For posterity, here’s a link to the post that I wrote on my blog last year, where I gathered and quoted some old locked-journal posts that I had written while I was diagnosed and treated back in 2007. (Rather than just re-quoting them here.)

Had a great get-together last night, good friends, good food, an abundance of drink (seriously — I’m going to be on an alcohol-heavy diet for the next week or so, given the amount of stuff that was brought to the house that we didn’t manage to get to). And then, as a special gift, I found out that Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary, thereby ensuring the accelerated splintering of the Republican party, and most likely a landslide electoral defeat in November.

So, y’know: Good Times.

I’m actually going to do an unheard-of thing: take BOTH days off during a weekend. I think I’ve earned it.

The device prints from digital 3D files via a single or double printhead that lays down extruded plastic (either ABS — the same stuff that Lego is made from — or PLA, which is corn-based and biodegradable). The build area is roughly the size of a loaf of bread, which means you can build fairly large objects, and if you’re using the double printhead, you can do it in two colors.

The price is $1750 for the single-extruder or $2000 for the double, within the realm of possibility for any Insurgent Creative looking to make… well, anything, really: Toys, game pieces, action figures, art… the possibilities are endless. You can read the press release here at the Makerbot website, which also features this video:
 

Exciting times, Creatives. If you can dream it up, you can build it.

Thanks to Allen Varney for bringing this to my attention.
 
 

To be honest, I’m not really putting this down here for readers, so much as for my own records — I’ve done something like this since I started blogging, and I like to go back and read them in later years, to see where I was, headspace-wise, in any particular year. So, without further ado:

2011 was one of those clichéd “roller-coaster” years — Low lows and high highs. At the beginning of the year, things were bad. Hella bad, as the hip kids say (or maybe not– being neither hip, nor a kid, I can’t be entirely sure).

The Borders closure gut-punched Adamant’s print revenues. HARD. I found myself struggling, in an ever-deepening hole. In desperation, I launched an “app-pricing” policy — every digital product from Adamant priced at $1.99. Long story short — it didn’t work. Slightly longer story: the RPG market is, I believe, not at the scale where that can work as intended. We peaked pretty quickly, and the sales cannibalized our traditional March sale. The realization that I hadn’t accounted for an increased release schedule in my initial estimations of apparent success meant that any gains were entirely illusory, and I’d left a ton of money on the table. The hole got deeper.

I’ll be very honest: I was very close to packing it in; closing up Adamant for good and getting some make-work job (tool booth or gas station attendant) for income while making the jump into fiction.

Half a year later, the situation was drastically different — a Hail Mary pass in the form of a Kickstarter for FAR WEST succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. Over 45 days our fortunes reversed, not only financially (although obviously that was a huge part of it), but emotionally as well (as sappy as that sounds). Over 700 people demonstrated their faith in us and their belief in the FAR WEST concept — and believe me when I say that after the lows of the first half of the year, that outpouring of support was perhaps even more valuable to me than the money.

Looking back at my plans a year ago, I’m disappointed that I didn’t launch the fiction or digital comics efforts that I’d announced as my goal for 2011. Those efforts were pretty much a victim of the “lost year” that stretched from mid 2010 until mid 2011. Yet when I look back at what has been accomplished this year, and almost all of it in the last six months, that does reduce the disappointment a touch. The launch of the FAR WEST property, the success of the Kickstarter and the splash we were able to make at the StoryWorld Conference, the signing of the BUCKAROO BANZAI license, the reception of the INSURGENT CREATIVE blog series– it’s been a pretty good year in the end.

Aside from continuing those accomplishments and delivering on them, my plan for 2012 is definitely to make up for lost time and get the fiction line started… and I think that I’ve learned my lesson about multiple resolutions, so that will be my only new goal for the year!

