August 2015

August 9, 2015

HOT TAKES: JULY — AUGUST ‘15

“Hot Takes” is a monthly Dark Acre feature made up of Jack’s opinions on random Internet debris.

VIDEOGAMES

IN LOVE WITH A JAPANESE GANGSTER

I spent 36 hours in the streets of SEGA’s incredibly detailed and true-to-Tokyo Kamurocho, a fictional pleasure district ruled by yakuza and corrupt police. People talk about Shenmue in reverent tones using words like “immersion”, but for me there hasn’t be a videogame experience more immersive in recent memory than Yakuza 4. I should probably do a Gameview on it, as it’s worth talking abut from a design standpoint, but my hot take on this one is: staggering amount of content, excellent story, and accurate depiction of Japanese underground culture. Now to go back and play the previous 3.

WAR CAN BE FUN

If you’re familiar with this one you might envy me in my only just now playing it for the first time. I remember seeing promotional materials for Advance Wars back in 2000. I’d been in Japan for a year and was spending most of my gaming hours (which were few and far between, what with the 17 hours a day teaching English) on SEGA’s Dreamcast. In the end I never got a Game Boy Advance, so I missed out on a lot of great titles. I’d thought about AW on and off ever since, and after not having my turn-based strategy itch sufficiently scratched I remembered it and checked around the various digital outlets for a copy.

By all accounts this game was amazing at launch, and that’s no less true today. The graphics are still crisp and, dare I say, delightful. Snappy audio, great characters, and a depth of design that seems lost in many of today’s newer offerings, Advance Wars could very well become my game of the year if it maintains the tight grip that it’s had since I downloaded it.

DESIGN

CERTAIN SPACE-Y ÆSTHETICS

Watch on Vimeo

This stellar chunk of video by Raoul Marks was made for some design conferences, and came across my desk via a series of gifs on Tumblr. Evocative of Facepalm Games’s The Swapper, there are fewer things that get me going faster than the mix of ultraclean space tech mixed with crumbly enigmatic monoliths. It’s not something I strive for in my own writing, but I can certainly appreciate it. Space odysseys forever!

Though I do wonder how the hell they keep all those gleaming white surfaces so clean…

MUSIC

STILL DUMPING THE BODY

I’ve always been a huge fan of the Hip. Way back when I was a no-good, drug-taking, hard-living miscreant, I spent many a long night harassing the graveyard shift at Peacock Billiards for free table time. More often than not the attendants would play some Hip, so now every time I hear Gordon Downie’s wild voice I get hazy images of racking 9-ball and knockin’ ‘em into pockets. A “deluxe edition” of Fully Completely was recently released, and it’s just as good as it’s ever been.

MONSTROUS

With the same lateness to the party as Advance Wars I’ve “discovered” Monster Magnet. When I was 21 and I met a very lovely girl named Janice, who’d traveled all the way across the country to hang out and party with the circle I was attached to at the time. At the time I hadn’t even noticed her sitting in the shadow’s the place where I’d been crashing, but she’d seen me and fallen madly in love. After she left the city, a friend introduced us and we started a long-distance romance, sending letters and mix tapes back and forth until I finally flew out to see her.

It didn’t work out; in fact it failed so spectacularly that less than 24 hours after arriving for a planned week-long stay we discovered that we were incompatible, and her father ended up paying to fix my return ticket so I could leave the day after, but out of all of that there’d been this one song on one of the tapes that she’d sent me that had stuck with me for years. I’d mis-remembered the lyrics though, thinking they’d been “wrap these muscles ‘round my torso”, so naturally any time I tried to look up the song the searches would fail.

I finally managed to make the right connection, and it was the song above. I’d never gotten into or heard any Monster Magnet beyond that track, so there’s been a lot of musical catch-up this month. This band rocks, and I’m glad I figured out who they were before it was too late.

