During a recent trip to Japan I was obsessed with the culture of vending machines. At a simplistic level the packaging and economics were fascinating. At a deeper level vending machines say a lot about the Japanese psyche.
I made a book called Canned Japan about vending culture and many of the 100+ different beverages tried. Some people are buying it, so it seems to be interesting to someone other than me. You can check it out over here, and I'm working on partnering with a publisher on a more in depth (and better photographed) follow up version.
Been thinking about the reasons why someone like me would publish this book. As independent and crowd source projects proliferate understanding motivations will be insightful and valuable. At a surface level it was wanting a sense of accomplishment for following through with an idea. It also was a chance to learn a bit more about how one actually makes and publishes a book, as completing a book has always been a goal. Though it's not much, the profit part is nice. But undoubtedly credibility is a higher payoff given my profession. Though I hate the cover typography, validation for a successful creative endeavor is a motivator - naturally with a bit of fear but not fear to begin no reward to end. Sense of belonging, if everybody else is self publishing I don't want to be left out. A sense of individuality, not everybody is actually doing it so it's quite rare to have completed this.
There are probably more. The number of motivations off the top of my head is rather interesting and challenges the reductive "single though" approach to much business thinking.
Or something like that.
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