They came! This is very exciting. What is up guys? Today is a very exciting day. In this box is the book that I wrote. It's been a book I've been talking about for a couple months now. This has been in the works for like over a year. So, they're finally, finally here. Our book, Practical Pottery, which we wrote all about our pottery experience, techniques, projects, everything from how to get started as a potter all the way to how to sell pottery. So, it's a very exciting day. I'm excited to open this box and actually see it because I've seen it. I've proofread it. I wrote it, but I've actually never seen a copy yet. So, you guys ready for this? This is a super exciting day. Alright, let's do it! Very exciting. Check it out. Alright friends, oh god, it's amazing to actually have this book. I never have thought of myself as a writer, but when I got an opportunity to partner with a publishing company, Mangle Publishing is the name of the publishers. And they kind of said like, we think you could do a really good tutorial book about pottery. And pottery seems to be a topic that there are people really wanting more of like an instructional how to book. And you might be the right guy. I said, you know what, let's give it a try. Give it the old John the Potter. You'd have no idea how to do something and you're going to figure it out. It was a fun opportunity and I'm excited to finally share with you guys what that practical pottery is available October 27th. Anywhere I think you can buy books, it's on Amazon, you can pre-order it right now and it'll get shipped out. So, practical pottery, pottery projects and techniques for creating and selling Mugs, Cups, Plates, Bulls and more by John Schmidt, the creator behind John the Potter. That's me. Oh, it's kind of surreal. So, the whole table of contents, I'm just going to give you guys a brief overview. Well, first let's start with why? Why? Why? I didn't want to write this book in the first place. There's so many different ways that you can approach pottery. And I've always approached it from the standpoint of like keeping things pretty simple and not diving deep into the things that I didn't want to yet. Like, each part of the pottery process has such a deep, you can go so far deep into it. Like, the glazes, you can get into the glazed chemistry and like what exact element is going to change different things at which temperature in the kiln? And like, my point of that is that there are lots of books out there that go deep and dives into different things. You know, John Brits book about cone five and cone six glazes. And the potters book by Bernard Leach, there's certain books that go to really dive. But I looked at a lot of these books and I thought this would scare away anybody that is just interested in like maybe dipping their toe in the water in pottery. Or like, how do you actually make pottery a sustainable business? Like, not just around how to make glazes or how to make clay or what parts of this like make the biggest difference. So, I wanted to create like, if I'm walking through the bookstore and pottery is like, I always wanted to try pottery. Like, this is the book for you. This is how you can get started without being intimidated by all the chemistry and complex parts of pottery. Because you can, you know, you can buy wheel, you can buy kiln, you can buy clay and you can buy glazes and you can just like, you can, it's possible to make from start to finish your own cups, plates, bowls, mugs without having to know everything there is to know. And so that's kind of what I wanted to do with this book is A to Z pottery, but not so deep into it that you can't understand it or that like, there's even pottery books that I'll read. I'm like, God, this is, this is boring. I don't want to do this. So, you know, it starts out with kind of like a little poem that I wrote about pottery and parenthood. And then the introduction, how I got introduced to pottery, like why I, why handmade matters. Shout out to Joel Cherico for using that picture in there. And then it's like, what do potters need? You know, you need pottery basics. Here's a chart of all the weights that I use for like a small medium large mug bowl plate vase, like how much clay to use. That's a really common question that I get all the time. Tools, whole chapter around tools that you use. And then it gets into different kinds of kilns. Shout out to hammerly ceramics for that picture. Shout out to Matthew Kelly, another YouTuber for that picture. Um, setting up a studio, like what you need in a studio. And then it gets right into like clay, um, wedging, centering, like cylinder. I spent a ton of time last year writing this book, different shapes of mugs, handles, different kinds of handles, how to do handles. Then we get into bowls, then we get into plates, planters, berry bowl. So then there's some specific projects, chip and dip bowl. So some of this stuff you guys have seen on the YouTube channel. And I have videos about which would work great in combination with this book. But there are a lot of things in this book that I've not really talked about on my YouTube channel or I took more of the like real down to earth things you need to know to be a potter from the YouTube channel. And I put them all into this book. The last things that we talk about in this book are like the business side, right. So how to actually think about selling, how to start thinking about getting a following, your branding, pricing, packing and shipping, all that stuff. With common questions. So yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's the book that I didn't think existed. I think the reason why mango looked at me and looked at pottery and said this might be a really good partnership for us to put out a book like this. Because I thought, you know, I want a book that draws people in like I have found so much joy and enjoyment and financial gain from pottery that I just want to share what I've learned and what's been successful for me and my like my view of how I look at pottery and how I look at the decisions that I'm making for what to make. And I thought I was going to set up a studio like it's all, it's all in there. Yeah, this book was originally supposed to be released like four or five months ago, but because of COVID and the pandemic. Amazon wasn't taking any books, new books for a while. So then it got pushed out to October 27th. If you are somebody that's looking to pick up pottery, if you know somebody that's looking to get a pottery, if you guys just want to support me and support this book, I really will benefit if we are able to sell a lot. They're $25 for the soft cover. You can also buy it on Kindle as well. Just check it out on Amazon. Somebody fun fact about the cover photo, this mug was a mug that I made years ago now and they tested out kind of different photos and whatever would work well for a cover photo and we really liked this one. So somebody out there has bought this mug. I sold it on Etsy like years ago. So if you have it, that'd be interesting to know who has this mug. It's very, very, very exciting. I am super excited. I think we should do a giveaway, huh? I'll be giving away a book from this video. So all you got to do to get entered into the giveaway is just like this video, share it with somebody that may be interested in practical pottery. Comment below and tell me, are you a potter? Are you someone that wants to pick up pottery? Who are you? Like, where in your journey of clay has it not started yet? Are you a professional potter? Let me know in the comments below and then we'll pick someone and send out a book. So very, very, very, very excited. It's been a while since I've been this excited. If you know anyone that is wants to get into pottery, this would be a great Christmas present. We'll be back with tons more videos for the rest of this year. As always, I hope you would subscribe, like and share this video. I love you all. We'll see you guys in the next video.