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Community for science fiction and fantasy author/artist M.C.A. Hogarth.
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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
November 08, 2021
Business Post: Do You Really Want Every Customer?

Kind of interesting interaction last week about the Kickstarter, in which disappointment was expressed that I wasn’t offering a normal paperback prize: I should be offering prizes in every price range, because to be successful you should reach every potential backer, was the assertion.

This was a valuable interaction, because it prompted me to re-examine my processes. After a couple of days, I figured out the core misapprehension: it was assumed I wanted to reach every potential customer. But you don’t always want every possible customer. In fact, in the case of the Kickstarter, arranging to reach every potential customer would lose me money, which makes the ‘to be successful, you should be doing something different’ advice… bad advice. As a consumer, I can sympathize with the sentiment, especially if I’m on the un-served end of the equation… there have been many times I’ve thought ‘I wish there was a price option that got me what I wanted for what I can afford.’ But that’s not always feasible, on the other end.

Your first task, when you are crafting a business plan, is to decide what you’re using your prospective project for. I tend to separate projects into two high level buckets: bread-and-butter income, and capital generation. The former’s intended to bring steady amounts of low level money, and the latter, bursts of cash I can use to top off disappointing quarters or pay for big expenses.

The strategies for these two kinds of projects have to be different. The bread-and-butter route rewards low-effort, low-to-moderate cost products that can be sustained indefinitely. High-effort, premium products are time-consuming and need to be limited, which makes them ideal for capital generating projects. What doesn’t work, in my experience, is mixing the two strategies, unless you have a workforce you can put on the task. As a single-person business, I will get myself into trouble immediately if I try to use high-effort but moderate-cost products to generate capital.

To put some concrete examples in here:

Paperbacks printed on demand and shipped by retailers without my intervention are low-effort products I can offer indefinitely. All I need to do is press the ‘make this available’ button and retailers will sell them for me until I press a ‘stop selling this’ button. Easy peasy.

Paperbacks printed on demand and shipped by me are high-effort products that need to generate a great deal of cash to offset the effort and time it takes for me to handle them personally. I need to order them (time and money), receive them (time), pack them for re-shipment (time and money) and mail them individually (time and money). There is no reason I should be doing that when Amazon or Barnes & Noble will do it for me… and for cheaper. I can’t offer free shipping.

Since any paperback I touch is already extremely costly, turning them into a premium, high-cost object is the only way I can profit off them… which makes them a perfect fit for short-term capital generating projects.

My Kickstarters—intended to generate capital quickly—are the right tool for premium products. I can offer low cost prizes only when they are cheap in time and production costs, which means, essentially, anything digital. But a Kickstarter project is the wrong tool for a moderate-cost paperback option, which I would lose money on… particularly since that paperback option will be available later via my bread-and-butter route, which is retail sales. I would lose money offering an unsigned, cheap paperback option via my Kickstarters. Which means, for that kind of project, the moderate-budget backer is not a potential customer I want to serve.

This doesn’t mean I don’t want my moderate cost customers. It just means they can pay me at a different time: after the Kickstarter has generated the capital I’ll be using to create the project, not before.

There was a later comment that basically went ‘she’s overfunded, so I guess it’s working for her, but…’ ‘It’s working for her’ should end that sentence. If it’s working for me, it’s successful, and on my terms. I’ve spoken many times about controlling your successes. I don’t want to limit my success based on tasks I could offload to people hired for the extra work. But when I can’t see a way to do that offloading—when the work is the creative part that can’t be outsourced—then I don’t want to attract so many people wanting so many things that I spend a year struggling to keep on top of all my commitments. I’d much rather be done in a few months, and then be free to continue trying new things and working on new projects.

It may be that this is myopic; that the reason I’m not living in my Italian vineyard with my private plane waiting to fly me to my yacht in Greece is that I’m too good at keeping my business from sprawling out of control. But I also think that when you stray too far from your core business, you’re more apt to end up doing things you don’t enjoy… at which point, you might as well work in a cubicle. The pay’s more predictable.