TELEVISION

JORODOWSKY’S DUNE

Put off watching this one for a long time, not sure why. A fascinating tale of artistic ambition, the gathering of giants, and the machinations of Hollywood. I don’t understand why someone doesn’t just Kickstart this project and make it happen. Jorodowsky himself admits in the doc that it could be realized as an animated film, and he’s got a complete production bible. Perhaps it’s one of those things that better left to live in the imagination, lest it be picked down to a carcass by culture critics.

THE 08TH MS TEAM

Terrible cultural confession time: for someone who’s loved “mecha” for most of their life, lived in Japan, collected dozens of plastic model kits of the series… I’d never actually seen a single episode of any of the Gundam universe. It was a sublimated part of my sci-fi lexicon, though, living in some lizard part of my brain as this sprawling thing that was mostly identified by the giant green Cyclopean robots and their opposition in sharp red, white, and blue.

Why did I start with this series? It was one of the recommended places for noobs. Is it good? It’s watchable, but it’s kind of destroying what I had living in my imagination. It’s another example of the idea of a thing being far more beautiful than the reality.

When someone says you’re 1 in a million they’re also saying there’s 7,000 other people like you.

2015-08-13 8:44 AM

I don’t know what to do. I’ve never known what to do. I’ve just walked under the sky and kept moving in what felt like a forward direction.

The internal compass could be wrong, you know, but I think that’s fine. What matters most is the motion, not the destination or direction.

My greatest desire has always been to find a place where I’m both in extreme discomfort and total comfort at once. To be able to stand under an oppressive overcast atmosphere, wearing a tailored suit, and not have a single concern. The last time I remember being able to summon that kind of feeling, I was the least free.

I still carry a lot of baggage around from my time in Japan, and not just the emotional fallout of having left behind so much that I loved, but from the near decade of living in constant fear of being late. I say fear, but what I really mean is terror. Three slips in punctuality and I would have lost a livelihood more lucrative than anything I’d ever known. Work schedules, train schedules… fuck schedules. It all created a neurosis that couldn’t manifest itself properly because I was in far too good a position psychologically for it to come to the fore. It wouldn’t be until I’d left, until I’d actively worked to turn my back on everything that I’d built there, that it would start to seep in through the cracks.

It’s taken some six years to come to grips with that, to free myself from the tyranny of the schedule, of the timed obligation. I always believed that if I’d abandoned that structured way of living that I’d find myself lost, not knowing what to do or where to turn. But we’re always lost, aren’t we? Even those of us with the most complete maps, or total senses of purpose and direction, in the grand scheme of things we have no idea where we’re going. A person without a reason to wander is no greater or lesser than one who’s trucking along with a GPS and full tank of gas.

As with all things, it’s with the letting go that the sense of freedom emerges.

2015-08-13 8:44 PM

“So, we’ve got, what, a hundred thousand lost and lonely souls pounding just as many words into their blog-spaces every day about the things that matter to them. And you know what? I think that’s great. I really do. People need an outlet, and the developed, progressive world has provided one for those with the means to string sentences together on a keyboard that’s connected to the Internet. Maybe they know a little CSS or HTML or maybe they don’t, and they’re using a “free” service to spread their thoughts around. Whatever the case, it’s a wonderful time to be alive, and depressed.

“Here’s something that bugs me about all of this, though, and it’s really only because I’m a so-called ‘content provider’, and as one of those mystical unicorns—though not really all that mystical if you grasped what I was getting at a moment ago—I used to feel it was an affront to my sensibilities and dignity when the aforementioned democratized ‘publishing of the feels’ gave way to everyone and their second cousin labeling themselves a “culture critic”. I mean, that label’s got about as much heft to it as “social media expert” (and, more often than not, you’ll see that it’s the former that’s morphed into the latter in the past half-decade) so not only is it laughable to assume this illustrious title, but it’s taken a step further down the winding trail of insult when some of these folks actually monetize their opinions.

“I’m all for capitalism, I think it’s great that if someone can find a way to make money for doing something, and in turn stimulate the economy with their activities, then they’re doing all right by the current metric. Capitalism probably isn’t the best possible system we could be living under (I’m thinking “we” in terms of “general human beings” here) but it’s the one we’re under now, so we might as well get somewhat good at it until something else comes along, right? So, being able to crowdfund your musings on whether a certain video game or book or pop star’s relationship drama is any good for society at large is fantastic.

