This is not the end
But it is an ominous email title, isn't it?
Hello.
I have just reached £150 in earnings from the eBook edition of my book WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? on Amazon. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s decent considering I have not used their ads dashboard in a long time, and most of my sales are through people I speak to directly, and in paperback. I know this isn’t ‘scalable’ but I am secretly a social creature, and there’s something about faceless ads for books I put a lot of love into that makes me feel gross, like there’s a tube in my right foot draining my humanity away. Last time I felt like that I was reading an absolutely atrocious short story about divorce and oranges at university. It was so bad that I became convinced my own weird brand would never succeed, that the world just wanted miserable stories about miserable people saying miserable things at each other across a miserable ‘shabby chic’ table.
You’ve all proved me wrong. Weird stories have an audience.
Anyway, about Earthloop
EARTHLOOP NEWS
Hello all
(Disclaimer: I am unwell as I write this, hence the delay, so please excuse any errors)
Before I begin, I wanted to say thanks for supporting this weird project. It’s not been an easy ride, but it has been a fun one, and I learned a lot about crowdfunding (this was my first attempt) and I made some new fans, connections, and friends along the way. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the last update, it contains some fun spoilers in the form of an episode plan.
This is not the end of Earthloop.
But it is a new start. At some point halfway through the timeline of this Kickstarter being open, I reached a point where any decent advert would cost me about 40% of the campaign goal. I made a difficult decision not to go ahead, as if I only reached the 1500, I’d have a lot less in reality to work with and would have struggled with fulfilment. I had to be brutally honest with myself. I made 35% of the funding on the weekend of ComicCon, but online ads are a nightmare for a writer like myself.
So what’s next?
I still want to pursue crowd funding, but through other means. I am currently part of a comedians group on Patreon, and after dusting off my ancient account I have discovered there are new means of fulfilment on there. I believe the Earthloop story could fit well there, but you’d have to tolerate the occasional silly story too. I might put my upcoming standalone novel, THE STEPHANIE GLITCH, there too. I have tried to ‘compartmentalise’ my existence for the benefit of the marketing gurus, but if I’m honest it made me miserable. So, “comedy poet sci-fi author sometimes serious poet Phillip” is the character you are getting from now on. I perform better artistically if I’m allowed to flit between all these forms relentlessly, even if it isn’t good for the algorithm (one is reminded of the public reaction to David Bowie’s album THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD, featuring David in a dress which potential fans found off-putting, but which I found fascinating. I need to be more Bowie).
The plan.
I do have a business model. Mainly to release the first Earthloop eBook for free and to charge for the other two when they come out. Any author I’ve met who actually makes enough money to eat from writing does this, which bothers me slightly as WHO BUILT THE HUMANS could have been three or four novellas. But you know me, artsy and experimental, why not put 11 universes in one novel-length book?
(Probably because the advert algorithms will be confused by it and you’ll spend nearly two years trying to find a good way to categorise it in online bookstores)
The ending.
I know how EARTHLOOP ends, and I know how it begins. It is an epic story, told through three consecutive lives of the enigmatic Lax Morales and his friends and enemies. Back in 2019, when I first wrote Lax into a story, I had no idea people would love him so much. Earthloop is happening in part because of all the positive feedback I got. The story was always in my head, but it took supporters like yourself to convince me to bring it out.
The future.
Crowdfunding has shown me that there is indeed an audience for my stories, and that has given me a lot of momentum.
The episodic nature of Earthloop lends itself to Patreon quite well. I could also launch pre-orders of the paperbacks through Etsy or Ko-Fi, with a big discount for Patrons. This worked for WBTH, and kept my head above water whilst I designed the cover and printed bookmarks, posters, and of course the books themselves.
But I want input from my supporters. What do you think is best?
Elsewhere
You can follow me over at Substack to keep up with my work and to take part in polls, hear about free books, become a guest on my sci-fi comedy podcast, or to see some free stories and sci-fi poems from myself. It’s a lot of fun.
Thanks for being here. It did sting to get so close with this project, but in the days since, I have become incredibly motivated to keep writing it. That’s partly why I didn’t get round to writing this post until now. Earthloop and Stephanie have eaten my brain, as has the flu I am currently battling. Now, time to get a big curry and listen to some Bowie.
Oh, I’m making the WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? eBook free for a week when my newsletter reaches 500 subscribers. Currently at 349.
- Phillip
Anyway here’s a Lego cat. Whenever I see this I become unmanageably happy.
Look at it. Marvel in it’s dark orange splendour, its little patterns, the wiggly tail.
This is the absolute peak of human artistry.
I joined another discount sci-fi thing by the way. Let me know if you want me to share more of these in the future. I join about one every week or two, it’s the best way to find cool new people to add to this newsletter.
https://books.bookfunnel.com/spaceoperashenanigans75/yvjbovtnky