My most important observation, after thinking about this for a few days, is to remember that advice that sounds like it should work may not work in practice, and that you always, always have to run the numbers. “To be successful, you should have a product in every price range” sounds good on the surface, but might actually be the opposite of what you need to do to succeed. Trust the math. 🙂

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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
October 27, 2021
Cursive Practice Video, to Relax

Or at least, I intend it to be relaxing. Hopefully it delivers.
4:22 minutes

Materials:

00:04:27
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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
July 23, 2021
Overview of the First Oil Paint Experiment

In which I talk about the paper, the paint, and the experience of oils versus gouache. Fun stuff, will do more.

Thank you Locals supporters! Your contribution to my art war chest here is what's powering these experiments and videos. For now I'm keeping them public but I may start doing some subscriber-only videos if you all are interested.💖

00:03:35
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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
July 17, 2021
Video Review: Oil Painting Papers

My initial review on receipt of the three oil paper products I ordered: the Canson pad, the Rembrandt block, and the Arches single sheets.

00:01:54
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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
November 09, 2021
Alysha Misc

Thanks for your comments yesterday on the business post... all very provocative, in a good way. I'll try to respond to all of them today.

Some Alysha misc now, since I'm gearing up for the results of the Kickstarter!

Petrov is giving away coupon codes for every book in the Alysha series (and has some leftover coupons for Marda and the business book). You can pick those up here (and please do! The books are bought already, someone should use them!) https://twitter.com/PetrovNeutrino/status/1457344535843987461

Our own @JudasComplex sent along a sample of the Faith in the Service audiobook, which I've attached for your delight! I... haven't had a chance to listen to it. Don't ask me about my past week and a half or so. Putting it here will guarantee I get to it.

After hearing the amused comments during the livestream, I went ahead and added all the ship type illustrations I have inked from the 90s to the wiki. Glory in the rampant adorableness of their anthropomorphic stylings! See those ...

Alysha Misc
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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
April 12, 2021
The Jaguar's Heart 7: We Are Not a Monolith

A little comedy today, at least in the link. Transcript follows.

Hi, all. Welcome to this episode of The Jaguar’s Heart.

A while back I was introduced to a comedy sketch about Cuban coffee by a Mexican comedian, Gabriel Iglesias. ( The sketch begins with him greeting all his fellow Latinos and then backing up to say ‘but we’re all different, aren’t we’ which is a segue into a demonstration of how different Hispanics speak Spanish.

It is hilarious. First, because I am a Spanish speaker and a linguistics hobbyist, and his portrayal of various accents resonated with my experiences in trying to make sense of them myself… Not always easy, since from culture to culture, slang and accent are often totally different (and sometimes grammar! Spaniards use a grammatical construct that has died out in many other Spanish-speaking countries, the plural “you.”)

I also loved it because the Cuban coffee part is real. I grew up with Cubans. I know how we are....

The Jaguar's Heart 7: We Are Not a Monolith
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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
March 25, 2021
The Jaguar's Heart 6: Hatespeech

One of the most common things I hear (and say) right now is "the asymmetry is the story." Here's one about how none of us are innocent of the sins we hate in others.

Hi, all. Welcome to this week’s episode of The Jaguar’s Heart.

It’s been weeks since the Baen’s Bar incident and I’m still thinking about it... because the longer I do, the more I feel, overwhelmingly, that it’s obvious that the problem is deeper than “this forum was saying stuff that offended us.” We have to back up to the glaring fact that people on opposite sides no longer consider each other human. Nothing I say will matter because the people disagreeing with me don’t think I’m human. They have denied my humanity; they have not bothered to listen to my beliefs, or have fake-listened to them in that way that people do when they’re so ready to prove you wrong that they’re only using your speech to provide talking points for their own ideas.

We have forgotten how to listen.

Increasingly, we have also ...

The Jaguar's Heart 6: Hatespeech
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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
August 13, 2026
flop

Just got the air conditioner back after a week without it, and that... would be why all work stopped. But I am revivifying now, and planning a second kickstarter for stickers! Please go vote on your favorite potential design:

https://forms.gle/S5wFoNmekUaRnRzt5

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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
August 07, 2026
Sizzling Florida Summer

So, the air conditioner broke and we are looking for an affordable repair, and I want to tell you that I have been completely out of it in the resulting heat. I have been cheering myself up re-reading reviews and comments you leave in the gallery and here and on various social media. (Yes, I have a little 'read these when you need a pick-me-up' folder).

I am so grateful for the effort so many of you have put into word-of-mouth, and wanted to say so! Thank you!

