TAFCON Debrief

Getting. I was about like 11, 15, and I'm like, I'm the world's hungriest boy, so I need to go get lunch. And I was like, oh, I have plenty of time. It's like, there's like 45 minutes. And I forgot that the. The place that I go to get a very good Nashville hot chicken sandwich used to be 5 minutes away from my old place and is now 15 minutes away from this place. So I was like. So it would have been like a five or 15 minute trip out there turned into like 45. And I was like, oh, I gotta get back here. And I'm like, I have to scarf this entire chicken sandwich as quickly as possible so that I'm not eating while we're on the recording.

Oh, my God. I got halfway through my lunch and then realized what time it was and was like, okay, the other half of lunch is for later.

I bought a blueberry sourdough loaf at Costco yesterday, and it is one of the most incredible things I've ever had in my life because I just toast a slice and then I put cream cheese on it, and I, like, simultaneously feel very, very fancy and really poor at the same time. But that's good when it comes to a lot of food. So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know.

You want it to be just fancy enough to tickle the brain stem, but not so fancy that you feel like a little dilettante. A little like you don't want to

be a prince lad, you know?

Exactly. That's better. Yeah. Well, welcome, audience, and back to behind the Locked Doors, a sometimes podcast where, I don't know, my brain's scattered.

Even busy boys. Okay, we've got stuff going on.

We do lots of stuff.

Yeah.

I am Scott Paladin. I am editing a horny werewolf audio drama podcast called It Takes a Wolf.

My name is Sam Stark. I am doing lots of sound editing things and getting back into writing episodes for a spinoff of Unspeakable Distance called AZ in West.

Yay. I'm Jack, and I'm also working on AZ in West.

I'm Mike, AKA Interiority, and I am working on a horny Regency drama called the Two Majors. At the moment, I'm not sure. That might not.

Oh, I love that. Let's go.

You know, I was thinking kind of like double major might be a bit too cute.

Yeah, Two majors is good.

Two majors is really solid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So double major did make me go. Well, there's something to be said for that.

It implies a collegiate Thing that it didn't sound like you already had.

Yeah, that's wildly off track.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. So, progress report. I don't know when it was that we last released an episode, so could not tell you the. I've. I have been making some progress on the editing for episode two. I still have to do some re recording. Um, I just need time to like, hours to put that together, but the last couple of weekends have been shot for me, so. But we'll talk about that stuff later. Um, so how about Sam?

I.

That's a big sigh. That was a big sign. I'm thinking.

Um, I had. I. I did a whole bunch of audiobook stuff. I did my first HarperCollins. I just picked up like three new trans, like, own voices reads, which is pretty awesome.

Cool.

I am Pride. Yeah, happy pride. I am looking at possibly doing a editing job for a publisher maybe, and I was really excited because I had like, some downtime because I also had a very minor surgery and I was able to sit down and like, sort of familiarize myself with as in west stuff again.

And.

And there was Tafcon, which we'll talk about.

So, Jack.

Yeah, I went to Tafcon. Basically, the past, like, month of my life, all I have been doing is preparing for events that I was tabling in June. I've now done all those events. So the last week I have done nothing but lay around. I like. Well, I went to one of my jobs, but the other job I took off. So I've literally just been catching up on sleep and trying to, like, become a human person again. So that's all I have accomplished. But I am proud of myself for that.

Just imagining the scene from T2 where the. The. All of the mercury slowly coalesces back into the T1000. That's what I imagine.

Yes. Yeah, that's me this week.

All right.

How about you, Mike?

Well, yeah, I've spent the past few weeks preparing for tough con, namely the disappointment of not being at Tafcon. The heartbreak.

Missed you so bad.

Making sure that I hydrated enough so, like, when the tears inevitably came, they wouldn't kill me. And then recovering from the heartbreak of Tafcon. Since our last update several months ago or whatever it was, I have made progress. Like, I've written at least one episode since then probably too. But yeah, last two weeks, lot of fatigue, not feeling so good. So, yeah, not done too much recently. But hopefully we'll get back on it when it stops being 100 degrees in the UK, which is not a country designed to be 100 degrees.

Wow.

Yeah.

And until very recently, was not a country that got to 100 degrees. And now we have a week of near it, and it's not great.

Hate that for you.

Yeah, hate that for you.

At least we're not France, which is a good 5 degrees Celsius hotter. So, you know, sucks to be French, I guess.

