The Difference Between Availability and a Launch

The Difference Between Availability and a Launch

For a long time, I treated release and availability as the same thing.

When something was ready, I told myself it needed a launch, a moment, a narrative, a push, before it could truly be “out there.”

That made sense in projects built around momentum, audience engagement, or optimisation.

Launches create urgency, focus attention, and mark a point of collective acknowledgement.

But after doing that repeatedly, I began to notice something about the way it shaped my relationship to the work.

A launch always feels like a beginning and an obligation rolled into one.

There’s anticipation, preparation, validation, performance.

Even if I didn’t intend it to be, the launch became a pressure point, something to manage, something to justify.

With Info Product Build, I wanted to try something different. I wanted the work to be available, not launched.

The distinction sounded subtle at first, but the more I leaned into it, the clearer it became.

  • Availability is simply presence.
  • It doesn’t demand attention.
  • It doesn’t prescribe timing.
  • It doesn’t create a moment that must be justified or defended.

A launch creates a boundary between before and after, an event with expectations tied to it.

Availability does not.

When I made Info Product Build available without a launch framework, a few things happened that surprised me:

  • I felt less pressure to perform against an arbitrary moment.
  • I didn’t feel the urge to “announce” or “convince.”
  • I was free to let the work exist on its own terms.

In practice, that changed how I wrote, how I positioned the work, and how I thought about its completion. There was no crescendo to manage. No drop to recover from. Just presence.

That, more than anything, confirmed the decision to treat Info Product Build as a work that simply is, not something that had to be introduced with fanfare or expectation.

Availability doesn’t require resolution. It just requires acceptance.

And that, in itself, was a significant lesson.

About The Author

Steve King writes about work, decisions, and why finishing matters. When he’s not doing that, he’s usually playing golf or re-watching favourite movies and box sets.