A late check in, new art, meditations, and a conversation!
First of all, apologies to my legions of devoted fans, I didn’t get to write a blog yesterday. There was a study trip that took the entire day and I didn’t prepare in advance. There have been a few developments in thought that I want to share with you this week, related to the direction of the project and the final outcome.
The original intent was to publish a kind of deluxe hardcover book with high quality art, technically flawless print, stitch-bound with two ribbons, weighty paper, the whole shebang; and have a pay-what-you-want PDF to go along with it.
I liked the PWYW model because I’m doing this to express myself and have a project under my belt that will be the start of a career. A demonstration of all my skills, research, and knowledge in one package if you will. PWYW would be an answer to this situation where I don’t mind earning from a digital product but don’t feel super good charging people for an intangible good. This conclusion was supported by an article I read on Forbes, where they did an experiment and found that this model reaches more people. You can read it for yourself here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2015/05/29/you-can-earn-as-much-or-more-from-a-pay-what-you-want-model-as-from-a-fixed-price-model/
However, it seems PWYW is not so universally appreciated as I thought. Someone on reddit called it ‘free with a guilt trip‘ and many people seem to hesitate to get PWYW products because they feel they should contribute something. This affected my thinking and I was facing a kind of dilemma - I want a part of what I’m doing to be freely accessible to anyone but this has to be done in a clever way.
In the meantime I realised I’m actually very fast with the layout part of the work and so I made a decision to have two or three different PDFs. There will be the whole thing in its full glory, with art, two columns, letter format, bookmarks, and everything. This one will be complimentary with the purchase of a physical copy. I also want to make a version that will have all of the content but without art, or only with public domain art, and this one will be free regardless of everything. Finally, I’m considering making a single-column version for use on smartphones as I’ve heard a surprising number of people want this kind of thing too. Not sure if I’ll charge for this PDF.
Untitled (Own work, pencil, ink pen, acrylic marker, gouache, whiteout, 2023).
I also had the chance this Tuesday to meet with one of the coaches in my master programme. We spoke about two issues that have been bugging me about this whole endeavour. Namely, the cultural specificity and sensitivity of the material, and whether the whole thing should have a layer of academic work or not. She had quite interesting opinions and input.
Her suggestion was that I assemble an advisory group, a few people to whom I’d send my texts regularly to get feedback and input. This is something I’ve heard before but ignored, as all good advice needs to be haha. I know that the most accomplished writers have these kinds of discussion groups and often praise them as one of the most important tools in the process. I will look into this more in the next few weeks.
And on the other issue, she said she enjoys things that are radical but also funny. Her suggestion was that I incorporate references, footnotes, arguments, and academic commentary but in a jokey funny kind of way. This would be a meta-layer on top of the text of the game which is serious and direct. I liked her idea and I think it can also be very interesting visually!
That’s it for this week! A small and late check-in, but at least you can enjoy some original art I made one of these evenings. Nailing an aesthetic for images in the book, producing a coherent and consistent body of work for this purpose is so far ahead, but it’s important to do these experiments when I can. See you next week, hopefully with results from the first playtests!
