What Kind of Additional Merch Would You Like To See In The Future?

Did you know that, most of the time, buying a ticket to see a band perform live in-concert actually puts less money in that band's pockets than buying a tee shirt or CD? And we're not talking a bigger percentage, either... we're talking total earnings. That $25 tee shirt you bought at the venue actually made your band more money, overall, than the tickets that cost you at least three times that much to purchase.

While there's a lot of math and behind-the-scenes explanations for this, the important lesson to take away from this statement is that buying merch directly from performers and creators you like is one of the best ways to support them.

Which is why I wanted to stop in and ask folks today... would you be interested in seeing me put out some merch for The Literary Mercenary?

I've got some plans in the works...

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

A Couple of Potential Ideas...

On the surface, this might seem like a bit of a weird direction to go in. After all, I'm an author, and all my books and gaming materials are already merch. And while you should absolutely check out my Amazon author page, as well as the nearly 200 tabletop RPG games and supplements under my name on Drive Thru RPG, the idea behind this week's post is all about expanding the options I can both bring with me to conventions, but also making sure there's more stuff available in general for folks who are fans of what I'm doing.

The advantages of having additional merch is that it provides more options for fans, and it represents an additional stream of earnings to help keep the wolf from my door. It also provides a wider range of costs so that different folks with different levels of disposable income can still get something when they come across me in the wild. The difficulty, of course, is production costs for getting new merch made, and the fact that you usually have to order a minimum number of things up-front. So if they don't sell, you're stuck with a lot of stuff you bought, but can't turn a profit with.

So, I had a few thoughts I'd like to lay out. And I can basically break them into two, very broad categories...

#1: Literary Mercenary Merch

The first category is broad strokes stuff for fellow writers out there. Stuff that likely uses some of my logos, as well some... shall we say choice phrases I've decided to identify with over the years? Some of my thoughts so far include:

- Stickers (surprisingly not something I've done yet, though I feel I should)

- Notebooks (I do love myself a handy dandy notebook, and something pocket-sized is always useful)

- Patches (I did this once before, and they were middlingly popular... just not quite enough to restock)

- Bandannas (for those who prefer a piratey look, or who just want something cool to hold back their hair)

These are just a couple of thoughts I had to get me started... but if there's another item you'd like to see, let me know in the comments down below!

#2: "Army Men" Merch

And you should grab a copy if you haven't yet!

For those who aren't familiar with it, my tabletop RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic has been out for a couple of years now. And while there are plenty of additional supplements for it like the mission module Assault on Outpost 13, or the medals system introduced in Army Men: Medals of Honor, those are all digital things, and I sort of want to provide something physical for people to buy to go with their game. A couple of ideas I've had thus far include:

- "Standard Issue" Faction Dice (color-coordinated to your faction, complete with an Altoids tin-sized carrying case)

- Faction/Unit Patches: Something to identify players who favor one nation over another. An expansion might be patches for particular units or regiments in the game setting

- Dog Tags: Another simple, color-coded way for you to let everyone know which faction you fight for

Given that I have copies of my game book out on the table when I go to an event, I figured adding another few options for players to check out would be worth adding into the mix... but what do you all think?

Again, if one of these sounds good to you (or if you think something should be added into the mix) let me know in the comments down below!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Stop Telling Creators To Do More (Just Support Them, And They Will)

I know I usually bounce back and forth between the Craft and Business of writing, but this week I have a business topic that is really clawing at me. For regular readers this may sound like I'm revisiting an old chestnut, but given that the holidays are often a make-or-break time for artists out there, I wanted to plant a flag, clamber up onto my soapbox, and say this one with my full chest.

Stop telling creators to do more things! I promise you, we are up to our eyeballs, we're drowning, and the last thing we need is someone adding one more damn thing to the pile!

Seriously... we need a lifesaver, not an anchor.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

I'll Get RIGHT On That (In My COPIOUS Amounts of Free Time)

I'd like to give folks a primary example of what I'm talking about here. For those who don't know, earlier in 2024 my first roleplaying game Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic released after its successful Kickstarter. Now, to help bring some attention to this game, I have done all of the following:

- Regularly promoted it on social media

- Mentioned it often in my creator newsletter

- Started a FB page about the game for players to go for updates

- Featured dozens of articles about it on my fairly popular blogs

- Created supplemental material including Army Men: Medals of Honor and Ungentlemanly Warfare: A Baker's Dozen of Booby Traps

- Started a video series about it titled Tactical Plastic Report

Now, despite all of the things I just mentioned, it's proven tough to get traction on Army Men as a game. The Kickstarter succeeded pretty well, and there's usually some folks who claim it looks interesting, but it hasn't exactly had the impact that I'd like it to have.