Cat here says, "At last you understand that what is good in life is to sleep most of the day and also the night."

I might have to take his advice.😅

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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
August 06, 2026
Wednesday Share: Massage Therapy Art

https://mcahogarth.org/gallery/image/88-2005-040-LaelkiiWithSkulls

Now that I'm scanning and uploading everything I'm amused how much art I made because of, or to study for, all my massage therapy tests... like the one up there of Laelkii with skulls just so I could label the parts (and hopefully remember them better).

Other candidates:

My notes on Chinese medicine resulted in this series of sketches of the five elements and their corresponding time, organs, and seasons: https://mcahogarth.org/gallery/image/90-2005-14-ChineseMedicine1

My cheatsheet of pelvic stretches in case you want to get at those muscles you're messing with by sitting all the time: https://mcahogarth.org/gallery/image/90-2005-12-PelvicStretches1

My series of notes about hydrotherapy and temperature interventions (really cute cartoons in this series): https://mcahogarth.org/gallery/image/89-2005-057-TemperatureTherapyNotes1

My illustration of my exercises for healing/preventing RSI: ...

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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
17 hours ago
Nearing 6000 Images!
Gallery Update, August

I have been hard at work on the gallery and it’s time, thus, for an update! And I’m going to do it in stats because everyone loves numbers.

Overall:

  • 56% of the large format books are done

  • 5805 images in the gallery

  • 1897 (33%) have my commentary
    169 are finished pieces!

When I say “large format”, I mean the numbered sketchbooks that are 9x12 or larger. This total doesn’t count the mini-sketchbooks, high school sketchbooks, the remaining conlang notebooks (about 72 more books) or any of the loose artwork. But I figure I’ll jump those bridges when I get to them.

Now, some fun stats:

Top Characters So Far:

  • Me (!) – 267

  • Alysha – 191

  • Zafiil – 104

  • Vasiht’h – 99

  • Distant Song – 83

This probably reflects which books I’ve done so far more than popularity; I’ve done the “back” of the stack and the beginning of the stack but we’re missing large swathes of the middle. I’m curious to see how the character ratios change then… I’m guessing Alysha will remain popular but other characters will start pulling ahead.

Top settings (unsurprisingly):

  • Peltedverse: 1821

  • After this, Kherishdar and Jokka are tied if you count the language work for both.

Surprisingly, 168 pictures from World of Warcraft! So if you’re a gamer, you might want to hit that tag. Fun dark horse: Coracle, with 47 images uploaded so far. Only one book for Coracle, and yet!

Related: Spoiler images, at 53 uploads, comprise .9% of the total in the database right now. This is a good time to mention that when you create an account, all the warning tags are flagged by default so you don’t see those images; you have to manually uncheck them to see spoilers, questionable images, etc. I am here to protect you from accidental book trauma!

  • 194 titles say some form of ‘Probably’, ‘Maybe,’ or ‘I guess’

…which reflects that a lot of these books are decades old and my paper sieve memory does not resurrect my thought process at the time, especially with really loose sketches. Which brings me to:

Notes versus Sketches (and other developmental work):

  • Drawings: 93%

  • Notes: 1.5%

  • Language Notes: 3.8%

  • Maps, Floor plans, and Schematics: 72 images

Notes can be anything from timelines to worldbuilding scribbles to poetry to outlines! More of this resides in the mini-sketchbooks than the larger ones, but it’s fun to see the data I felt I needed a bigger page to explore. Also, it’s fun to see how much time I spend on maps and schematics. If you were ever curious about what items look like, or wanted to “walk through” a floor plan of some place I’ve written about more than once, you can definitely hit the database for that. (So can I! Very important!)

Finally, a ridiculous statistic:

  • 99 pages are sketches of horses

  • Absolute failures (10)

  • Sketches I liked (5)

  • Neutral: 84

I will continue drawing horses until morale improves. Someone else’s, because apparently I am almost never happy with my horse drawings.

When I sit back and think about the fact that I’m about halfway through archiving my art and it’s nearly 6000 images already… how… how many single people have 6000 useful images online in one place? What I’m doing is wild if I look at it too closely. So I don’t, I’m just gonna keep going. XD

Go make an account and have fun browsing!

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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
July 08, 2026
Welcome Back, to the Stardancer Gallery

I have a gallery again.

