my books’ titles or cover designs.)
So I decided to treat the process of self-publishing the book as a self-directed MFA/MBA project, and granted myself most of 2018 to work on it. Part of that work included being extremely deliberate about my motivations behind the project.
In 2018, I wrote a series of 10 essays / existential white papers about the project’s intentions. The limited edition of the book launched in 2019 and sold out years ago, but the work that went into the project feels worth sharing.
If you’re considering your own self-directed publishing project, I offer up this 30-minute read as possible inspiration. This was all written in 2018, but I’ve included some updates at the end of each section with spoilers about how each motivation panned out.
