Sunday Blog: Dragon Wars Decisions, Whisper Status and More About Shattered
February 28th, 2016 | Published in News
Thank you for all the comments on the first of these, peeps. I love talking with my readers. 🙂
So here’s where we’re at:
Dragon Wars:
Having listened to everyone’s advice I’ve come to a decision. Once I’ve finished Arc Four Dragon Wars will go on a hiatus (hopefully no more than a few months) and I will start serialising the spinoff instead. The Caredale Tales book one is titled The Sundered Light and should stand Whisper alone (though DW readers may well figure certain things out very quickly if they’ve been paying attention). The current arc has one more chapter (so several installments) to go before the pause so we’re talking at least a month before the changeover. Caredale will release on the Dragon Wars rss feed so those of you who use that will see it automatically.
Whisper
This week’s installment is written, so I’ll be sending it to Torvawk later today and there will be an update on Wednesday (yay!).
Shattered
No one commented yay or nay so as things stand I’m going to do the thing. The worst that happens is no one buys in, which would be sad but meh.
I’ve been looking at two friends who do a for money serial for examples and they both handle it in different ways.
(BTW both these serials are excellent and come recommended by me).
The first is Hen and Chick by Tristan J. Tarwater. A fun swashbuckling fantasy adventure which she’s serialising monthly on Gumroad. She is charging pay as you feel with a minimum of $2 month and subscribers also get a monthly worldbuilding post about the setting. I asked her some questions and she’s really enthusiastic about the model.
The second is Curveball by Christopher Wright. He describes this as a superhero prose comic. His serialisation is somewhat different and not entirely for pay as he is serialising it for free on his site. Each issue is between 8-10k words and is simultaneously available free on his site or as a 99 cent ebook on Amazon etc.
I have considered both these options and come up with the following:
- Starting in mid-April I will serialise Shattered in installments of 8-10k words using Gumroad (I’ll open subscriptions in early April in preparation).
- It will also be made available for Patreon Patrons so nobody will have to pay twice (though Tristan reckons that Gumroad is more secure than Patreon and she may have a point so if people don’t mind migrating I’ll probably leave Patreon sooner rather than later as it has been over a year now and it’s still very quiet). (Plus Patreon doesn’t deal with VAT meaning I’ll have to hand email the ebooks to avoid the VATMOSS debacle so I think I’d prefer people to migrate). Expect a Sunday blog on this subject once I make up my mind.
- I’m currently intending to charge a minimum of $0.99/month. I may up it to $1.99 if I decide to do the monthly world building content. (If I do this and I haven’t left Patreon then the content will only release to Patreon Patrons at the $2 or above level). (Note for European readers: These prices are excluding VAT. Gumroad adds the correct VAT to the prices I set).
- I will only release on Amazon once the serial is completed and all readers will get the full ebook (and a steep discount on the paperback if they want it).
- There will be a post on the site for subscribers to discuss each month’s release because comments are one of the joys of serial fiction.
- Once the serialisation of each book is fully completed on Gumroad I will release it for free on the website in a Serial+ format (There will be a link to the ebook at the end of each chapter).
- And in case you missed it last week this is the first draft of Chapter One of Shattered. Once ready for release I will have the final version of the chapter (approx 2k words) available as a taster to try and draw people in.
The other possibility is to release it as a pure PAYF serial.
That is people will be able to subscribe for nothing but there will a suggested price.
I actually rather like this idea. Apparently PAYF has worked well for a great many creators so it might be a nice thing to try (and it would solve the Patreon VAT problem). If I did it this way only paying subscribers would get the final ebook and the paperback discount. Also if I do it this way it will never release on the site as it will already be available free.
And finally here is a preliminary graphic for the header. It needs better art because I can’t paint well enough for commercial work (Enled’s mouth and eyes shouldn’t be crooked) but it gives you the idea. Not sure about the font either.
So there we go. I’d be glad to hear your thoughts on pricing model and everything else. 🙂