I got a. I get like, a nonpartisan, like, whatever sort of like, newsletter every day in my email. And today they had this really cool link that takes you to this really cool science y website that shows, like, you can just click a spot on the world map and you can zoom in and look how. How much hotter it is than it's ever been. And I was looking at. I was looking at Seattle, obviously, because that's where I am. And we are 1.7 degrees hotter than we've ever been. And then there's various parts of the US that are 1 and 2 degrees hotter. Fucking UK is like 7 degrees hotter than it's ever been. I can't believe it.

It's really scary. I'm so sorry.

Yeah. I'm so sorry, Mike.

Yeah, Temperature records for this month. Just tumbling. It's. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not great.

Woof.

Yeah. For a country that doesn't think that air conditioning is mandatory, that's not gonna be good.

Nope. No, we are finding out. We are very much finding out. Yep.

It's one of those. I'm happy to be underground these days in my office basement, where it is. Cool. Okay, so three of us mentioned it. Four of us mentioned it in various degrees. Last weekend was Tafcon. So that.

Allow me. I'll just mute myself while I whimper quietly.

No, Mike,

he's making. He's making a really sad face.

Oh. You know, this is the perfect.

This is the perfect opportunity to say happy birthday tomorrow to Mike. Who knows when this podcast is going to come out, but tomorrow, today, that

is for us, it's tomorrow.

For us, it's tomorrow. Happy birthday, Mike.

Happy birthday.

Thanks, but.

Yeah, please continue destroying me.

Yeah. So Tafcon was the audio fiction convention held in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, which is about 20 minutes away from where I am currently. So I had no excuse not to go.

Yeah, legally, you had to be there.

Yeah, I mean, like, it would have been. It would have been rude. It would have been. If I had not shown up. That's like an official snub at that point. But Sam and Jack and many other people who, if you listen to this podcast, you probably know their voices were There as well. It was a one day event and with a lot of talks. It was held in a relatively small convention center. It was really kind of small and intimate as cons go. It was probably actually maybe the smallest con I've ever been to.

We were suspecting that the venue was like a wedding reception venue or something. It was decorated in such a way that it made me think, ah, this is for wedding reception.

It was labeled as a gallery for the.

For.

Oh, it was a. It's what it was called, like the Rembrandt gallery and convention space, I think is what they called it.

Okay.

Yeah. So I think it's very beautiful. Yeah, it was great. It was. It was perfectly adequate for the. For the convention. So there were. I attended several talks. Jack, I know that you spent most of the time at your table. We got to go to maybe one or maybe only just a. I think

I just went to the one that we went to together, which was a crowdfunding one, which was really interesting.

Yeah, very interesting, Sam. I concentrated myself on the marketing and monetization and stuff like that because that was where I felt the weakest in terms of what I wanted to get out of it. There was also a very good talk by Gabriel Urbina about. What was it? Audio or fiction you can play with, I think was the title of it. It was a really good. It was a. It was a pretty good talk. Sam, did you hit anything particularly interesting or.

I. I did and I. I did basically all the same stuff you just said. I. I took notes. Thank God. Because. Quick side note. I got to Colorado at midnight on Friday night, Saturday morning. And I just stayed in the hotel, or not the hotel. I just stayed in the airport because I've done that before. I've just slept in airports before and

we've all been there.

It wasn't great because I had a migraine. So I took my migraine meds and then just passed out on a bench. And then I met up with Mel when she got there. And then. So by the time I got to Tafcon the next day. Cause we played mini golf. We did a bunch of stuff on

Saturday night and we like went out the previous night.

Yeah, it was very fun. By the time I got to Tafcon, my brain was like basically mashed potatoes and so. But I did attend the talk by Gabriel. Gabriela.

Gabriel.

Gabriel.

The way they pronounced it was Gabriel. Gabriel.

Gabriel.

Yeah, Gabrielle.

But forgive us if we are not saying it correctly.

So. Sorry.

Cool, dude. Very interesting to list. Great speaker. I can't like, talk point by point, because I don't remember. But it was like, what was nice about his talk was it was like, you look back on it and you're like, yeah, this is all really obvious stuff. But then as you, like, sort of think about it, you're like, yeah, it's obvious, but, like, I don't really take this to heart very often. I should probably re examine how I do stuff. That was really cool. I really enjoyed the monetization talk because it wasn't even really a panel. It was like, everybody sat down on couches and, like, had a discussion.

