Tag: frozen dreams

It was a good day on the Kickstarter, to start the second week. And the map’s done and paid for, which is nice. And, best of all: I got chapters of edits back! …And they were all sensible ones, dammit. If you want to learn a seemly humility, hand your work over to an editor. The experience is most instructive.

Today I started the map-purchasing process. I’ve commissioned Robert Altbauer of Fantasy Map to do the job; he comes well-recommended, and after seeing some of his work I was happy to hire him to do the work. One more possible add-on, I think. Speaking of which: I want to see how FROZEN DREAMS is doing at the midpoint level before I decide how to do add-ons. Backerkit will make it a lot easier, but also cost money to set up and run. If I don’t get very many more backers, it may make more sense for me to run things on my own*.

Today, I had discussions, or at least a discussion and maybe started another couple. The ‘maybe’ discussions involved inquiries into map prices, and I’ll know how they went in a few days. The full discussion involved the audiobook stretch goal; I sat down with my audiobook narrator and worked out what she would do and her rates, should it fund and/or I put the money together otherwise. She’ll also be hopefully recording a blurb/sample in the next few days, which I will absolutely use to try to entice more people to back the Kickstarter.

I’m not sure how well that will work out, assuming that it funds; but every time I’ve gone I don’t think people will pay good money for that about something in this Kickstarter I’ve turned out to be wrong. Besides, if it works it’s a revenue stream worth looking into. And, honestly: I kind of like the idea in general now. Pulp detective stories lend themselves well to dramatic readings, I think.

I spent the morning playing with spreadsheets and making suggested revisions to Chapter 1 to FROZEN DREAMS. The spreadsheets were mostly to make sure that I’m being reasonable in my stretch goals. I… seem to be? Where I’m getting hung up is that I don’t know how to budget for the city map that I’m likely going to need commissioning; I’ve been asking around about prices, but I get a lot of shrugs and ‘it depends.’ This industry needs some industry standards, tanjit.

In contrast, the revisions are straightforward: my copy-editor sent over suggested changes, I looked at them and pretty much said Yeah, and then I went and implemented them. Nice and simple and it didn’t take me long to do. I like this system.