Why publishing
Advising on brand is a practice. Running an imprint is a discipline. The two are related the way studying architecture is related to building a house. KØS is where I test the positions I advise on: how narrative carries, how format shapes reception, how a small imprint with no marketing budget has to earn attention structurally rather than buy it.
What went into the book
Writing and editing the manuscript. Fact-checking. Category and keyword selection for KDP, which is a genuine creative-strategy problem disguised as a logistics problem. Back cover blurb. Book description in HTML for the storefront. Studio outreach for launch coverage. Every one of these decisions was made the same way I would make it for a client brand.
The creative decision that mattered
Not trying to be a biography. There are excellent biographies of Kusama. The book takes a narrower angle, sits inside it, and trusts the reader to come along. A smaller subject, more precisely rendered, is a better answer than a larger subject shallowly covered. That is true of books. It is also true of brands.
What the work taught me
When I tell clients that format is strategy, this is the work I am pointing at. The book is the argument. The argument is that you can produce something specific, unfashionable, and unhurried, and that the right audience will find it. Most marketing plans assume the opposite and spend accordingly.