{"id":50651,"date":"2026-05-18T03:32:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T03:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-started-a-publishing-gig-outside-my-day-job-to-see-if-a-creative-side-hustle-could-break-even\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T03:32:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T03:32:19","slug":"i-started-a-publishing-gig-outside-my-day-job-to-see-if-a-creative-side-hustle-could-break-even","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-started-a-publishing-gig-outside-my-day-job-to-see-if-a-creative-side-hustle-could-break-even\/","title":{"rendered":"I started a publishing gig outside my day job to see if a creative side hustle could break even"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69ef0c2ba98bc8fdc096f209?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Tse Hao Guang&#039;s headshot.\"\/><figcaption>Tse Hao Guang started a literary publishing business while working as a researcher.<\/p>\n<p>Tse Hao Guang<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Tse Hao Guang is a researcher and writer in Singapore.<\/li>\n<li>He started a side project publishing literary pamphlets that spotlight emerging writers&#039; works.<\/li>\n<li>He wanted to show that a creative venture does not have to bleed money.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tse Hao Guang, a 38-year-old researcher and writer based in Singapore. It has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I started a creative publishing project to spotlight emerging writers, with the goal of not losing money doing it.<\/p>\n<p>My journey in literature began when I was young, traveling to meet my dad&#039;s side of the family in suburban Canada during the holidays. There was nothing to do, and I&#039;d beg my uncle to drive all the way to the library, 20 minutes away, and borrow huge stacks of books.<\/p>\n<p>Since 2015, I&#039;ve published two books of my own and edited several anthologies.<\/p>\n<p>It&#039;s very, very rare that you can survive just by writing books. When I was a freelance writer, I taught writing workshops at schools and universities and did copywriting gigs. It tired me out, because client writing and creative writing used similar parts of my brain.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I work full time as a strategic foresight researcher. Earning a stable salary has removed the pressure to make money from my writing, allowing me to pursue many creative projects.<\/p>\n<p>One of those projects is Paper Jam, an annual publication that spotlights Singaporean writers.<\/p>\n<h2>Starting Paper Jam<\/h2>\n<p>The big gap I saw for emerging writers was that when they want to showcase their work, there are only a few avenues.<\/p>\n<p>They can either publish in a journal alongside many other writers, so it&#039;s not their solo work, or amass enough stories to create their own manuscript, which has a much higher bar to entry. They would also need to print up to 1,000 copies for their first run, which is tricky to manage financially and inventory-wise.<\/p>\n<p>I noticed that Singapore didn&#039;t have a flourishing independent zine culture like other countries do.<\/p>\n<p>So I came up with the idea for Paper Jam, a literary pamphlets publishing venture. I received funding from Sing Lit Station, a Singapore-based nonprofit that supports local writers, and launched in 2024.<\/p>\n<h2>Limited copies for exclusivity<\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69f02332367066d7c2971b2f?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Paper Jam only produces 100 copies of each pamphlet.\"\/><figcaption>Paper Jam only produces 100 copies of each pamphlet to maintain exclusivity.<\/p>\n<p>Aditi Bharade<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The idea was that I&#039;d pick three writers each year via an open call on Instagram, and each would write a 28-page pamphlet. For the last two years, I&#039;ve put out the open call in November.<\/p>\n<p>While editing, I tend to over-suggest, giving them many edits. I expect them to push back and encourage them to disagree with me until we find a middle ground.<\/p>\n<p>I decided to print only 100 copies each of the threeA5-sized pamphlets and not reprint if they went out of stock. The idea is that a pamphlet isn&#039;t meant to stay forever. The appeal of it is that it&#039;s a limited edition, something they might not be able to buy again.<\/p>\n<p>Then in September, I sell the pamphlets at bookstores in Singapore and at literary events.<\/p>\n<h2>Won&#039;t lose you money<\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69f0239a367066d7c2971b30?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The back covers of Paper Jam&#039;s pamphlets.\"\/><figcaption>I wanted to prove that this venture would not cost me money.<\/p>\n<p>Aditi Bharade<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>From the start, I set a constraint on myself \u2014 the business may not make me a lot of money, but it shouldn&#039;t cost me any. And so far, we have been successful in that.<\/p>\n<p>In 2024, I priced the 300 pamphlets at SG$16 each, and in 2025, I raised the price to SG$18. The cost of producing, without design and labor costs, is roughly SG$2,000 to SG$3,000.<\/p>\n<p>The past two years, we&#039;ve about broken even. Last year, we earned a bit more, and I&#039;ve used that money to hire an intern to help me with this year&#039;s run.<\/p>\n<p>If you think about this project as a way to earn extra money, it doesn&#039;t work. You can earn a lot more easily by doing other things.<\/p>\n<p>But I see it as a success that we don&#039;t lose money. It&#039;s not a vanity project where you spend too much, and the readership is too low.<\/p>\n<p>Paper Jam&#039;s intent has always been to publish works that would not have seen the light of day otherwise. That&#039;s been the value of it to me, so I see it as a success.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tse Hao Guang started a literary publishing business while working as a researcher. Tse Hao Guang Tse Hao Guang is a researcher and writer in Singapore. He started a side project publishing literary pamphlets that spotlight emerging writers&#039; works. He wanted to show that a creative venture does not have to bleed money. This as-told-to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50652,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}