Hey, hey, what's everyone up to?

Today is going to be a different post than what I got you used with, because although it has a connection with one of my biggest passions, which I revived lately and made some posts with this purpose, which is reading, this post is going to be more than that. Because it also represents a life update (which I rarely do), a moment of being vulnerable and honest (which I always try to keep away from the internet) but also a story that although it doesn't have an end just yet, it would be amazing to get some advice or read some other people's similar stories because I am in a moment of impasse for sure.

My life story

To start with a little background, I always loved reading. While I am at the borders with two different generations, I received my first phone quite late in my childhood after all my classmates already owned one and they started looking weird towards me, not keeping up with technology, the same happened with owning a computer which was actually donated by a neighbor who I was visiting frequently to play video games and still hang out when it was raining outside.

Yep, 99% of my childhood was spent on the same bench, in the same place, at the same hour, meeting with the same 2 friends and speaking for hours, playing football, riding the bikes, and playing other childhood games.

However, meeting with 2 friends who were both males and into video games, I got the same technology and gaming bug, although I ended up affording to get a computer from my own money only last year, at 27 years old!! However, my gaming passion was not missing until then as I was blessed with receiving as a gift one of this friend's computer when he got a new and more advanced version, then my parents replaced it a few years later as a Christmas gift, and then I met a very important person in my life, who again, offered a gaming PC for me when I was 18 years old. So, despite coming from quite a modest family, I feel both privileged and a bit lucky to have so many important people in my life.

When it comes to books, though, this passion was mostly influenced by my aunts and cousins who were reading a lot and where, every time I was visiting them, in most of the cases I was returning home with new borrowed books to read, and obviously, return them in a few days after I finished reading them. But as years passed and life took me in different places, away from home, in a new city during the college years and then in another new city after graduating, I ended up not being in touch with them too much, but always met again during my birthday, which is constantly celebrated with family, not friends, as most people do.

This led to a new opportunity to get new books, which became an unwritten tradition to always get new books as gifts from most of my family members, along with money, which was partially invested into new books as well. A more recent thing turned out to be the passion for reading on my kindle which was, again, gifted by an important person in my life, who already knew the little fortune of money I was spending on getting new books, which, to be honest, are terrifyingly expensive!! I mean, spending between 10-20€ on a single book, in Romania, which has the biggest inflation rate in Europe, and the economy quite fu**ed up, is scandalous!

So, even if there are still quite a few books that I really want to get in a physical version to have them stored in my future library, most of the books I am reading these days are in electronic format, which I learned to deal with quite easily. It actually feels a lot more comfortable to read on the Kindle during this time of the year when the daylight is pretty short, and I am not forced to keep the light turned on for hours anymore.

Life update

Anyway, a quick but meaningful life update, which I kind of shared in tiny parts here and there on the blockchain, is that my life changed a lot in the last few years, where, even if I never had a normal job from 9 to 5, I constantly had activities that earned me a couple of bucks monthly, including this platform for blogging where my journey began 8 years ago, to my activity as a freelance Graphic Designer on Fiverr, and then to more or less 3rd party activities for different companies that wanted me to handle the creative part.

Actually, a few years ago, I thought that I finally found my path in this life, getting to collaborate on a daily basis with some brands from the UK, which were all owned by the same people and which kept me busy between 12-16 hours daily creating things for them, being a fool to believe that it will last pretty much forever since they always refused making a contract with this purpose. This was only successful for real for 2-3 months, then I had a break of another 2-3 months where they refused to communicate with me, bringing no explanations, then again contacted me and so on. It was an on-and-off business relationship that already triggered some red flags, realising they are not as trustworthy as I thought and that I quickly need a plan B.

Sadly, plan B never came, as I got into some slight anxiety and depression, constantly wondering how good I am actually, and started doubting myself. So I ended up creating the gaming channel with my boyfriend, hoping to see it monetised one day, but I also made an investment in handmade candles, hoping to turn them into a little business one day.