Beyond that, the biggest thing I need to try to keep in mind in 2012 is that I’m lucky enough to create for a living — people pay me for the things that I dream up. I don’t answer to any boss, I can’t be outsourced or laid off, and my future plans are my own to decide. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of stress — things fall behind schedule, the work piles up, and a thousand minor irritations masquerade as major problems. My biggest resolution of 2012 will be:

Take a deep breath, look around, and realize that my life is pretty damn great.

Happy New Year.

• Day One: Introduction — including John Roger’s theory of “4th Generation Media” (4GM).
• Day Two: Kickstarter — crowdfunding of your projects.
• Day Three: The Free Content Model — including Howard Tayler’s keynote address to the Utah Open Source Conference.
• Day Four: CwF+RtB=$$$ — including Mike Masnick’s presentation on the model to the MidEmNet conference.
• Day Five: Scrivener — an overview of the software that should be the weapon-of-choice for Insurgent Creative writers.
• Day Six: Fans, Friends & Followers — Scott Kirsner’s book and the related video presentation to the Bay Area Video Coalition.
• Day Seven: Webcomics.com — Brad Guigar’s website, and the accompanying book.
• Day Eight: Bandcamp — sales and delivery for music and merchandise for Insurgent Creative musicians.
• Day Nine: Kindle Direct Publishing — overview of the market-leading independent epublishing tool.
• Day Ten: Createspace — sister program to KDP, offering print-on-demand books and more.
• Day Eleven: Spoonflower — custom digital printing of fabric for textile designers.
• Day Twelve: OneBookShelf — the premiere digital download site for Insurgent Creative game designers.
• Day Thirteen: Wreckamovie — crowdsourced film and video production.
• Day Fourteen: Gettin’ Paid — payment processing for Insurgent Creatives: Paypal, Amazon Payments and Square.
• Day Fifteen: iTunes U — educational tools to enable an Insurgent Creative being a Jack-of-All-Trades.
• Day Sixteen: Freelancers — hiring additional help to cover things you can’t do yourself.
• Day Seventeen: ImagineFX — Magazine with tutorials and tools for Insurgent Creative artists.
• Day Eighteen: FutureMusic & ComputerMusic — Magazines with tutorials, tools, and samples for Insurgent Creative musicians.
• Day Nineteen: Mag+ — a service offering free software for production of publications for digital tablets, without coding.
• Day Twenty: Spielmaterial.de — a supply house for game components.
• Day Twenty-one: Other Publishing Options — Covering the 30-40% of the market not held by Amazon.
• Day Twenty-two: WordPress — site design and content management.
• Day Twenty-three: Cafepress — print-on-demand merchandise sales.
• Day Twenty-four: Grab Bag! — a digital delivery service, a wordpress media creation plug-in, and a Flash game creation platform.

So there you go — One advent calendar down. So what becomes of Insurgent Creative in 2012?

Well, the response to the series has been great — obviously there are quite a few of you out there who are interesting in giving the Insurgent Creative life a try — so I will definitely be continuing in the coming year. I’m considering a few things, including the possibility of an Insurgent Creative podcast, a dedicated website, and more. I would love to hear your input, so please leave your comments below.

Thank you for reading this far, and here’s to a creative 2012.

Storm the gates!
 
 

Anybody selling digital products should look into Payloadz which runs ecommerce and file delivery. Payloadz features secure file storage and delivery from their servers; integration with your site or sites like eBay; support for Paypal, Amazon Payments and more. Here’s a brief introduction video:
 
 

Stencylworks is a platform that enables game designers to create iOS and Flash games without coding, by using their online library of functions and graphics (or via uploading your own). It’s available in a free “lite” form (which watermarks the final game, and does not publish it to the app store), and a pro version costing $149 per year, which removes the watermark, gives you access to private forums, and publishes your games to the App store. Plus, Stencyl is currently working on expansion into the Android market and HTML5 development (instead of Flash). A brief overview video follows:
 
 

Cafepress was founded in 1999, and currently has more than 13 million users. The site produces over 250 different types of products, ranging from poster prints and banners, to drinkware, to all manner of clothing. The process is simple — you create your storefront (which can be customized to match your website), upload your custom graphics (following the free downloadable product templates), set your price (Cafepress will tell you the cost of production, and you set your mark-up above that price — which is the amount that you earn per sale), and activate the product for sale. Cafepress handles the sale, the production, and the shipping, and pays you your monthly commission within 45 days of the month in which it accrued.

