Self-Publishing, planning ahead, things to come, and giving yourself a little pat on the back.

Art from: Tarot Adventures, Book One: The Draw of Glenfallow
Artist: Anthony Ojeda

Publishing your own material is a lot of fun and quite a bit of work.  Writing the book, editing, working with your play tester feedback, conducting final revisions and edits, then formatting the book involves a significant commitment of time and resources.  If you are crowdfunding your work in some capacity (such as I do to pay for the art I use), then you also find yourself working to promote your coming project, interacting with your audience (backers/supporters:  this is tremendous fun really), and managing a self-imposed deadline by virtue of the fulfillment project your create.    While this may sound like a lot of work, and can be, if you enjoy the genre you will find that there is a great amount of joy in holding those first run proof copies of your book and in knowing that your work is in use by others.

Self-publishing requires that you familiarize yourself with a number of things: copyrights, ISBN and Bar code sources,  distribution systems, and promoting your work.  Before releasing anything you write, do your research on these points.

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Art from: Tarot Adventures, Book One: The Draw of Glenfallow
Artist: Anthony Ojeda

Planning your titles in advance is critical if you're going to be crowdfunding.  Using a single platform, such as KickStarter, places a constraint on how many projects you can have launch at a time.   Use your time during your crowdfunding campaigns wisely!  Complete your project to the highest quality level you can produce.  You want your audience, your backers and supporters, to be thrilled with the items you produce.  This makes them more likely to support future products of yours.  Be mindful of your fulfillment projects.  Make realistic determinations on how long it will take to fulfill rewards, and work diligently to meet those deadlines.

When you are planning your project timetables, I recommend that you use a calendar.  I know this seems obvious, but its an important way to manage your time.  Set up your goals for task completion and indicate them on your calendar. Work to complete each task on time and you'll find that you reach completion of your projects in a timely manner and with less stress.  {Note: I also recommend that you copy all files and save those copies off your native system, either in a cloud service or a physical storage media}.

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Cover Art:  47 Furious Tails, Issue One
Artist: Alexia Veldhuisen

For 2018 I have the following planned releases (fingers crossed on the crowdfunding!):

Fulfillment of The Steel Road is to be fulfilled by end of August... presently I expect fulfillment to be complete in July.    The KickStarter campaign for The Steel Road has been a huge success so far with the first stretch goal having already been reached and 10 days (at the time of this writing) remaining for us to reach the second.  You can check out the campaign by using the link below (art by: Zack Viola).



Launch of  "Whispers of Persephone" in August 2018.   This campaign will have a higher funding goal as I am attempting to wholly fund the art for this book via crowdfunding.  With all color art by Christian Martinez, this book is going to be darkly beautiful.  I hope it haunts collections of gamers all over the world.  You can find more information about Whispers of Persephone ~ HERE

I'll be closing out 2018 with two final projects:  Tarot Adventures, Book three:  Death comes to Glenfallow, and 47 Furious Tails Issue One!   With the remaining months in the year, my KickStarter calendar is quite full.  It will take careful planning and spot on execution to make all these projects release on time.  I'll be updating progress on each project as I go along.

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Be proud of what you've done.  Give yourself a little pat on the back.  Many people start working on projects and never finish them.  By working diligently you can release your own game, book, or other project to the world.  I hope you do, and I hope I get to enjoy it.

My best advice for anyone who wants to publish their own material:  Do your research, work tirelessly, and never give up.  Don't stop creating.

Thank you for joining me once again on my adventure into writing, self-publishing, and game design.
The art for this entry was done by:
Anthony Ojeda      Alexia Veldhuisen     Zachary Viola

Each is a remarkable talent and are among those 'Fantastic Freelancers' (TM) who have taken the risk and worked for Sinopa Publishing LLC (my company).  I want to thank them all for their contributions to the success of those projects they've worked on, and I look forward to years of mutual success to come.


I hope you'll join me next time, as the adventure continues.