“What is it about all this that gets my proverbial goat, then? Why am I taking the time to pound out a few thousand words of my own, in a critical tone? It’s the folks who are participating in the grand game I’ve outlined here who use their energy to try and tell us what’s wrong with whatever it is they’ve ingested. Why a certain writer is horrible at telling a story, and their books shouldn’t be selling. Or why a billion-dollar franchise shouldn’t be adding more entries to its library. Or… well, I think you get the idea. The whole thing about taking an hour to write—and, if we’re really, really, lucky, edit—some big think-piece bashing some bit of popular culture is that no matter how subtle the subtext of “don’t participate in this thing, I did, I took the bullet for you, you don’t have to waste your own time and brain cells on it, I’m here to tell you that it’s capital-B bad for you, and save you from it,” the fact of the matter is that whatever pissed that person off enough to get them to write about it also got them to think. It pulled them out of whatever rutting, grinding doldrum their mind was in, and sparked a huge fire under their ass, one that made them go out and metaphorically cry to the heavens about it. I use that phrase, and maybe it’s a little harsh, but when I see thousand-word write-ups on stuff and those posts have only got one share or like or whatever the social media metric is, maybe it would’ve been better off remaining unwritten.

“But yeah: The thing made the person think. So, then that person, who thinks they’re doing the altruistic thing by going out and warning everyone about the dangers of what they’ve consumed, what they’re actually doing is attempting to shut down the whole critical thinking process of their audience.

“Isn’t it better to experience something bad, and have it challenge your ideas, than to trust someone else’s subjective opinion on what they felt?

“I sure think it is.”

2015-08-21 7:35 AM

He lived aboard a solar-powered ship that cruised around the equator. The deck was comprised of photovoltaic cells, and not for walking on. There were weekly required guano-scraping sessions, but aside from that the setup was maintenance-free.

Below the wide deck and its solar wings was a luxury cabin, soundproofed and built on a giant gimbal that eliminated the effects of the sea’s rolling. He had all the amenities needed for a comfortable life: kitchen, full bath, king-sized bed. The real work was done in the forward room, where he had a state of the art satellite-connected data center.

The solar deck floated only a few inches off the surface of the water, giving it just enough clearance so that the cells were never submerged. The rest of the ship was below the waterline, and the gimbaled cabin provided a crystal clear view of the outside via high-definition cameras wired to an array of widescreen monitors.

With a stocked pantry he could go without making landfall for up to three months, and after becoming an expert on the aquatic life he extended that to six, a full half-year living off the bounty of the sea.

It was a lonely, solitary life, but so had his land-based existence been. The time spent aboard the ship was far more exciting. Never had the awareness of his own independence been greater than when he was nestled in the belly of the craft, sailing under the broiling equatorial suns, and plying his chosen trade of data brokerage.

August 23, 2015

MONTH 59 REPORT

HOW I MADE 5 DOLLARS SELLING EBOOKS

I have a dream where the primary means for spreading my work involve only Goodreads and this site. It’s not out of laziness, but efficiency. To the general public, looking at the business of selling books online, these are the only two places where that activity should matter: a popular, consolidated, social media-driven place that allows public review (and potential vivisection), and an “official” place that offers easy access to the products. Since I want as little to do with Amazon or Apple, for various reasons that could be simplified as “disagreement with corporate policy”, I’ve put myself into the very challenging position of sole responsibility for peddling my wares.

At the end of July, for the first time since releasing Ambia way back in ‘11, I started looking into marketing options in earnest. As the new, definitive editions of my books started to come together, I realized that I’d sorely neglected the publishing portion of self-publishing. Writing the book, making the videogame, sewing the plushies, printing the t-shirts, whatever’s involved in the making of a product will always be the hardest and most stressful part of any creative business endeavor, but it’s all for nothing if there’s no avenue for reaching the people who want to pick up what you’re laying down.

