NOTE: This post originally appeared on my Patreon account on July 18th, 2023
It's quite frustrating trying to do what I'm doing, which is simply write for a living. There's so much to do, like self promotion and whatnot. TikTok is apparently great for authors. And I thought for a while that drawing on TikTok would be a good thing to help draw in readers, but I don't think it worked when I tried.
Literally didn't get much attention, except in those first few weeks. Views just got less and less and less, so I decided to stop doing daily posts for a while. There's no point to put in all that effort only to get diminishing returns.
I'll have to try something completely different if I want to use TikTok again, tbh.
It's similar for SoG's visibility on Royalroad and Moonquill, but I understand that one will take some time for me to get up there. I need many more chapters in order to get taken more seriously. Plus I don't really know any readers on Royal Road, and don't know how to make myself more visible there.
This Patreon is dwindling, too. Especially since I made it specifically for free/low coin Webnovel readers. But then WN pushed them out of the app altogether, so this went nowhere, lol.
On top of that, I'm leading any new Ravens of Eternity readers towards the physical book, so there definitely won't be any new Patrons. So I'll likely be shutting this down soon and switching to my blog. I'll be making a more official announcement in the coming weeks.
In any case, it all seems kind of depressing since I'm not getting a lot of views or reads and whatnot.
Long story short, this is a tough road and I'm really demotivated to keep going with it all. But I'll try to keep going with the stories and the drawings and TikToks. Hopefully that'll lead to some semblance of success down the road.
ABOUT VOLUME TWO
I've been doing a bunch of editing on Vol 2, and gotten from 535 pages down to 512. And I'm close to about the midway point, and I need to pick things up faster. All the edits so far have been somewhat substantial, with some sections changed to better fit the print version.
I think I might have said this already, hah.
But getting to my point, I think I'll actually be able to get it down to about 500 pages when the first edit run is complete. Maybe can trim a couple more as I fine-tune the manuscript.
Also been brainstorming what images to use for the cover, and for the inner illustrations. Not entirely sure what to do. Since Amal/Azrael is introduced in this Volume, maybe I should do a trio on the cover. Definitely going to add updated character sheets, but they'll be armed and armored.
Could also do some for the antagonists? Would that be interesting? Like Nightmare next to his rap sheet instead of a character sheet.
I could go for that, yeah.
