Alright, some news regarding the upcoming book:
I have gone ahead and removed access to draft 2 of the story for beta reading. I've gotten more than enough feedback for that and I've started working through the draft three revision. I'm still shaky on the new names and I've changed Simon twice, but the more I think about it, the more I like Roscoe better for his name.
Skuru will be doing the audiobook narration for this book as well. https://www.patreon.com/skuru
Kusu will be doing the illustrations and cover design https://www.patreon.com/Kusunagi
I'm also going to put together a crowd-funding for the costs associated with publication, which will include line editing and proofreading, ARC copies, Art, Narration, internal design (for both physical and ebook). The goal will be to reach around $10,000 by the end of the year, but if it doesn't reach that goal, I'll have to wait until I have enough saved of my own money. It may sound like a lot of money to publish a book, but that's on par with rising costs, and the length of the story.
The cost estimation breakdown is:
$4500 for audiobook production. This is not easy, nor is it cheap, and it takes the most time outside of actually writing the story.
$2500 for editing. This includes line editing and proofreading. Since I have several rounds of beta reads, developmental editing is not necessary. This might be a bit of an under estimate considering the length of the book. This is the second most time-consuming step, and the second-most expensive.
$1100 for cover design and illustration.
$600-$800 for internal book/ebook design
Whatever is left over will go to extra ISBNs, Marketing, ARC distribution (I want to go physical ARCs this year), and any overage costs I didn't calculate above.
Patreon has been getting me closer to the black for all the money I've spent over the years, but unfortunately, it's not enough to fund a new project like this all at once. Whenever I publish I book, I have to save for over a year for publication costs alone, then I have to save for the audiobook production, which leads to me publishing the book first and the audiobook a year later.
This time, I would like the audiobook and print books to all come out on the same day, and I want to be able to pay people for their time and effort in getting this project off the ground. Those of you that do voice acting/editing/and art know how much time and effort it takes to do these things, and I want to make sure people are compensated well for their time.
I'm going to be going through draft 3 with a fine-toothed comb, fixing things like awkward sentences, cadence, any grammatical errors, names, word choices, and even places/inconsistencies. This will probably be the final draft before it goes out to a professional editor.
I would also like to keep production of this story in my own ecosystem, and I've got hundreds of people in Discord and thousands that follow me. So if you enjoy reading my work and have a background in book editing, shoot me your information. For anyone that has a background in internal book design and ebook design (usually using Adobe Indesign), I'm likely going to outsource this as well because I do not enjoy doing this at all, and it takes up way too much time.
If you are a paid member and want to read through the final draft before editing, it is being shared in the story-updates channel of my Discord.
Thank you all for your continued support!
Doodly-doo of the main characters from Kusu after reading WLGYW.
Marcwolf
2025-08-03 20:58:56 +0000 UTCA D G
2025-08-03 17:03:51 +0000 UTCsunkawakan
2025-08-03 17:01:23 +0000 UTC