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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
February 25, 2025
The Best Laid Plans of Chimerical Jaguars

I am supposed to be launching the Kickstarter for the second Jokka collection this week. In fact… my planned date for that was… yesterday.
You will note that I have not launched the Kickstarter. That would be because the Ai-Naidar showed up, and while they didn’t do anything as uncouth as punch me in the face, they’ve laid me out anyway, like a boxer down for the match. Most of you have noticed the eruption of meta-conversations on patrelocals, and probably knew before I did what this portended. But I’ve had occasional clusters of visits from the Ai-Naidar before without needing to write another story in the canon, and honestly I thought their next story was going to be written four years ago, and it didn’t happen. I have lots of notes, but no book.

Well, now I am two chapters into a book. Not a long one, I don’t think. And not the one I planned (of course). But I don’t think I’ve had an idea eat my brain this completely in years. I am once again so full up with Stuff that I am ...

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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
January 29, 2025
January Updates!

Some quick updates! First, and most notably, the next Kickstarter will launch sometime in February (late, probably) for a second Jokka collection. You can sign up here to be notified of launch: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcahogarth/the-smell-of-intelligence-and-other-stories

Second, I’m wrapping up the writing on the gamelit novel, and have started work on the cover art, in the hopes of having that ready soon. First readers, take note! I’ll be asking for help for this one soon. I expect the book will be available direct in March, with retail launch in April.

Third, having discovered how to set up forums, the Discord now has a forum section for live-reads, for people who want to share their jaguar-book-reading experience as they’re doing it (and for people who’ve already read the books to enjoy). If that kind of thing is your jam, stop by and check it out—we have threads for Princes’ Game, Zafiil, and the Jokka books currently active.

Fourth—despite not really ...

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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
January 14, 2025
Back in Time Tuesday: The Huntress Engaged

Going back the late 90s with this color pencil piece of one of my old D&D characters. The goal at the time was to imitate a Renaissance portrait of the kind I was studying in college, which often had pastoral backgrounds with Renaissance-style architecture in the distance. I wanted to see if it could be done with pencils, rather than paint, and it was a pretty good attempt...! I liked that the dragon friend also has designs on his tail and wings.

This edition of Back in Time Tuesday is free, so share it if you wish!

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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
February 02, 2024
post photo preview
Gamelit Novel Index

The chapter titles are all a mess. But this is the proper order so far:

Gamelit 1 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/4241337/gamelit-novel-first-chapter

Gamelit 2 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/4255477/gamelit-novel-last-bit-of-chapter-1

Gamelit 3 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/4267366/gamelit-novel-chp2-part1

Gamelit 4 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/4267371/gamelit-novel-chp2-final

Gamelit 5 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/4298755/gamelit-novel-chp-3-part-1

Gamelit 6 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/4330428/gamelit-chp-3-part-2

Gamelit 7 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/4331116/gamelit-chap-4-pt-1

Gamelit 8 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/4361942/gamelit-chp-4-last-bit

Gamelit 9 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5215305/gamelit-novel-chapter-3

Gamelit 10 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5244861/gamelit-novel-10

Gamelit 11 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5271216/gamelit-novel-11

Gamelit 12 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5301971/gamelit-novel-12

Gamelit 13 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5326625/gamelit-novel-13

Gamelit 14 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5360605/gamelit-novel-14

Gamelit 15 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5385714/gamelit-novel-15

Gamelit 16 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5418577/gamelit-novel-16

Gamelit 17 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5444360/gamelit-novel-17

Gamelit 18 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5475518/gamelit-novel-18

Gamelit 19 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5502726/gamelit-novel-19

Gamelit 20 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5530518/gamelit-novel-20

Gamelit 21 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5558728/gamelit-novel-21

Gamelit 22 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5586451/gamelit-novel-22

Gamelit 23 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5613544/gamelit-novel-23

Gamelit 24 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5642711/gamelit-24

Gamelit 25 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5668799/gamelit-25

Gamelit 26 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5693714/gamelit-26

Gamelit 27 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5722853/gamelit-27

Gamelit 28 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5747793/gamelit-28

Gamelit 29 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/5772301/gamelit-29

RECAP RECAP Gamelit 29.5 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6386873/gamelit-29-5

Gamelit 30 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6398055/gamelit-30

Gamelit 31 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6411958/gamelit-31

Gamelit 32 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6432688/gamelit-32

Gamelit 33 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6457957/gamelit-33

Gamelit 34 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6481325/gamelit-34

Gamelit 35 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6501493/gamelit-35

Gamelit 36 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6542961/gamelit-36

Gamelit 37 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6563733/gamelit-37

Gamelit 38 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6590629/gamelit-38

Gamelit 39 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6612520/gamelit-39

Gamelit 40 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6635635/gamelit-40

Gamelit 41 - https://studiomcah.locals.com/post/6662873/gamelit-41-potentials-potentialing

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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
March 07, 2025
Gamelit 44
the call
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mcahogarth@mcahogarth
March 03, 2025
Meta-Conversations: History, Part 1
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