The regular suggestion that keeps cropping up in my comments is that I should make an actual play of my game so that people can watch it. And while I will acknowledge that this strategy could be helpful, it also comes with a lot of obstacles that I don't feel like the people suggesting it completely understand. These include:

- Recording Equipment: I have a personal setup, but I don't have mics, cameras, etc. for the 4-5 people it takes to run a decent RPG.

- Space: I do not have access to a private space that is good for recording.

- Talent: You can't just put whoever in a chair when making this kind of video. Folks need to be engaging, comfortable on-camera, on-task, and willing/able to perform.

- Time: These things don't just happen. There's setup, testing, technical issues, running the actual game, doing multiple takes, and then on top of it there's all the post-editing it would take. This could all range from a dedicated several days of work, to several weeks of work.

Now, to be clear, I could make an actual play of my game, if I either really wanted to, or if I had some reason to believe that it would do really well. However, I'm very aware that the Internet is absolutely glutted with actual plays of various RPGs, most of which barely anyone watches. In order for this to be a good return on investment for my time, my energy, etc., the recorded play session would need to bring in not just thousands, but tens of thousands of views. The most popular video I've ever made is currently sitting at 4,600 views and some change, right now, and that thing was an absolute fluke.

More to the point, though, The Problem With Pentex actually has product placement in it... and despite all of that traffic, it has sold a single product to the audience who watched it. Just one. And even that one I'm not entirely sure about, because it isn't my affiliate links in the video.

Creators Need Support, Not More Tasks!

While the example of people commenting, "Just make an actual play!" is one specific incident, this kind of nonsense happens to creators every day, usually dozens of times a day. Some other forms it takes include:

- "I'd love you to make merch of this!" Not realizing that getting that merch made is likely thousands of dollars in investment, along with several months for an order to be fulfilled.

- "I really want you to write another book in this series!" I'm sure we'd love to do that, too. Books can take a year or more to write, and just as long to publish... most of us don't have two years of savings banked so we can just hope the new release does okay.

- "When are you going to release this in audio?" Audio books take almost as long to make as the original book itself, and even longer if you're doing a full cast, SFX, etc.

- "You should go to X convention!" Conventions cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to attend, and historically, authors do not sell much when they're present. I've only ever made a profit once in something like 12 years of going to cons.

- "You really need to get on this social media platform!" Okay, but building a following takes years on any platform, even if you're already established. This isn't the quick-fix solution so many seem to think it is.

And the list goes on, and on, and on.

Sure, I'll add that to the list...

Creators are struggling. Whether we write novels, make videos on YouTube, run podcasts, paint paintings, create audio dramas, or do any of a thousand other things, all of us are struggling. And what does not help are people coming into our comments and leaving off-the-cuff remarks about what new direction we should take our art, what platforms we should use, or the best new method we should use to improve our audience. Because unless you are a marketing professional, or a fellow creator who has been through the process, chances are you don't know what will work any better than we will. Not only that, but it's likely we have already considered your suggestion, and the reason we aren't doing it isn't because we didn't think of it, but because we simply can't afford to do it (whether that be a cost in time, energy, money, etc.)

What we need is support. Because support helps us increase our reach, pay our bills, and it helps us afford to make more art. And, ironically, support would also give us the time and breathing room to make some of those projects you're suggesting, but that we simply can't right now because those things (wait for it) don't have audience support behind them.

Because if I sold a 10,000 copies of both Marked Territory and Painted Cats? As soon as I was done celebrating, I'd be storyboarding Leo's next adventure. If every video I made for Tactical Plastic Report broke 5K views, and there were a hundred or so fans who were begging me for an actual play of the game, I'd start putting a crew together. And if folks demanded Literary Mercenary merch, then supported me when I brought out patches, stickers, pins, or more ambitious things, I would keep doing them. If I could get 5K views on my audio drama for the story Suffer The Children, and folks bought copies of The Rejects while leaving comments that they wanted the rest of the stories in that book dramatized, I would be on that ASAP.

 

If you actually, truly want a creator you follow to succeed, then you have to be part of that success. Because we don't get anywhere by ourselves. We are, in essence, crowdsurfing... and if we don't have people willing to hold us up, we're going to fall on our faces. And when that happens, some of us probably won't get up.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (ongoing audio drama series)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

The Absurd Played Straight (Talking About My Favored Brand of Unusual Writing)

A lot of folks think that to write a funny story your manuscript needs to be full of jokes. They think of all the double entendres in many of Shakespeare's plays, for example, or of the laugh tracks you find in both audio and TV sitcoms, and believe that's the basis for what makes something funny.

I would offer an alternative to that, which may appeal to those who still want to tell a story that many would find silly on its face, but who don't want to be cracking wise in the text. And it is what I call The Absurd Played Straight.

