)statusupdate · 3:16am Mar 2nd, 2016
So yeah, none of the things I tried to do to save myself worked.
I've relaunched Counterpart but that probably broke it worse, so it will probably never be a thing. The plugin stuff is pretty dead and it doesn't seem to matter whether I do it or not, though I got probably a couple months out of trying.
I have 1,443 words on chapter 11 of Precious, and I want to finish this freakin' book so that's how it's going to be. If I can do nothing else, I will do this, and then what happens happens. I don't like starting my 'monday updates' thing for a book, and then breaking it (still less when it doesn't help: I'm no forrarder AND I'm not giving people chapters.)
That stops here. 'One Down', the eleventh chapter, goes up on Monday no matter what. And then 'Exodus', the twelfth, the following Monday. And so on.
Some of you who are into that sort of thing can pray for me. I don't know what to, certainly not my 'higher power', it ain't working for me anymore if it ever did. Maybe someone else's can lend a hand. Now I'm sorry I write my Celly so damn unGodlike!
The book will NOT die. I know exactly how it goes, and it must be told.
Note: if this seems awful, read the comments: hope's a vampony, it flutters eternal and is very tough to kill.
I was gonna say this in a PM, but FiMfiction is not allowing me to send PMs for some reason (I'm still getting them, and can reply, but... who knows, I'll deal with it later.)
You've gotta make some money, boy. I have ideas, but I'm not sure you'd like them much, because they mostly involve doing things that other people would pay you for, which are not always the things you really want to do. But if that sounds like a thing you'd be into, PM me. I really think there are ways you could make some cash that you'd be really good at.
If you're not really interested, I understand, and I'm not gonna hold it against you.
3787150 Talk to me. Doesn't even need to be a PM. I just need to be able to complete this book. No, let me rephrase that: I SHALL complete this book
I edited an entire anthology for Furplanet, some years back. They didn't pay. I still have a copy of it, on which they misspelled my fursona-name in the cursory note of thanks. It's possible you're thinking of something like that?
3787196
I might have mentioned this before, but here's my thinking. You're a great writer. You also write great porn, both romantic and kinky.
People will pay for porn. There are companies that specialize in softcore erotica for women, there's self publishing on Amazon. But the thing is, you need to write what sells. It's a job. If that's weird hairless apes, that's what you need to write to get people to buy it. But I have complete and utter faith in you that you could write stories about hairless apes that are awesome and engaging and sexy and people would pay you money for, especially if you did your homework about what kind of plots and kinks people tend to buy.
I mean, I know you'd rather be doing stuff you want to do. But if it comes down to it, if you need cash, you have a way that I really think you could make it with your talents.
(Edit: Not, like, boatloads of cash, but some cash. More than you'd make off of other online stuff.)
Jeez. There doesn't seem to be any time quite like the beginning of a year for financial trouble.
Sorry about Counterpart too, it's a shame it didn't catch on.
3787237 Well, that's disappointing
The trouble there is that you're identifying a field and it's doubtless true I could do that but (as far as I knowwwww
) you have no connections for getting into that field. There are already thousands of people doing it and being talked about doing it, and it's just another damn lottery ticket. Quality does not matter, and I find that disheartening.
I did wake up imagining my 'Tales of Versus' kitty characters transposed into a 'Tough Guide To Fantasyland' sword-n-sorcery world. That's a new thought. But I promise, as somebody who has worked making original stuff and getting a marketplace to cough up either money or attention for it, for years… it really truly doesn't matter if you can identify something you don't especially like but could clearly do.
What matters is doing something you care about, not to make you happy but because it is distinct… and then being able to connect with a world in a way where people will turn to you for that thing, and not turn to the hundred other people also there doing that.
Because they were there first. At this point (and I think it is unusual and not exactly stable: the fever will break one way or another and either more general opportunity will arise, or we'll all be in rags around campfires constructing tumbrels) it seems to me if you're not already the go-to person (or pony) for providing a thing, there is absolutely no way to start. And if you have something but it's dwindling, it's a wait-it-out game.
I could do worse than to complete the eighth Trixieverse book, perhaps even contemplate others. Nobody else has subverted this genre to the extent I have (certainly in terms of word count
)
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I'm not sure I agree... I guess I have a weird POV; in the past year and a half, my husband has made himself a decent part time job writing tabletop RPGs-- a market not nearly as lucrative as erotica. But he recognized that within his community (Old School Revival-- people who play modified early edition D&D) no one had written some stuff-- at first it was classes that would be popular like ninjas or detectives, and then he went to work on a quality versatile sci-fi game, and now it's one of the top selling games of the system. Yeah, he didn't mind writing it, he's a Star Wars fanboy-- but he also made sure it would cover games in the style of Star Trek or Doctor Who, which he doesn't care about, He wrote a supplement for mechs recently and he really doesn't care about those, but people were asking him for one. He's also been able to parlay that, and the connections he made there and as a blogger in the Tolkien fandom, into jobs writing freelance for other tabletop RPGs.
It's not like there's a shortage of tabletop games out there, or people willing to write them for free or market them, but by treating it professionally, paying attention to niches and marketing, and being good at it he's been able to build his little publishing company into something that brings in a much-needed few hundred dollars a month.
