Elf

Fine, I'll send out a skellin with the big headphones. If you adopt her please let me know what she's listening to, ok

its the Girl Genius comic series

So, general idea.

In the tumult of the night his parents died, Bruce hadn’t thought twice about handing his baby brother off to a kind police officer. He was shaking so hard he thought he’d drop Daniel. While the officer walked away to calm the screaming, swaddled infant, Bruce gave statement after statement to officer Gordon and others. When Alfred arrived at the station to retrieve the Wayne boys, he was met with a terrible shock.

Somehow, through incompetence or malevolence, Daniel was nowhere to be found. The officer who took the child initially said they handed him off to a secretary when he’d calmed down, and the secretary said she’d called the local CPP office to check on what requirements needed to be met for an infant in their custody. They said they’d send over an agent to handle the process. The child was passed to the person with the correct badge. They were now unreachable. And Daniel was too.

The CPP office denied having received this call. The secretary produced the recording, which all police lines in Gotham have by default. The police line says the call went to CPP; CPP’s system says otherwise.

And Daniel is somewhere out there with a crooked agent, or a fake agent, and they have no idea who they are or what they want.

Of course this made national news. The image of the stolen Wayne baby was on every television and newspaper. It was broadcast nationwide. Information about the disappearance had a hefty reward. Bruce begged the media for help finding his little brother. Not since the Lindbergh baby had there been such a national outcry.

And still there were no answers. Bruce grew disillusioned with a justice system that couldn’t find his parents’ killer nor his brother’s kidnapper. Daniel Wayne’s disappearance became the first case for Batman. It led him into the darkness of Gotham, plunging headlong into rampant trafficking, corrupt child services, and even brought the fabled Court of Owls to his attention.

—————

Meanwhile, in a different genre, young scientist couple Jack and Madeline Fenton are of their yearly vacation to haunted locales around the country. With a two-year-old in tow, they’re not quite up for spelunking through caverns or wandering the woods at night, but there are plenty of urban legends to investigate!

Through their unique combination of genius and incomprehensibility, the Fenton tangle with the Court of Owls, managing to destroy one of their secret society hideouts and save a cute baby on the way out! Sure, they’re convinced the Court was made up of ghosts and the child was spirited away to be ritually sacrificed. But the baby is safe in Maddie’s arms, and Jack notices how much he looks like himself, so they decide to take him home.

They try to report what happened to the police of course, but the cops told them to get lost with their ‘crazy ghost stories’. Along with the other complaints received about their insane outfits, gear, and vehicle, the police were quite ready to have the Fentons get the hell out of the city.

You’d think a town as haunted as Gotham would have more credulous citizenry, but what could you do? Oh well, back to Amity Park!

“What should we call him, Jack?”

“How about Daniel? I keep seeing that name everywhere for some reason!”

Because when you think about it, the problem isn't that you can go to your chosen bookseller and find a story where Sparklia Special gets semi-forced to have babies for Broody McDarkenfay (it's okay, she's into it). The problem is that it is unnecessarily difficult to look a little further down the shelf and find a vampire princess domming the hell out of the hunter who knows he shouldn't love her. Reducing people's choices always serves the reactionary agenda one way or another. Expanding choices. That's where it's at.

Marie Kondo, gently over my shoulder: why is a pair of pants you find unwearable still in your dresser drawer

me: oh shit that’s right!! The dresser is for clothes that under some circumstance I might conceivably wear!!

Marie Kondo, beaming proudly: Yes, that’s correct!! These pants must have been your favorites. How wonderful that they were so comfortable and practical that you wore them out. But now since they no longer function as pants, you should move them from the drawer where you keep your functioning pants!

me: Yes thanks I got it they’re in the fabric basket now

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but my friends have always gendered me correctly and stick to it even when it confuses other people and my friend's little sibling calls me older brother in Kannada yes, India made legal gender change impossible but my dog learned my new name quicker than the humans and she runs to give me a kiss when she's told to without being confused about who's being referred to

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but I can feel the Adam's apple growing in my throat and my muscles getting stronger, and my smile more real and I'm growing a beard, and I talk more freely

When they come to the Kabin, we want to make those kids proud of their identity, proud of their accent and proud of where they’re from,” he explains.

“Knocknaheeny hasn’t had the best reputation in the last 20 or 30 years, but it’s changing for the better. We’re always telling the kids to be proud of where you’re from – whether that’s Cork or someone who’s moved to Ireland.”