It didn't take long and I ended up quiting this activity, as it involved lots of investments and tests done to find the right resources to work with, plus the competition that would kill my business anyway, especially that there are lots of local stores where you can get a candle for 2-3 bucks only, which wouldn't even cover half of the investment I would make for a single candle only.

Right after this thing, I was contacted again by these companies I told you earlier, which promised me more collaborations for the future and obviouly I fell for it again (such a fool!), but only lasted 1-2 months before AI leveling up and see these companies slowly but steady make their whole activity with ChatGPT, from texts, to images, from entire music albums that I was creating before, to even posters and marketing creations. It felt again like a punch in the face, where I had to take myself the answers from this, since they never had the courage to actually contact me, and mention that this was it, and there is no longer a place for me in their team.

This led to another session of doubting my skills, doubting myself, and my life in general, still refusing to get a 9 to 5 job, which is also quite hard to obtain these days when mass fires are done and if anyone does hiring, they already expect to see someone have at least 10 years of work experience at my age, ugh.

How did everything start?

So, at the end of 2025, still from my passion for books and reading, I started looking randomly for various bookish gifts one could get, and this is how I ended up discovering the minibooks, which are quite popular on Etsy, but they did not exist in Romania, where I am from.

This made me quickly want to make another investment and give it another try to open up a little business that would make me create things for many hours in a row and still not feel like the time passes. This was a very brave action despite living with rent and having this rent actually raised at the beginning of the year, so my savings were already slowly fading away, but I ended up getting a printer at around 150€ for the sake of having very detailed and good colours on my prints, and that was only the beginning.

As a printer was obviously not the single investment needed to be done, I then placed a couple more orders for different printing papers to try which one is the best for my activity, then for plenty of tools of all kinds which I didn't even realize how needed they are, then for various types of cardboards and magnets, failing for a couple of times to order the right thing, and more recently, the whole shipping materials such as boxes, personalized stickers, bubble wrap, tissue paper filling, personalized shipping bags, as well as plenty of stickers and bookmarks to offer as gifts and surprises on each order at no extra cost.

That's how the total investment done so far quickly doubled, with close to 300€ invested and still 0 earnings. For some, this might sound like a very small amount of money, while some might share my thoughts that it was a brave move for someone who has no income and currently lives only from savings. But for me, it was a dream that I still feel like being at the beginning and way too early to quit again.

The name of my little handmade business is "BookBites Handmade", and it pretty much says what this is about having little bites of actual books created handmade.

I reproduce popular books (but not only) by hand, having just the covers printed, but which in pretty much all cases are still recreated by me as only the front cover is displayed to the audience, while the back covers are quite rare to be found or only found in poor quality, which is where the restoring or recreating part begins.

An even harder thing to achieve, which ends up involving recreating everything from scratch, are the book spines and the sprayed edges of the paper that some books have, but which are never shared online. So these are the ones that fill most of my time when it comes to working on the digital version of a book before turning it into reality and beginning the crafting part that involves working with plenty of materials that no one can think about before actually digging into this activity.

Each book takes around 1 hour to be created, although I can save around 15 minutes if I cut some of the materials in advance. I also hide a little magnet inside the book which, even though it can't be observed from the outside, is a powerful and quite expensive magnet used to be able to face all layers of the book and still stand steady if people want to put these on a metallic frame, on the fridge, or basically any metal surface.

At first, I thought that crafting just a couple of series of books which are more or less popular out there, would be enough to gain a bit of attention and keep my resources for personalized orders as I expected people to be more interested in getting the mini version of their favorite books, because a popular book doesn't necessarily mean that is read or a favorite by anyone out there.

Happily, I managed to get lots of high-quality pictures and videos to work with, thanks to my sister, who has a little photo studio at home and shares the creative passion as well.

I even opened an Instagram and TikTok accounts, which seem like the best way to promote this kind of thing in the 21st century. While the Instagram account has been constantly dead, I can't say the same about TikTok, where each video was quite popular, and every two days, I've been contacted by people asking questions that gave me a bit of hope, thinking that some orders might pop up soon.