If you wish to run sales entirely through your own website, Cafepress also allows you to buy your own merchandise at cost, with price breaks for bulk ordering — so you can order inventory if you prefer to handle all aspects of the transaction yourself. Given the ability to customize a Cafepress shop to match your own, and embed it using simple HTML (iframe, for example), though, there’s not many drawbacks to simply letting Cafepress handle most of the back-end. If you follow the templates provided, I’ve found that the quality of Cafepress’ production is excellent. The poster that we did for THRILLING TALES, featuring the artwork originally used for the classic Justice, Inc. cover, turned out so well that I had a copy framed at a local art store and it now hangs in my living room.

The creation and sale of merchandise isn’t likely to be your primary focus as an Insurgent Creative — I suspect there are few of us who say “I want to design and sell original T-Shirts, gifts, stationery and more” (and those of us that do want to will probably figure out some way to traditionally produce inventory, as it brings the costs down significantly). However, for writers, artists, musicians, game designers, etc., the ability to have merchandise available that is branded for your property serves not only as a nice way to market your main property, but also acts as a good source of additional income. Whether you’re looking to have merchandise available online, or you’re interested in having some stock produced for sale at conventions or other events, Cafepress is a good option with minimal headaches.
 
 

WordPress is a PHP and MySQL-powered platform, free for download, using customizable template system and plug-in architecture. It currently is the most popular content management system on the internet, with a huge user base, and a vibrant community producing add-ons, plug-ins and templates that can meet any need you might have. This blog is run on WordPress, as are all of my sites (Adamant Entertainment and the Far West website, for example).

There are themes available for every conceivable site use, from magazine-style websites to artist’s portfolios. Many of these are freely available, although, to be honest, I tend to use premium professional themes, because they usually are more robustly tested, more stable, continually updated to reflect the latest iteration of the WordPress software, and offer support as part of their purchase price. My favorite premium theme company is Viva Themes, who charge $45 per theme. This blog is built from their Method theme, Far West is customized from the Amantina theme, and Adamant’s site was built around Republica. I’ve found their coding to be easily understood and adaptable, and the support forums covered any questions I have had.

There are plug-ins for a nearly countless variety of functions available for WordPress, and again, some are free and some are premium. One of the more important tools you should look into is some sort of eCommerce platform, allowing you to run a webstore on your site. Even though most of your sales will most likely occur via the market-leading site in your particular niche (Amazon if you’re writing books, for example), it’s always a good idea to be able to sell through your own site as well (not the least of which is because you earn a greater percentage of the sale price).

The eCommerce plug-in that I use (currently on Adamant’s webstore, and coming soon to the FAR WEST site as well) is Cart66. Cart66 costs $89 per year for a single-site license, integrates with most payment processors, and enables the selling of everything from digitally-delivered product to physical products and services. Here’s an overview of how it works:
 
 

PubIt! is Barnes and Noble’s rather unfortunately-named electronic publishing platform, specific to the Nook ereader. Barnes and Noble is one of the top three sites, sales-wise (Amazon and Apple being the other two). Unlike Amazon, which uses the Amazon-proprietary Kindle format (based on MOBI), PubIt! uses the open-source standard EPUB format. Files can be imported ranging from Word, HTML, RTF and TXT and covered to EPUB via a free tool offered by the site, and can be error-checked via a Nook simulator before submission. From there, the process is fair standard to pretty much any epublishing platform. FAQ and instructions can be found here.