And as you can see, I have some experience with it.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! To be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

In a Distant Future, Man's Best Friend Seeks Answers

If you're a regular reader, and you're a fan of my work, then you've probably seen the way I execute this particular style of writing. Whether it's in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, two hardboiled crime novels where the entire cast are made up of NYC street animals like stray dogs, cats, pigeons, and foxes, or you've come across my tabletop RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic where you take on the roles of plastic people in a plastic world fighting for their survival, you're already familiar with my take on The Absurd Played Straight.

However, perhaps the best way to explain how this style of humorous writing works is to point at one project that I think did it really, really well... a little game called Pugmire.

Seriously, check it out if you haven't!

Now, for those who have never come across this game before, Pugmire is a sci-fi RPG set in the far, far future. Humanity is long gone, but dogs, cats, and others have evolved (possibly through the help of laboratory experimentation) into bipedal creatures living in a medieval-esque civilization. Bits and pieces of ancient technology have been discovered, referred to as magic, and are used as potent tools. Humanity is a myth that has taken on a god-like position to many of the good dogs, who are adventuring throughout the world in search of treasure, and knowledge of the lost and distant past.

We, as the players, know the truth, but the characters we play do not. However, while this world is very silly from our perspective, the flip side of that coin is that it can still be used to tell very serious stories. Because while we can sit there and laugh at the puns, and the misunderstandings of these adventuring canines, we can still get wrapped up in the drama of their lives. Whether it's the stray who's lost their pack time and time again until they can't get close to anyone, or the adopted young noble trying to prove he truly belongs among the city's purebred elites, or just watching the big, drooly mongrel sacrifice themselves to save their friends from certain doom, it's possible to take a ridiculous set up, and still tug on one's heartstrings with it.

In fact, I'd argue that it's a little easier in some ways. If you have an absurd setup for a story, it lowers the audience's guard somewhat, and makes them even more susceptible to plot twists and impactful moments because they simply aren't expecting those things.

A Final Note on Defying Expectations

Throughout this entry I have referred to The Absurd Played Straight as a type of comedy writing, because that is the typical reaction we have to taking the absurd at face value. If you see a black, undulating horror from the void beyond time rear up out of a summoning circle, and it gets a pat on the head while being referred to affectionately as Icky by the occultist it snuck up on, that is a jarring mismatch between tone and expectation. The result is that, more often than not, we laugh. Juxtaposition like that is funny.

But funny is not all this kind of story has to be.

Like I said above, what may seem fun and silly on the surface (because many absurd concepts are very silly) can often get serious or poignant once you've gotten the audience to dive in with you. To return to my own work, you can tell a gritty, horrors-of-war story rife with trauma and post-traumatic stress using my Army Men RPG, if that's the route you want to go. And, to be clear, the idea of your plastic army men toys breaking down while thinking about the squad mates they've lost on the line is absurd... but it's an absurdity that hits on a tragic truth, and lets you tell a story that might be too real with flesh-and-blood characters in a "normal" war story. Similarly, I've had to tell multiple buyers that Marked Territory is not a children's book, despite the absurd premise. Because when it comes time to throw down, as happens in every good noir mystery, Leo fights like an alley cat... and alley cats leave crushed skulls and spilled guts in their wake. There's not a lot of violence in his books, but when it happens it's nasty, brutal, and visceral, which hits the reader much harder because they're not really expecting it while reading a story about a Maine Coon solving an animal mystery in the heart of New York City.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Variety May Be The Spice of Life, But It Is Often Too Risky (As a Creator)

There is a cycle I've gone through several times as an author, and it sneaks up on me every time. In short, when I first get a new job, or enter a new niche, it's thrilling, exciting, and I have fun with it. Whether it's writing short stories, putting together newspaper articles, or working on TTRPG supplements, there's always a period in the beginning where it feels good to flex the creative muscles to accomplish a new task. Then the check comes, and it validates all of the effort I put in, giving me the fuel to get up and do it all over again.

With that said, though, it's really hard to keep doing the same thing day in, day out, with no changes in sight. And while it's an uncomfortable topic, I wanted to broach it today, because it's something that affects all of us who create professionally, and we're often not allowed to talk about it without sounding like we're ungrateful. However, I want to remind everyone that if you're doing the work, you have the right to complain. Period.

And this is something we ALL have to grapple with.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

The Grind, and "The Muse"

Have you seen the ARG from Happy Meat Farm? Well, in stage two this mysterious company that's conducting bizarre experiments started reaching out to various YouTubers with "sponsorship" opportunities. Those who accepted at first seemed to be doing great thanks to a strange "muse" who started dictating their content to them. While these creators were making money and getting the numbers they needed, most of them felt this was not the direction they wanted to go with their channels. The content was too socially engineered, too filled with clickbait, and too creatively hollow, even if it was paying the bills. In time these mysterious muses seemed to murder the creators, leaving clones of them behind who happily toed the line, delivered the content they were told to, and had no ambitions to do something other than what their corporate masters told them to.

