An Artist's Life, Digitized: Quotable Toilet Paper

All Artwork is by Grady Lyda

Here's a little story about a personal project I worked on for more than a year...

Since I was very young, I was impressed by exceptional quotations and sayings that caught my attention. I had been given a book full of blank pages, so over many years I filled it with these glorious gems. When the book was full, it occurred to me that other folks might appreciate this treasure trove of wisdom, facts, and humor that I'd been collecting for such a long time.

Brainstorm: Suppose you could buy a roll of toilet paper that was full of brilliant quotes and fascinating bits of information? This concept prompted me to sort thru 1000s of entries in my book to select the top 10% that would be most interesting to the most readers.

I carefully formatted a document that could be printed on toilet paper and committed the text to more than a hundred 4.5-inch square sheets. This took many months of careful design, typing, editing, and proofing, but I finally finished it. Now what?

I envisioned an entirely new industry that offered great entertainment and helpful knowledge to everyone via their toilet tissue. I spent countless hours developing a marketing campaign, creating logos, ads, posters, letterheads, biz cards, and press releases. Eventually, I had everything I needed to make this thing happen in a big way.

Then I did what I should have done a long time ago, before I invested thousands of hours into graphic design, product development, adverts, and business collateral: MARKET RESEARCH.

A few minutes on the Web changed everything. I was mortified to discover that this was not an original, revolutionary idea. In fact, there were dozens of specialty printers who were already selling novelty toilet paper. My visionary concept was not new at all, so why bother?

The best definition of an entrepreneur is someone who spends 16 hours a day working for himself so that he doesn’t have to work 8 hours a day for someone else. – Mark Stevens

Sadly, I failed to follow up with the next step, which would have been to produce the actual physical product: Functional printed toilet tissue. I never manufactured a million rolls of QTP to be unleashed upon an adoring and grateful planet. Maybe someday...

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then give up. There’s no use in being a damn fool about it. – W.C. Fields

PDF: QTP Press Release

Nevertheless, I still have the original camera-ready emailable PDF document, and whenever I've shared it with others, their feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. I've often been told, "This is so great! I started reading and I couldn't stop until I got to the end, then I wanted more. Where can I buy it?" Well, I don't know yet...