It would be so easy to say ‘I can’t tell you what that means to me’ but part of my thing is that I do tell you what things mean to me, all the time, so I’m going to try.

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mcahogarth.org

Let me start by telling you about the original Stardancer gallery, which many of you remember and an even larger number of you weren’t around for. Because in an era before big sites like DeviantArt, when personal websites were still linked by webrings and coded by hand, I had a website that used a database to show visitors not only the latest thing I’d uploaded, but the comments left by dozens of people on that offering.

It’s so hard to explain how crazy that was. There were no Wordpress packages, no visual editors, no gallery plugins. There was no user validation by Google or Apple, no social media, no expectation of interaction or community. Everything had to be coded by hand and installed by someone who wasn’t afraid of a UNIX command line. And from 1999 until mid-2012, the Stardancer gallery served, on average, 5 pieces of art a week, with over 175,000 words of commentary from me, for thirteen years, and those pieces accrued between 5 to 40 comments from visitors. When it finally went down, there were 2906 distinct pieces of art in the database, and of those 253 had multiple versions—I uploaded them as I worked on them with commentary on each stage. Some of those pieces had 9-10+ stages where you could watch me wrestling with them (complete with titles like “OMG Ugly Stage” and “needs a background”).

For context, 175,000 words is probably about 700 tightly-packed paperback pages. That’s how much commentary I wrote. And that’s not including 1993 keywords and 60 projects I was tagging everything with.

I wanted that gallery so I could share my art with all of you. But it was also functioning as an organizational layer for me. When I was trying to remember a story, a character name, a forgotten piece of art I wanted to finish, I would search my own gallery. It was my backup brain, and my sketchbook index, and it kept me focused. It even had basic project management tools, since each of those 60 projects had a status: complete, in progress, ongoing, on hold, trunked.

The sunsetting of the original site was inevitable. You can’t run software with visions of enterprise-level functionality on a friend’s personal computer. But I was in the very unusual position of having started out with a system custom-built for my idiosyncrasies, and nothing on the market was good enough. I kept poking and not loving any of my choices. Host all my artwork on some aggregate gallery site or shoehorn it into a cookie-cutter Content Management System? No thank you. So I never replaced Stardancer, and for fourteen years, I’ve been running without that second-brain infrastructure.

And now, I have it again.

Now I can think ‘what was that thing I said about that one character in that one sketchbook?’ and search and find it. I can mutter, “Where is all the Ai-Naidari language work” and pull up the notebook. I can think ‘Didn’t I want to finish that picture of the dala fox? What sketchbook is that in?’ and I know.

I know!

And unlike the first gallery, this one can have everything in every sketchbook. Because I streamlined the parts I hate (editing, watermarking, uploading, making thumbnails, importing into the database) and left myself only the parts I enjoy (writing comments and tagging). And while some of the original Stardancer’s features aren’t online yet, like multiple versions of the same image, they’re designed and in the queue… and this version can have cool new features, like user favorites, and requests from users who love something and want me to finish it.

I’m so forgetful. I keep trying to explain to people how much of a cheesecloth my brain is with just about everything. Without rigorous documentation, lists, and notebooks, I would be completely useless. Art is one of those places I document my thoughts and keep myself pointed in the right direction. The fourteen years I didn’t have a gallery are literally gone in my brain, artistically. I have to dig up the physical books and thumb through them to remember anything about them. So I think you can imagine my relief that this is now available… not just for you to enjoy. But for my sake, to keep myself from vanishing because I am no longer observing myself.

Right now the new gallery has 2644 images across the 42 sketchbooks (and one unfinished language notebook) I’ve scanned and uploaded… of the nearly 200 I have. I’m only just getting started. I am crazy excited, I can’t even tell you.

I have a gallery again.

I have a gallery again!

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mcahogarth.org

Anyway, this is the part where I talk about how you can enjoy the gallery:

Every subscription and purchase helps keep the gallery open and supports our free users, so thank you so much for chipping in!

What can I say? Welcome home, my friends. Welcome back!

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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
March 16, 2026
Early Access is Now Live! Come Join Us on Ke Bakil!
Make your own Jokka clan and watch it thrive!

Good news, patrons! The beta for the JOKKA! game is now open! You, as paying patrons, now have early access!

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