You have the talent to write erotica, but... to be blunt, I've never seen you market it. Even in the "economy" of FiMfiction here, you have to know that by now the bar to entry for Trixieverse is too high to gather new readers, and even readers who fall behind have probably been well outpaced by this point. The "market" for new Trixieverse dwindles with each novel-- with ten updates, Precious has less than half the views and lower ratings than Lick Before You Sleep. And when you aren't putting out stuff that's accessible to new readers, you're going to gain fewer new readers for the next thing. And at the same time, follower decay is a thing-- people leave fandom, don't read as much new fic, etc.
And followers here are a market. If you offer something for sale that's what they want from you, that's the start of a business model. If you make a dollar from every copy of an OF story you sell, and you can get 100 people here to buy it, that's $100. And if it's something that can spread outside of MLP or furry fandom, that's more dollars you might make based on ratings and comments and word of mouth.
I'm not saying don't finish this story. I'm saying, once again I'll be blunt, because I like you and want to see you succeed, I think you're going about making money the wrong way. You're not looking at what people want and considering how you can give it to them better than anyone else (and you can,) you're doing the stuff you want to do and trying to strike gold. I totally get that, but I don't think it's fair to blame the market for it.
3787595 I hear you, but how shall I put this? Your husband is more normal, more well adjusted, nicer, and better in almost every way than me.
I'm an autistic freak that can only do certain things. The range of those things is HUGE and the depth to which I get into them is amazing: I structure books well, I'm a hell of a proofreader (I actually thought you were going to suggest making a patreon for proofreading and ghostwriting), I can write video games and DSP software that sometimes gets props from industry giants, I drew hundreds of episodes of a comic and learned the secrets of watercolor pigments and can sculpt and tune a drum kit and repair a broken Farfisa organ.
And NONE of that stuff has a value outside of being lucky enough for someone to want it. I relaunched that Greenlight thing, recognizing that it was getting more negative than positive attention, taking pains to direct the relaunch toward what 'normal people on Steam' would want, and repeatedly getting feedback about where I was going wrong and what I should do w.r.t "looking at what people want and considering how you can give it to them better than anyone else", doing several iterations to make the result what people want and not just my own goofy take on things.
The result is doing at least twice as badly as the first try, and obliterating my hope of getting access to that market at all.
I'm sorry I'm not as good as your husband. I do have qualities of my own which I think include a grasp of what's going wrong and how I fit in all that, but one thing I've learned repeatedly is that when I try what you're suggesting, it does not work for me. I don't know what to do when my eccentricity finds no foothold in 'the market', and I feel that the more 'the market' tightens and focusses itself, the less chance I have, and I'm pretty damn sure it's doing that.
But I can't follow it. It doesn't work when I do it. It works when your husband does it, but that approach does not work for me. Maybe it's an 'uncanny valley' situation?
I got this book ('Dal-Tokyo') by Gary Panter, because I related to it so well. Read it, and then for some reason decided I should give it to my Dad for Xmas (turned out his birthday was sooner, so I did that). He's always been into comics, including Krazy Kat, but there was no reason to think he'd like freaking Dal-Tokyo, which is totally insane.
He loved it. And this is a guy who will not like a thing just because it's a present, a guy who's a born critic. I think if I'd tried to do anything more 'normal' it would have failed miserably.
I just have this feeling that due to the profound nature of my autism I literally can't look at what people want, and if I try to do that the people recoil as if my misguided effort is repugnant. And I can only stand so much of that. I'm seeing it in the Counterpart relaunch. Oddly enough the actual game is suffering no such problem, it's still being made in a vacuum. But the marketing is only getting worse as I try to aim for 'what people want'.
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Have you considered looking for a marketing person and "face" for business things? You might even be able to find one among your friends who will do it for free, or for a small share of potential profits. While James is good at marketing, he doesn't do it all himself; he has to buy artwork, and he hires layout designers because they can make his product more look professional than he can. The layout designers are guys he knew through the community who offered to take it as a side job, and while James has to pay them out of the profits the investment is totally worth it.
Marketing is a talent, and if it's one you don't have you should find someone to team up with who has that but needs stuff to market.
3787732 Yeah, I need a Steve Jobs. No question about that. I'd definitely profit-share. I would need to see evidence of ability, though.
I already hire outside talent: all my websites that matter are themes by the guy who runs 'Array'. I gave up trying to design websites some time ago, don't even personalize the things much.
Soooo I got to 2,519 words that I'm happy with, on the next chapter, plus some brainstorming in various ways. Nothing too impressive but kind of in the zone Bookplayer was talking about? In particular I have to wonder if the onset of 'Zootopia' is a good opportunity, since I have several books written that are anthropomorphic. And they're not on the Internet (at least not directly on a website) anymore, but they could be on the Amazon Kindle. In fact, they are on MY Kindle, but they could be for sale and they're not.
It's a bit late to be starting that, but eh: it literally is what Book is suggesting, except that she's suggesting softcore >nohooves porn. I can see the no-hooves on the grounds of fanfic being a no-no, but I've GOT to wonder if there might be a place… for paws
4,413 words of building awesomeness… and I've talked with a local friend who's full of ideas for (a) me recording people and giving music lessons (to the extent of being a sort of de facto producer), and (b) me giving these music lessons personally to him. I said let's do it, so that ought to help