John, I wish you well in whatever direction you take. You have been an important catalyst helping a lot of the authors and readers here and I, along with many others, fully appreciate that.

Please allow me to be brutally honest with my opinion here. Forgive me if anyone finds it offensive.

Your stated reasons for removing your book from Inkshares seem puzzling, incomplete and logically flawed. Although no one else has yet voiced this, I’ll bet that many have thought it. 

"ultimately, it is about preserving my own creative energy so that I can get to the polished third draft I want to pass over to production. This has been a difficult and painful choice, however ultimately the crowdfunding model has placed too much strain on me mentally and emotionally and my priority, beyond the desire to build a readership for Blood Dawn, is to make sure Blood Dawn is as amazing as it can be."

It would seem that the worst is already over - we all saw how fast our combined efforts got "A God In The Shed" over the 750 threshold and everyone believes the same would happen for your title with not much further effort required from you. Your network here would get that done!

You spread yourself very thin here with an almost manic pace of activities and additional "projects" and promotions for others. So the mental and emotional strain you speak of likely stemmed from the entirety of this and can’t solely be blamed on the "crowdfunding model".

Unless there is something major that you are not revealing, the prudent reaction to your stress would seem to be to scale back the "other activities" and put your time and energy into the book at this critical point in time.

I fail to see how the "crowdfunding model" would play any role in stopping you from making this third draft the best possible ms you are capable of producing.

Once you reach the 750 mark, there is NO deadline for submitting a ms into the production process. Indeed some authors here are taking a LOT of time after completing their funding. The Haida Gwaii Lesson and Guns in the Hands of Artists are two prominent examples.

All you need do is take a breather to recover from the mental and emotional stress and then go back to work on the novel with your creative energy preserved, having lightened your load and scaled-back from the extraneous activities here and Goodreads and all of the other numerous platforms you use to engage with and help others.

Of course my suggestions pre-suppose that what you stated is true. What I suspect is that you may be slightly disingenuous with your stated reasons for removing your book from this platform and that your real motivation is much more than the reasons given.  I apologize if that suspicion is unfounded - but it just seems to make more sense.

Although Inkshares is a non-binding contractual model, I would personally feel a very strong obligation to my own supporters, to Inkshares management and staff to follow through on my promise to produce my title here after reaching the point that you have.

I would feel that leaving now is a serious breach of trust and is tantamount to "breaking my word". Once I commit to something like this, all I need is a handshake promise to make my word my bond. That’s just the way I operate and the moral framework that shapes my life. I realize that most people nowadays do not share this strict adherence to such old-fashioned values.

I hesitated to write this opinion piece and ultimately decided to place it here in a last ditch effort to ask you to reconsider your decision. You are a good guy and a valuable member of this community.

Does anyone else here want to join in and urge John to keep Blood Dawn on Inkshares? It may be a futile effort at this point, but at least we or I tried. I wouldn’t do this John, if I didn’t believe you and Blood Dawn were worth the effort.

God Bless and good luck with whatever direction your journey takes.

Hello Inkshares Authors and Readers! 

I have a question for Inkshares and the Inkshares community about co-authorship and how it’s represented/integrated into the Inkshares site. 

First off I have been really loving the updates to the Inkshares online platform, including these forums! Thanks so much @Thad @Jeremy Thomas Inkshares is looking/feeling really great and the new additions have deeply enhanced the online experience! In that vein of improvement, I offer the following observation and question:

So far, (and please correct me if I am wrong) I seems that only one Inkshares account can be the "author" of a book project, but as we know many books have two or more authors. While RUNE OF THE APPRENTICE only has one author (me!) I have co-written another book which am very excited to begin funding on Inkshares in the next month or so. (I will spare you the details because promoting that book is not the purpose of this post.)