The quote was for a corporate history book, and it came to me over email from a company I had never met. They already had a printer, the one they did all of their corporate printing with, flyers, everything, and it was a bigger company than mine. They had the same machines that I had, plus a whole lot more. Literally the same machine. And they gave a quote that was cheaper than my quote. She came back to me and told me that her printer was cheaper. Then she said, but I want to go with you, because you’re the book specialist. So I said, of course.
On paper she was wrong. I didn’t invent a book. I didn’t differentiate a book. A book is a book. I did have different machines, and different paper, but even when I didn’t, saying no to everything else made me a specialist.
The rest of this essay is in Marketing Curious.
