Notice: a Discussion about KU and the story
A few things:
I’ve signed a publishing deal for Budding Scientist with Podium. I believe I ntioned in, like… February? March? Sothing like that? that I was working on sothing, and well, that was the edits for the next draft of the Volu 1 of Budding Scientist. I felt that it was important not to change it TOO much, but there were a bunch of smaller things that I felt should be changed, either for flow, consistency, or typo corrections. Volu 1 of the story WILL be coming down from Patreon, RoyalRoad, and Scribblehub near the end of next week. This ans the majority of the first 62 chapters will no longer be available on these platforms. I am allowed to leave up 20% of the story, I believe? I will double check that number later, but that probably ans the first 13 chapters will stay, if I'm doing my math correctly. The rest will be removed.
Now, I also wanted to discuss WHY this is happening. I was originally trying VERY HARD to push for not taking down any part of the story until Volu 3 of Budding Scientist was finished, aning the entire story would have been available on RR/Patreon/Scribblehub, before I took it down a month later, or sothing like that.
Ultimately, the publishing company agreed with , but recently, they emailed and basically said ‘this is a really bad idea. Are you sure?’ and we got into a discussion about it. I myself eventually changed my mind.
Why?
Simply put, it boils down to financial stability.
I LOVE writing. I spend about half an hour every night before I go to sleep just laying in bed, thinking about my stories and where I want them to go. I’ll imagine scenes that haven’t been written yet and adjust minute details in them, think about how a certain world should be structured, think about how so component of the world interacts with another, or how two characters should et and interact with each other. Every ti I take a shower, I usually spend several minutes soaking in hot water and thinking about stories I want to write, or stories that I’m currently writing and want to improve. I sotis scrap these ideas (not every idea is a good one), but writing is a passion that I’ve had since I was in elentary school. And while second-grade wasn’t that good at writing, their heart was in the write place (heh. Puns).
When I posted the first chapter of Budding Scientist, it was during the Covid pandemic. My father had just had a stroke, I was unemployed and depressed, my cat died soti around when I started releasing chapters, and I needed sothing to get away from everything for a while. I was very insecure about my unemploynt, I felt awful, and I needed to do sothing. So I turned back to my at the ti sowhat abandoned hobby of writing, dusted off an earlier draft of a story called ‘Alice’s Disastrous Journey through an Isekai World’ (I was never that good at naming stories) that I had written, and started ssing with it. I rebuilt Alice’s character, the worldbuilding, the System, and basically everything to turn it from an unrefined goop of ideas to a fully fleshed out story that was (hopefully) good, and renad several tis before I settled on ‘A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World.’ I went through a few drafts, fixing things here and there, and eventually, I ended up writing the draft of Budding Scientist you’re familiar with today.
I’m incredibly grateful that you guys give the chance to write, my greatest passion, and I actually get paid for it. Which, honestly, is sothing second-grade would have never imagined happening.
However, while I’m incredibly grateful, I’m also not quite financially stable right now. My writing is currently in a very weird place - I treat it as a full ti job, but I don’t quite make enough to sustain myself writing. I am VERY VERY close - My paynt from Patreon each month is almost enough for to survive, but it’s just a little short each month. And it has remained that way for quite a while now.
When I was just writing Budding Scientist, it was closer to a hobby paycheck - which was fair, since I ssed up a lot while setting up Patreon tiers and have never quite managed to catch up to the promise I made when I first set up my Patreon - I had originally intended to have 3 tiers for Budding Scientist chapters, much like I currently do for MaM. That never ended up happening, because I could never quite get ahead of my Budding Scientist chapter schedule, and reworking the tiers without adding new chapters for Patrons just didn’t seem fair to . The original intention was to have 3 chapters for a $3 tier, 5 chapters for a $5 tier, and 10 chapters for a $10 Tier.
Anyway, Budding Scientist wasn’t paying bills, but I wanted to keep writing. I had started writing, and I wanted to keep doing it. So I expanded a little bit. I went from just writing Budding Scientist to writing Budding Scientist and Markets and Multiverses. I’d had the idea floating around in my head for a while, and it just needed a few rough drafts and so polish. I was also excited to write the story, so I wrote the first draft of a girl nad Miria, and her journey through the Multiverse. I thought a lot about things I felt I had done poorly in Budding Scientist, and sought to expand my skill set and utilize my new skills. I got to writing, until eventually, the story reached its third draft and I started posting it.