Game Theory had a great video on it, in case you didn't see it.

What does this have to do with this week's topic? Well, everything, since you ask.

Because artists of all kinds (writers, YouTubers, audio dramatists, animators, etc.) are stuck living under capitalism the same as everyone else, that means we have to find ways to monetize our skills and abilities to make art that people want to consume. And when we're faced with the option between a project that we think would be exciting and fulfilling, and one that is likely to pay the bills, we often have to go with the latter simply because we cannot afford the former if it turns out the thing we want to make has low prospects for actually keeping the lights on.

And because I can hear throats clearing in the comments, and the future echo of people saying, "Just work on those passion projects in your free time..." you're grossly overestimating the amount of freedom and juice most of us have. Because if an artist has the energy, time, and ability to handle the "pay the bills" projects on one hand, and to work on longer-shot projects that are more fulfilling on the other hand, they do not have a problem.

Most of us, though, have both hands full with pay-the-bills work. We spend all day, every day working on it, and when the day is done we have nothing left except for a couple of fumes in the tank to maybe jot a couple of ideas into a notebook, or maybe sketch a concept or two. We simply cannot do more than that because there are only so many hours in the day, and only so many actions your brain can take before the quality of your output degrades, or your brain simply refuses to do more.

What Can Help Avoid This Problem?

The best solution would be the fall of capitalism so that artists could just make art without having to worry about the twin threats of starvation and homelessness if they don't make a certain amount of sales/reads/views every month. Failing that, though, the best practical solution would be if folks listened to the advice that Mat Pat gives at the end of that video about the muses and the Happy Meat Farms ARG.

In short, when a creator you like tries something new, or does something different, audiences should support them if they want to encourage them to keep making things. You aren't obligated to automatically love everything a creator makes, but if their new book, new podcast, new show, etc., seems like something you wouldn't normally go for, give it a try. See if you like it, and do all the things a creator needs from their audience to keep them moving forward (buy copies, make donations, share stuff on social media, read articles, watch videos, and so on).

Numbers matter, and the easiest way for you to help the creators you love avoid burnout is to make sure they have enough money on-hand that they can try new things, or that experimenting with a new format, new genre, etc., isn't going to land them on the street because they didn't pull in a certain amount of sales, views, etc. Because if the only thing that ever gets support is one type of content, then that's all a creator can afford to make if they don't want to come up short at the end of the month.

Getting Personal About This Problem

The reason I wanted to talk about this topic is that it's been creeping up on me for a while now, and a lot of the time I want to use this platform (small as it is) to talk about issues I'm facing as a professional. Especially if they're issues that other writers might consider personal failings, or just try to endure because they don't want to be seen as complaining too much.

A soldier's privilege is to grumble, though, and we're all mercenaries here.

Folks who are familiar with my work know that the bulk of my output these days is tabletop RPG supplements, which typically take the form of some kind of numbered list. Whether it's more general supplements like 100 Fantasy Professions (That Aren't "Adventurer") and 100 Knightly Orders For a Sci Fi Setting, or more specific ones like 100 Shadow Names (And Their Meanings) for Mage The Awakening, that format is the dominant one.

And the reason is because that's the product that sells. Full stop.

I would love to write more short fiction, like what I did for the Werewolf: The Apocalypse collection Tales From The Moot, or even more free stories like 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, Cthulhu Mythos Edition. I'd love to write more novels like my sword and sorcery book Crier's Knife, and I wouldn't even mind putting together additional gaming modules like my recent piece The Price of Iron where players take on a dark fey threat in the middle of a major city. I've also been steadily releasing content for an entire fantasy setting titled "Sundara: Dawn of a New Age," and I've been putting out audio dramas for over a year now.

At the end of the day, though, what moves copies is numbered lists of random stuff. So that is what always takes priority.

What brought all of this to something of a head for me is "Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic". This RPG is on Kickstarter for one more week, and though we've met our minimum funding goal, I was really hoping to at least make it to the first stretch goal. This game has been several years in the making, and it's nearly been killed twice in pre-production. I have all kinds of plans for expansions, additional rules, new enemies, and all manner of ridiculous, tongue-in-cheek nonsense for it... but I need folks' help to make that a reality.

Because I think this game has a lot of potential... but it's going to be really hard for me to actually explore that potential (and create more content for it) if I have to devote a majority of my time and energy to writing even more supplements for other genres, other game lines, etc. because those are what pay my bills.

If you could back this KS, I would really appreciate it. If you can't, or if you already have, please help me spread the word about it so we can reach more fresh sets of eyeballs. And if you're reading this article in the future after the campaign is over, consider searching for Army Men on Drive Thru RPG, and getting yourself a copy... hopefully future me got the support he needed to write some of those extra expansions I've got in my notes!

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!