Sadly, from simple questions to actual orders is a long way, and that was proved countless times, as no one actually proceeded further to place an order with this purpose.

That's when I started having mixed feelings, thinking that maybe the price is the problem although I am selling this 3 or 4 times cheaper than what I've seen in other countries or on Etsy, where, btw, my minibooks are larger than these sold everywhere else, with even more qualitative materials used, and better printings to actually be able to see and read the back cover which in most of the cases is missing. From my research, most of the people who create these kinds of minibooks make them 3 times smaller than I do and have the same cover on both sides, which personally doesn't make a lot of sense, but for some reason, they are very popular and even earn lots of money with them, despite being more expensive than what I create.

To answer one of your questions, I thought that I should sell each minibook for about 5-6€ based on the fact that my investment in the materials used for each book is around 4€, and that I should have a little price increase also for the time I spend creating these. Is it expensive? Is it cheap? You tell me. Maybe my mistake is that I wanted high-quality things, and I ended up getting more expensive materials than what most of the people get, but that's because I am a perfectionist, and I want people to feel quality over quantity.

Sadly, one week of constant posting on social media to promote this has passed and I was already running away of content to post, so that led to another session of creating some new minibooks without proper direction or the promise to sell them afterwards, because if you are not posting daily on social media especially as a new brand, you will quickly have the account dead in a couple of days.

So despite not dreaming of earning fortunes overnight to cover my investment done so far before speaking of profit, the pressure of time was real, and it actually brought another session of anxiety that I was hoping not to meet anytime soon, especially since I have so much fun and enjoy so much creating every single book.

Why am I writing all of this on here, you might think? Because the blockchain became my 2nd home for me since I was here for over 8 years now, and I got to meet lots of people with different life stories that more or less shared them on here, but where, for some reason, I am confident I will find some advice or other people in similar situations.

I am aware that in most of the times it takes many fails before starting a business, but I am also part of a very creative generation that has big dreams that one day I will earn my modest income from an activity fully led by me and which brings me more joy than money, yet a thing that I've always found more valuable than the actual income since a happy mind and healthy body is a lot more important than wealth.

Secondly, I know about the power of communities, and that we have quite a few people on here who still prefer reading over plenty of other temptations to spend their free time, so maybe this is where my start should be. Maybe you like some of the books already created, or maybe you have some favourite ones you would like to see created? Let me know. I would be more than happy to create some new books again, but which this time have a destination and I am able to put to good use all the lovely packaging and tiny gifts I invested in, to make this a special experience from unpacking to the actual products.

As I said, I am already on Instagram and TikTok, but I am also on Vinted.com as BookBites, which I know is a platform that is available in quite a few countries and where I listed my products so far. If this is not available in your country but you are interested in buying something, you can always contact me on the social accounts mentioned or on Discord as GabrielaTravels to discuss more.

I know this turned into an incredibly long post, which was definitely not my intention, but words and stories kept coming without realising how many words this post has at the end. I guess passion will always speak louder than anything, and it's very easy to lose control when you start writing something with this purpose.

Along with sharing my little handmade business on here with not too many hopes of seeing something changed, I wanted to bring a life update and some personal stories that I kept inside for way too long and felt they might need to get out somewhere. This time, that place was here, on the chain, but maybe a little lesson for both me and some others that some things don't happen quickly. Although I don't look after that, maybe somehow it motivates myself to keep going, hoping that one day I will bring another similar post on here, but with a whole different situation over BookBites, which I strongly feel like one day it will bloom for real.

^{(a vulnerable, but creative)}
-- Gabriela, xo

^{Gabriela Travels is a Curator for Worldmappin and Hive Gaming communities, but also the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences.
At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe.
Additionally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (300+ articles written on this field), but also approaching other topics as well, like game and book reviews, lets plays, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 750+ blog posts.
Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, owning a YouTube channel for each of the two.}

~ @GabrielaTravels ~