With the addition of MaM, my inco reached its current point - almost financially stable, but not quite there yet. But ever so close…
I still love writing very much. But I would also like to not worry about my finances every day, and wonder if pursuing my passion is a horrible, horrible mistake that will co back and bite . I would also appreciate actually having financial stability, and the funds to not just survive from one month to the next. And financially speaking, what makes the most sense for is to remove Volu 1 of the story from RR, Scribblehub, and Patreon, and transition to a model where I can hopefully actually earn a decent living from treating writing as a full ti job within the KU unlimited program. I also considered cutting back on writing and abandoning my hobby/job as a whole, but I really, REALLY do not want to do that unless there is no other plausible option. Maybe I’m just being dumb and stubborn about this, but I don’t want to give up on writing if there’s any chance it can work out for . My other option for reaching financial stability would be to start a third story, but trying to manage that, along with the 3 chapters a week from Markets and Multiverses and the 1 chapter a week from Budding Scientist, is proving to be difficult. And while I do have a new story idea that I’m super excited about writing, it’s still very much in its first draft phase. Markets and Multiverses almost a year in draft form before I started posting it, and I imagine the tiline for ‘Project 3’ will look similar. Maybe it'll be faster, since I learned a lot more about writing since I started writing MaM, but... it's hard to say right now. And I would be looking at remaining financially unstable for another year or so in hopes that Project 3 will eventually solve everything, which is…a dubious plan, at best.
And since I’m also editing older Budding Scientist chapters to prepare for volu 2 of the Kindle/Podium release, and writing both of my current stories, it’s just a bit hard to juggle. Project 3’s tiline might get delayed for that reason alone, making it even more dubious. Right now, I squeeze out ti on weekends to work on project 3 (which I am not going to admit the existence of anywhere besides this post, just for the record. Outside of this post, Project 3 is sort of like Schrodinger’s cat - it may or may not exist, but I will admit nothing. After all, I might run into a problem that makes it hard to keep writing the story if I can’t figure out a solution for it, or sothing - right now, I’m trying to figure out how the second and third volus of the story’s plot line connect to each other, and whether volu 2 of the story would need to be split into two volus, and whether that would solve the plotline issue I’m currently running into, and a bunch of other stuff about worldbuilding details. Anyway.)
While taking ti out of my weekends is viable while I’m super excited about the idea and really really happy to be worldbuilding and imagining and writing the story, the ‘super excited’ phase of writing a new story usually only lasts a few months. After that, I transition to a more ‘I am enjoying writing this story’ kind of state, where I’m still having fun, but usually no longer invested enough in it to chop out several hours of my free ti consistently to work on it and build it more. And inconsistency is never a good recipe for writing. Frankly, going into the KU exclusive program with Budding Scientist is notably more likely to solve my financial issues - and it’s also sothing I can do right now (well, in a few weeks, but you get the idea.)
Which is why I’ve ultimately made up my mind to take down the first volu of Budding Scientist book 1 from RR, Patreon, and Scribblehub. It hurts a bit to do, because I did want to have all 3 volus up on said platforms before taking them down only once I was done with the webnovel draft of the story. But at the end of the day, this is what I think is best for and my writing as a whole. Not being stressed out and worried about whether my writing is a mistake will do wonders for my ntal health and stress levels. And stress levels have a big impact on how well and how much I write. When stress is too high, I have a much harder ti doing fun things like bonus chapters or longer chapters consistently, since there are so days where I just feel frazzled and blehh. (Those are technical terms that I just made up).
So this is my ultimate decision. On the 24th of this month, I will be removing Volu 1 from this platform. And Volu 2 will also be removed whenever I finish going through the editing process for it - which is still several months away, but whenever I get to that point, that will be what happens. I wish I could have given you more forewarning, but there were so miscommunications that happened that shortened the notice and forewarning I could give you.
That being said, here’s a link to the pre-order for Volu 1 of the story, if any of you are interested. It would an a lot to if you pre-ordered it, but you do whatever makes the most sense to you. Currently, my publisher says that it will be 'released' on the 19th of September, unless sothing has changed and I didn't get an email about it yet. And it has also gone through a notable amount of edits compared to the webnovel version - I tried not to change TOO much, but I fixed a lot of typos, consistency issues (there were a lot of weird bits about how much one gold crown could buy), and flow issues. There will be an audiobook and an e-book available. A link to one version is here, and I will get a link to the other up as soon as I have it.
A Small Town in Southern Illvaria
Thank you very much for reading this far, and thank you for allowing to pursue my dream as an actual job instead of just a hobby I sotis have ti for.
~Acaswell
Reviews
All reviews (0)