This time around I’m taking it slow, and being patient. I believe that the ultimate method of grassroots promotion involves producing more stuff and then presenting it to as wide an audience as possible. The following results illustrate the effects of a limited passive campaign.

OVERVIEW

Here’s the current passive promotion cycle that started when Tale of the Madeus was published 30 days ago:

This had been kept minimal and straightforward on purpose, because I’d rather do more stuff than just keep telling my audiences to buy. I still have yet to do a proper newsletter mailing or reach out to book review bloggers, and anything more than that would involve paying money for promotion (a thing that I’m more than willing to do, but will be waiting until I have at least 2 more books on the shelves before investing).

BOOST NO BOOST

By the time the new edition of Parlow’s Choice was published, the updated version of Tale of the Madeus had been “on the market” for 11 days. I prepared a Facebook advertisement (they have some strict rules about the accompanying image, mostly to do with additional text) and then “Boosted” it from the Dark Acre page. Here’s the report:

.002% conversion rate for US $35.

The ad was set to target “science fiction ebook readers in the age range of 18-65”. Supposedly it appeared on the Facebook feeds of 13,332 people connected to the people who had already (graciously, thank you) Liked the Dark Acre page.

The ad ran for 3 days before using up the allocated budget. It resulted in 30 clicks that took interested folks directly to the book purchase page on Gumroad.

ACTUALS AND FACTUALS

Here’s the 30-day report from Gumroad, showing views and sales:

An excellent look at the results of the marketing efforts thus far.

The good news is that the Facebook clicks add up, regardless of the shockingly horrible conversion rate. Gumroad itself provides some activity, and the number of views is surprisingly high considering that it’s more or less just “shotgun marketing”.

The top performer was direct shares, most coming from my email activity. I’m not crazy with my mailings, but just spreading the links in signatures has worked the best so far. I think that the point here is that each one of the efforts has resulted in directing at least one person to my work, and that even the single view from Pinterest is a precious gain.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

You may be wondering how the report above can show 8 sales and only 5 dollars total. Here’s how that works:

A single cash sale (a very kind overpay, though) on 79 views.

The zero sales are free copies I’ve given out to supporters and friends. They’re not review copies, either: I handle those separately to keep the sales data as clean as possible. So at least each “sale” is someone who was interested enough to redeem a download code, and of course the very awesome person who paid more than the minimum for a copy of Tale of the Madeus.

MOVING FORWARD

The immediate workload as of this post looks something like this:

It’s likely that the shorts collection won’t be ready for another year, and it’s possible that an additional book gets published before then. In either case, once there are two more books on the shelves I’ll contract a PR firm and do some serious marketing. Everything until then will be passive (and hopefully non-destructive) grassroots efforts. (A decade later I’ve done none of these. –Ed.)

You can help me out by spreading my work around. Every share of the shelf link: https://gumroad.com/darkacre and the books link: https://cmon1975.com/page/books (the S in the httpS is very important, as it will auto-format the share if sent on Twitter or Facebook) is worth far more than any single purchase. Also, if you’ve read any of the books please take a moment to leave a review or rating on Goodreads. As I’m operating without a direct review system (à la Amazon/iTunes) it’s the easiest way to generate proof of quality.

Furthermore: if you run a review blog, know someone who does and would be interested in some tasty sci-fi, or have any advice and recommendations regarding grassroots marketing, please get in touch with me either via e-mail or Skype and let me know. Any and all help is greatly appreciated. (Don’t do this. –Ed.)

Serious thank-yous are in order for the following folks who’ve stuck with me this far: Asbjorn, Ayako, Bryan, Divya, Erik, Greg, Gerry, Hannora, Janus, Jin Soo, Jiří, Joel, Kate, Kelly, Leonardo, Mike P., Mike R., Nao, Pam, Patrick, Pauline, Pon, Rainbow, Ronzo, Serge, Sergey, Shannon, Tom, and of course you.

Tune in next month for the year 5 report, where I drop the total costs for a half-decade of independent creative development. Until then!

It’s important to follow your dreams, but sometimes they’re nightmares in disguise.

2015.08.13 – 2015.08.21

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