The two options are mutually exclusive given the nature of publishing on platforms I have explored.

I know which way I feel but highly desire thoughts from others.

Story length is roughly 2000 words each (so very short). The ebook version would have multiple stories on one book, the web version is a web version, so they are all linked and cross referenced.

Topics to include publishing tech, my specific plans, plans I see friends doing, etc.

At the end of the day — and I mean this with my entire heart — we need more of absolutely everything Small Art.

Self published, tiny press, both. Digital, physical, both. Blogs, ebooks, both. The entire spectrum of occasional hobby to building it up into livelihood.

To ensure this does not sound like I am building a marketing course, this will be a post here on the good ol’ tumblr dot com. I am never going to crack your wallet in hopes of selling you a marketing thing

I will absolutely spend time putting both money and attention into “we need more everything small art.”

I will put zero resources into denouncing big art.

I will spend my fortunes and experience and blood and sweat into promoting small art.

I have zero experience with big publishing. Look to others if this is your path and absolute best luck to you.

Small press vs self publishing, the core thing you have to ask yourself — constantly — are the core questions of every small business:

How much money do you want to make?

How hard are you willing to work?

How much risk are you willing to accept?

How much are you willing to leverage your current resources?

How many resources do you currently have to leverage?

How long are you willing to experiment with negative results?

I love small business.

I LOVE small art.

Let’s get into it.

PRINT NEWSPAPER

Easier to handle than you think if you have graphic design skills and/or are willing to work in templates. The printing isn’t the hard part. Fulfillment is a bit tricky, but the printing can be set up to fit a standard envelope, and shipping is (reasonably) cheap.

If this is your core business, then it’s pretty straight forward.

I am avoiding it because I want to do cards / prints / stickers etc, most of which greatly benefit from a small box. This spikes shipping.

A newspaper alone can fit comfortably in a flat envelope with minimal costs and minimal risk of damage.

(My issue is exclusively “I want to do a bunch of stuff, I don’t want two companies”)

EBOOKS

The profit math here is ugly and heavily favors the digital store. You can make it work at volume (large quantity books, broad audience, mix of both).

Because you don’t handle the distribution, you can focus on writing (and marketing).

Your biggest challenge is going to be to gain readers. This is an entire marketing discussion and is ongoing. Getting / and remaining good at social will help. Newsletters, moreso.

Again, because you do no physical labor shipping books, your time can be spent focusing on writing. You need to push quality up (we all do, always) while continually pushing up quantity.

Get good at the tech details or hire it out, or go with a platform to handle it for you.

The issue with handling the tech yourself is you now have another job of troubleshooting customers ereaders. If you go with a platform, you often hit exclusivity issues — it can (probably) be on other platforms, but it (probably) cannot be freely available.

BLOG

Because this is free to read, the barrier to getting people to read it is significantly less. Because it isn’t a book, you can be far more experimental in length and content.

Similar to ebooks, you need to continually push quantity (as well as quality). Your work is going to be consumed very quickly, even quicker than ebooks.

EBOOK vs BLOG

So, the models in content are similar. The business models are not.

The main issue to resolve is… do you want to market your book (to pay for production) or do you want the blogs as a sign on the roadside “Hey I Exist Come See the Haunted Wares!”

Physical or other items are handy because you have more control over profit margins, but they require physical labor and space to handle.

How much do you like putting stuff in envelopes and boxes and handling logistics?

A lot? None?

This directly ties to the resourcing issues above. Do you have big tables, lots of space, easily accessible post offices?

Any time you think to yourself "oh I don't care about XYZ aspect" then imagine me (gorgeous) smiling at you (tenderly) and re-think that answer.

This is not judgement.

This is recognition of labor.

Your labor.

Do not allow a boss to take advantage of your labor, even (especially) if you are said boss.

POLISH vs EXPERIMENT

One thing thing that also needs to get answered… how polished do you want your work to be?

Because ebooks have a cost, there is some (variable to audience) expectations of polish. Or purposeful lack of! However you handle will be at the behest of — and I stress this — a paying audience.

Blogs, because there is not a specific and 1:1 publish-to-revenue connection, you have a lot more area to play with. Shorter, longer, etc.

You can do both!

And!

This links back to the original set of questions, how hard do you want to work?

THERE IS NO SINGULAR PATH FORWARD

You don’t have to settle on your first choice.

You can bounce back and forth as you figure out what blend works for you.

You don’t have to do it for revenue.

Let us never forget that.

You can just make stuff.