One thing to keep in mind is that PubIt! requires a U.S. Bank Account, U.S. Credit Card, and a U.S. Tax ID (either Social Security Number or Employer Tax ID number), that are ALL tied to a U.S. address. In addition, books released through this platform will only be offered for sale in the U.S (which, bluntly, puts Barnes and Noble at a serious disadvantage to Amazon KDP, which offers books world-wide).

Smashwords is not only a (fairly negligible) sales site, but also an aggregator, allowing authors to have their material sent via the platform to other sales sites, including the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store (and Amazon too, starting next year). Generally, speaking, I would recommend that a writer deal directly with each sales platform — but that’s because I prefer more direct control. If you don’t want to be bothered with that level of involvement or maintenance, then going with an aggregator makes sense. Expect to be paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of your book’s retail price, and payment is also only issued quarterly.

Apple’s iBookstore is one of the big three, and you can submit your work directly, or go through one of Apple’s approved aggregators (including Smashwords and Lulu). Apple uses the EPUB format exclusively. Books sold through the iBookstore earn 70% for the writer (even on books priced outside of the $2.99 to $9.99 range, so here Apple has an advantage over Amazon, albeit one which is pretty much entirely negated by Amazon’s far larger market share).

Lulu is a publishing option that’s been around for a while, and primarily offers print options, although electronic publishing is also available via your Lulu storefront. They also offer print distribution to bookstores via various paid programs. I’ve used Lulu for years for a handful of RPG titles, and sales have never been stellar — but steady. I suspect if I spent more time exploiting all the tools that Lulu offers, my results would be better.

Speaking of RPGs — another option for those of you producing game books, or books which might have a large crossover with the gaming audience — as I mentioned in Day 12 of this series, OneBookShelf now offers a print-on-demand program. (The procedural FAQ is here.) The program does not offer distribution outside of the OneBookShelf sites (RPGNow, DriveThruRPG, etc.), but integrates with the electronic publishing sales, and is a worthy option for writers who produce material of interest to gamers.

There are many other sites and services out there, and as always your best bet is to educate yourself as much as you can about all of your options, and to make the choices that benefit your career. If you’re going to make a living on your own, it makes sense to have as many tools as you can at your disposal.

Storm the gates!

One of the cooler things about the site is the number of products they have available which use A4 labels which you can print via your inkjet printer. They’ve got game boxes designed to be customized via an A4 label, game boards of varying sizes, all sized for A4 labels, and even labels cut to standard playing card size to make custom cards. (Although a more attractive option would probably be to just contact them about customized card production, which they offer.)

If you’re a game designer looking to explore options for board and card games, without sinking tens of thousands of dollars into production costs, Spielmaterial is an excellent solution.

In early 2010, the Bonnier Corporation, the publishers of Popular Science, partnered with London-based design firm BERG to create Mag+, a magazine publishing platform for tablets, and launched in April 2010, with version of Popular Science available in the iTunes store the same day the iPad launched. The Mag+ platform offers free plugin software for Adobe InDesign (the industry-standard desktop publishing layout software), as well as a free Preview Reader allowing you to check your work on your own tablet. Once you’re ready to publish, that’s where the fees kick in. Mag+ will publish your magazine app as a single-issue app for $199 (for a single type of tablet — iOS, Android or Kindle Fire starting in 2012), or you can publish unlimited issues from your own in-app storefront for $2500 (with expansion to another tablet OS or another language for $500). There’s also an enterprise-level feature at $3000 per month, which entitles you to hosting, free personal support, etc. — but that’s pretty much the corporate level. The first two levels, though are certainly doable by an Insurgent Creative, given the one-time fee. The pricing and features are detailed here.

Here’s an overview of the service:
 
 

You’re not limited to “magazines” either — there’s no reason why an Insurgent Creative couldn’t use Mag+ to release a comic book, or a role-playing game, or even a unique digital story, using the format and tools (embedded HTML5 functions such as video, etc. — again, all achievable via Mag+ without coding) to create an entirely new product category. I find the possibilities of this platform really exciting!

We’ll be back tomorrow with another entry. In the meantime, as always:

Storm the gates!