Audiobooks are Coming! (And I Want YOUR Input)

As you all have probably noticed, my reward tiers are remarkably sparse. The chief reason for this is because I haven't wanted to take time away from working on videos to produce things outside of my core content.

However, I think that the time has finally come for a change (and yes, I'm aware that change out of me comes at a glacial pace). It's exactly as the title says: I want to start producing audiobooks again. I used to do so waaaaaaaay back in the day, but I was doing them far more frequently than I could sustain, and they were exhausting to do. Those old ones, as of this evening, will be available for ALL patrons, though I believe that my performance then is not even close to what I can deliver now.

So what's changed? As some of you might recall, I used to have bloopers as a $2 reward tier, but phased those out when I realized I wasn't making quite so many mistakes. I was recording lines at twice the rate that I once had, and I was making fewer major mistakes. And so, I think I've grown efficient enough now that I could record and cut together audiobooks at a reasonable rate.

The secondary reason for this is that I believe my weakest aspect is my narration, and recording audiobooks would be a good way for me to practice.

Audiobooks will be released monthly, and will likely be 20-30 minutes long apiece. While my process has gotten faster, I still don't want to take TOO much time away from producing videos to record these. After all, you're supporting me to make my core content, right?

I'm thinking of setting these as a $10 reward tier. The time and effort required to make these is still considerable, and will probably eat up a full work day for each of them (I'm a one-man show, after all), and so that tier seems reasonable. I want this to be a way to reward my higher-tier patrons for their continued support.

Each month, I will put out a small poll with a number of public domain works to choose from which I think would make good audiobooks, I'm thinking four each time. $10 patrons will be able to vote for as many titles as they like. The one on top will be recorded later that month, while second and third place will be recycled for voting the next month. The one with the least votes will be removed from polling entirely, at least for some time, and replaced with another potential work. Suggestions for poll options can be put in the comments of any audiobook-related post.

Thoughts and opinions on this are absolutely welcome. If the majority of people are happy with this, then I'll put up the poll for the first audiobook very soon. I already have a few works in mind, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

-Fredrik