Give it away. Friends, followers, whatever.

I can / have / will always argue that if your guiding force is to get your work into the world, if money does not play into the reason you're doing this -- you should just give the work away. Giveaways, freebees, leave it in small roadside libraries. Yes, you will lose/spend money, but you'll lose/spend LESS than trying to build/and maintain a marketing / business strategy that you don't actually care about.

From 2022 - 2023 any time someoen asked what I was making, I just sent them a care package. Postage paid by me.

Hundreds of cards, prints, stickers, patches, keychains, whatever I was experimenting with. I didn't know what I wanted the next step to be, I wanted to keep making stuff, here you go, no obligation, enjoy.

You can always just make stuff and give it to people who like it.

It's still allowed.

Not everything has to be a transaction.

As I say in my tipsy ramble, there is room for more — we need more small art. All kinds, all media, all structures, all genres, all lengths, everything always everywhere.

My choices are directly linked to a well established view of how hard I want to work, my resources, and financial goals.

I am taking physical newspapers off the table because they would have to fit into my shipping set up (small price to free at a small minimum, most often in boxes).

I expressly want them to be part of Netherworld Post as a whole — both from an editorial standpoint (the Post exists in the fictional universe) and from a practical standpoint.

I used to run 3 separate businesses, I consolidated to 1.5… there is a lot of overlap between the Post’s front office — hi — and the back office of client work.

The goal over the next 5+ years is to increase that overlap significantly to reduce how much I work, so I can make more stuff.

UNIVERSAL TRUTH...

The only universal truth is, if you do this for profit, you will need to figure out what works for YOU. This will require time and experiments.

What works for me won't work for you.

What works for you now won't work as-is for you in 5 years.

The best way to keep you in orbit to your customers are newsletters (always) and social (currently).

Getting people to jump from one social platform to another is very very difficult. You are building an audience on a forever shaky foundation.

Every single reputable email newsletter company will allow you to export your list and import your list. They all have goods and bads — this is part of your experiments, which one you like, but jumping ship from one to another is (mostly) invisible to your audience.

Getting people to read newsletters is harder than social, the sharing systems and cultures are very different.

Welcome to experimenting. FOREVER!

...AND UNIVERSAL MATH

Retail price - transaction cost - production = subtotal - taxes = take home profit.

Retail price, you set this.

Transaction cost: $0.30 + 3% of retail price. It is a bit less, this is rounded for easy math.

Production: how much it costs to build a thing.

Taxes: For quick math, I subtract 40% from the sub total.

Example

$5 (retail) - $0.45 ($.30 + $.15) - $1 (production, including shipping) = $3.55 (sub total) - $1.42 (tax) = $2.13 profit.

These numbers are rough, there are nuances, this should help get you started.

So.

You retail at $5, you make $2.13.

Now you have a baseline.

Is it worth $2.13 each time you sell this thing?

If not, raise the price and/or produce it cheaper and/or do something else.

If you want to do this, you can do this. It will be hard and there is a high risk of failure. So figure out what you are willing to risk (see above original questions) and do that. Or as above, just give stuff away! That works too!!

Artists and writers frequently fall into this weird headspace of "If this isn't how I put food on the table, I am somehow Less Than."

My heart to yours?

Thems Capitalism Words.

Your worth is not your retail pricepoint.

Is an accountant worth their accounting salary? Or are they worth who they are as a person, including everything outside the office?

Do not allow the veils of institutional wealth propping up "... I ahve... a process... it is the most important thing... in the world..." to make you feel bad about yourself / your work / your output / your frequency / your everything.

This is a job.

It can be the greatest job in the world.

It can build more into your life than it costs to run. IT SHOULD. OTHERWISE, DO SOMETHING ELSE.

And it's a job.

It should be treated with the same seriousness as any other job.

Which is:

The benefit must equal or surprass the time/energy it takes to do, or you will do something else.

I love this job. Doing this job makes me more "me" than not doing this job. I'll do some form of this job for as long as that is true -- which will probably be life long -- but if not, I won't. I'll stop and do something else.

But it's a job.

Drawing and writing and putting stuff into boxes and mailing them are a series of actions. They cannot love me. They are actions.

Falling in love with myths and monsters and the mail serves me, makes me Me. Meeting people and serving them myths and monsters and mail and sharing them all IS something that can love me back, because people pour energy into it as I pour energy into them.

I hope

this makes

some kinda sense

i'm going

to go eat

a thousand pounds of jalapenos

and sleep