Well, as I'm sure you've all seen by now the campaign is over and Exile, Magus did not meet its goal. At the end there were 93 orders between 83 readers, and 291 followers. This was actually far better than I expected when I first started this campaign. As mentioned before I've had this book finished for years now, and going through a cycle of writing query letters then scrapping them before sending any out. When I jumped into my Inkshares funding attempt I did so on a whim, and mainly as a way to knock myself out of that cycle which had been preventing me from truly trying to get this story out there. Jumping in like that with no plan, not enough money to pay for any of the promotional efforts I wanted to, and a very small support base, I never expected to get more than a dozen orders and perhaps twice that in followers. I certainly didn't expect to inspire 83 people to place orders, some of them even for multiple copies, and I'm still blown away by the number of followers. That is why despite not achieving the funding goal I still consider this endeavor a success – it did not me out of the cycle which kept me from really trying to do anything with this story and it finally gave me confidence that there is an audience for this weird tale though it may take a bit longer(and more than a bit of additional effort) for me to bring together enough members of said audience to make a real go of this.
Enough talk of the past though, now on to the future of this book, a future which I am dedicated to it having. First step in my new plan – rest my brain a bit. Combining what is often more than a full time job with also trying to keep the funding campaign moving has kept me in a state of exhaustion, especially in these last couple of months. So for at least a couple of weeks I plan to try and recover from that, catching up with friends and family while I'm at it. My players have likely come to hate me for suspending a long running Dragonlance game(we're up to the 2nd generation of player characters at this point), so I'll try to appease them by returning to my DM duties during that time as well.
I've got a number of thoughts on how to proceed with the book, and I'll be letting those percolate in my mind while resting. Just so I'm not keeping everyone in the dark I suppose I'll share some of those ideas, and I'll also invite anyone who has their own ideas to share them with me(the best places would be on my Facebook page linked here or via Twitter @ Thoasoold). The most obvious idea is to return to the query letters and actually send them this time. With what I've learned of pitching through this campaign I may finally be able to craft a letter I'm satisfied with.
When I was originally writing Exile, Magus it was with the intent of trying to serialize it, an idea I abandoned around Chapter 4. With that in mind I found it odd/amusing when I was contacted towards the end of the campaign asking if I would be interested in contributing some serialized fiction to a website. This caused me to look around and discover what I'm sure I'm that last to find out, that being that there's a few options for releasing serialized fiction online now. With that knowledge the serialization becomes an option, though it is one I ultimately view more as a way to raise the money I would need to pay for the various artwork as well as a development edit in order to get this book looking the way I've always dreamed of it looking.
That leads me in to the next potential plan – self publishing. If I did so my budget would demand that it only be print on demand, a thing I've researched for years now so I've pretty much already picked out which services I would use. This plan will take longer than the others though, because I would not take this step until I have gotten a developmental edit, and gotten all of the artwork. The current cover art would be moved to the front piece of Part 4-Llanchland since that is the scene I always intended to proceed that part. Then I would need to commission art for the other 12 parts, as well as a new cover. I have no ideas(that I'm happy with anyway) for what that cover would look like.
I'll take a break from my potential plans here to briefly cover something else I'd not mentioned before. That being the restructuring of parts. Some of you may have noted that the currently layout has Llanchland as part 3, but I just noted it as part 4. That's because for some time I've been meaning to split the current part 2 into parts 2 and 3. The new layout would be as follows: Part 1 (Thierdenvolgenlund); Part 2 (Exile); Part 3 (Warrior); Part 4 (Llanchland); Part 5 (Cruise); Part 6 (Academy); Part 7 (Graduation); Part 8 (Hunter); Part 9 (Proposal); Part 10 (Rescue); Part 11 (Ansvari); Part 12 (Reunion); Part 13 (Ascension). I'd actually already made these changes to the structure over at my Wattpad page some months back.
Enough of the break from potential plans. The most obvious remaining plan is to try to fund through Inkshares again. Before I do so I would have to make sure I'm ready next time. This would involve both getting the new artwork mentioned above, and coming up with a real plan. Also looking at my order statistics I would also not move forward with a new campaign before hitting at least 500 followers, with a preference for 750 followers. In the meantime I will be keeping the draft page active with all of the Parts and their composite chapters(yeah, I'm just going to start calling the “sections” chapters from now on, whereas the former “chapters” are now parts) uploaded remaining in place. In addition, at every 50th follower I will upload a new chapter, or 2 new chapters when one chapter is particularly short. We're now at 293 followers, and at 300 followers I'll upload the final 2 chapters of Part 6(soon to be renumbered Part 7).
Beyond all of these plans though, I intend to stay active on Inkshares. Every other Sunday starting with tomorrow I will still be sending out updates to recommend currently funding projects to you all. Now that I have a bit of free time I'm also going to start completing several side projects such as the short story detailing a bit about the ancient civilizations of Melexi and Thirosia or at least the legends concerning them, a narrative gazetteer detailing the continent on which Exile, Magus takes place, and the maps of said continent. I'll be posting these on my blog, or if I can find a home for them in other, higher traffic venues I 'll do so there instead. Either way, I will let you all know when such things are posted.
That's about all I have for today. Thank you all for the support you showed during the campaign, and I hope you'll continue following. Now that the campaign is over and I can get my brain to focus on things other than getting more preorders, I also hope that you all will feel free to communicate more directly with me. I'm always up for a good conversation, even those which have nothing whatsoever to do with my own book. I linked my Facebook and Twitter above, and they are still the best ways to reach me. You can also find me on Goodreads, and as mentioned and linked above on Wattpad. If you're feeling particularly nosy and of a mind to see what kind of pictures I take you can also check out my Instagram, though I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to. The point however, is that you should feel free to both follow and contact me at any of these places.
