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PROJECT #50
Poker Boy Kickstarter Will Be #50… All have funded. Wow, that is a lot of projects and a lot of learning. Everyone one of them had different issues either in the project itself or behind the scenes in the building of the project. Yes, even this one. But almost all of them have been great fun to do. We did our first campaign for FICTION RIVER in August 2012. Another campaign for FICTION RIVER IN 2014, and another in 2016. Then in 2017 we launched PULPHOUSE FICTION MAGAZINE with a Kickstarter. What is great fun is that we are finally relaunching FICTION RIVER this summer with a Kickstarter campaign. We…
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Fun Writing Project!
This Will Start in the New Poker Boy Kickstarter… It has been decades or more since I Turckerized anyone. Tuckerization was mostly started when Wilson “Bob” Tucker would put his friends and other writer’s names into his stories and books as a joke or as a shout out to them. He did it so often, it became known by his name. (Bob was a very friendly guy and I was lucky enough to spend time with him in the early 1990s.) In this modern world, you never do that without asking the permission of the person being Tuckerized. For example, in one Star Trek book Kris and I wrote, we…
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Poker Boy Playing Cards
Available On The Poker Boy Kickstarter… And then eventually on my store… These are so stunning, I just had to show them to you… The link is to check out more about the Kickstarter campaign and be notified when it launches on the 1st of April. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/403649867/poker-boy?ref=2uys1x I think I’ll go write some more Poker Boy stories… Wow…
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Filing System Drawback…
Smith’s Monthly As A Filing System… A number of people have mentioned to me how cool that idea is to keep stories organized. And it really is. When I publish an issue. I have not published an issue since #67, which was November of 2022. Which means I have not filed anything since then. (grin) Granted, for six months of that time I was mostly blind and for another six months of that time I was recovering from surgery and most of this last year I was dealing with business issues. So yes, it has been 2 years and 4 months since I filed anything, but a lot of that…
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Restart Challenge
I Love Restarting… Everything feels fresh and I can pretend that the problems earlier didn’t happen or don’t exist. I have missed about two weeks of stories total in my Write A Story A Day challenge. Not bad, but now I am starting fresh, making sure I get a story per day done, and when I have some extra time, finish a second one to catch up. But the challenge for me this next three months is to write a story per day, and maybe catch up four or five of the days I missed. Totally possible. But it would not be possible without the attitude of restarting. Three years…
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Value on Lifetime Everything Subscription…
Got An Observation That I Have To Respond To… Someone commented that if they bought a Lifetime Everything Subscription to our workshops on WMG Teachable, it would take years to make up for the costs in new workshops. I went, “Huh, that’s not right.” But I wasn’t sure, so I had to go figure it out to make sure. (grin) Here are the new classes and workshops we have added onto Teachable since January 1st of this year (2025). In essence under three months. ONLY THE NEW STUFF!! (Remember, the Lifetime Everything Subscription is for the 600 or so classes and workshops already there, plus everything going into the future.)…
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Calculate Kickstarter Profits…
Stunning How Some Writers Set Up to Fail… And I am not talking about the total gross earned on a campaign or the number of backers or the amount of promotion a campaign will bring to a book or series. All that is really good in various ways. Nope, talking money only. There is no right number for a percentage of profit from a Kickstarter campaign. I have seen it vary from 85% of the gross down to losing money. Depends on the prices you set, the products you offer to backers, and the cost of those products. So a simple round-number example: You have a campaign that does well…
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Calling It A Night…
Plans on a Blog On Cash Streams… But honestly too tired to get it written tonight. Stunning how many cash streams a writer can have these days. So stay tuned for that. Might give you a few ideas. Also I will have a blog talking about successful Kickstarters. Do you measure a Kickstarter by how much profit it brings in after costs, or by the gross number (how Kickstarter does it), or by numbers of backers??? So many writers get lost in the cool stuff they can offer. And also how does Kickstarter growth really work and how to measure it. Fun topics, all beyond my poor brain tonight. Attempting…
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Let Me Show You A Brand…
POKER BOY BRAND… I have been writing Poker Boy stories since 1987. And over the years I tried to settle on a brand look as it became clear that Poker Boy was a main part of my writing. Marble Grant, Ghost of a Chance books and stories, Sky Tate, Pahket Jones, and others like Detective Crunch are all in the Poker Boy Universe. Finally, with all the learning I have been doing on brands and trademarks, the brand for Poker Boy finally came together with the brilliant help of Stephanie at WMG. And the look of the covers is finally settled as well. So firing up a Poker Boy Kickstarter…
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My Filing System
I Am Both Organized and Not Organized For 67 months, I did Smith’s Monthly Magazine. Had one short break in the middle somewhere and now it has been on hiatus for over two years because of the life rolls. But it is coming back. Soon. The last few days I discovered once again why I loved doing that magazine and what is really important to me about it almost more than anything. It is my filing system. Every month I would publish four or five or six short stories. I never repeated a short story, so there are 270 different stories in those 67 issues. There are also novels and…