Although that. That room was too small for the

group of people and it was too freaking hot. I didn't understand why they shut the door, but anyway. But the two people that were running the talk were so passionate about what they did, and it was so cool to just listen to people talk about things that they genuinely were so excited about and so. And loved so much. And I got so many good ide. And now I understand what the difference is between, like, putting ads in your podcast and doing ad reads. And I looked up, like, how to do a bunch of that kind of stuff, which is kind of cool. And I asked a couple questions later afterward about, like, Patreon stuff and things like that. So I've been trying to, you know, figure out how I want to do some of my stuff. My favorite part of Tafcon, though, and Scott, you will. You will probably agree with me, was the absolutely incredible meeting that the sound designers had that was, oh, my God,

you guys were in there forever.

Oh, my God, it was so fun. I'm not gonna go into the nitty gritty because nobody actually cares unless they're a sound designer. But, man, it was so wonderful to stand around with a bunch of other fucking nerds and talk sound design. And I met so many cool people, and I have everybody's. Oh, that's. That reminds me, I have everybody's contact info. I need to get that back out to everybody. But so cool. So, so cool.

Yeah.

The sound design, I think, was labeled as the Sound of Sound Designers Fetch, which was correct. That was a great way to title it. Yes. It was a loose thing. I think they put. I think they grabbed a couple of people specifically to go in there and kind of like, quote, unquote, run it. Not like, not officially, but to sort of moderate.

Yeah.

Sort of like, be there to. To consciously ask good questions, which was really good. And sort of get people engaged, which was really, really, really. It was much, much less formal than Something like a panel or even like the discussion we had about monetization. It really was very informal, but still guided just enough that like we didn't end up talking about movies or anything. Like it was like a. And watching a bunch of people who are, you could tell for the most part are working solitary by themselves. Solitary, suddenly get into a room with a bunch of people who do that same job was very interesting. It was very good to see everybody sort of be like, oh yeah, what about this? What about this? Oh yeah, yeah, I totally hate that.

Blah, blah.

You know, it was very interesting.

I totally hate that.

Yeah, yeah, that was cool. That was not a thing I thought about. I had not been to something like that with sort of a guided, not a guided discussion, but a, but a topic based free form discussion like that at a convention before. And I, I enjoyed it much, far more than I was expecting to.

Well, I think most conventions are too big to run stuff like that. Yeah, like you'd have to literally lit. You'd have to be like, okay, 15 people can come into this small room and no more. But like this convention was, I don't know, maybe 200 people total if we're being very generous. So I feel like that was the right size of group for that type of discussion. But a lot of times when you go to like Comic Con or something, there's just no way to limit it that way.

Yeah. And I, I looped through the writer's discussion later, which was like the next slot over, and it was. There were less people overall and it was much more like kind of not as well, it was less cohesive maybe is the way to put it, which makes sense.

That's writers for you.

Yeah, that's writers for you. Yeah. It's also just a looser like thing overall. You know, the sound design is a very particular kind of thing. Writing could be anything. Anything could be writing. Yeah, that was a very good. Yeah, that, that sound designer kvetch was very informative and fun. Um, I hopefully once Sam sends out the, the connection information so we can all email each other can be. Because I, I have a list of like plugins and stuff that people were like, oh yeah, you should try this that I need to like get from them.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Somebody has a, somebody has like a comprehensive how to use reaper and it's like, it's like a setup that you plug in that's already tailored to like doing podcast sound design. And I was like, hello, let me get your name in a contact info. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Reapers, man. Reaper's one of those things. I.

The.

Actually there was a really good idea somebody mentioned. I forget who it was. Talking about switching to a program like that, where it was like, you have to just do that as its own. Like, you have to make learning a new DAW its own project. You can't use that new DAW to run a project. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's exactly what happened. Because I switched to reaper at 1. Tried to switch to Reaper previously. I was like, perfect. I will just force myself to edit behind the locked doors in it. And I got like two episodes in and it took me so much longer each time that I couldn't handle it anymore. And I was like, I just got to go back. I just got to go back to the audition. And treating it like its own project is a really smart way to do it.

Yeah, I did. I did the. The most stupid thing ever. And I did. I did what you did, but with audiobooks. And I was like, I'm going to learn Reaper by editing this audiobook. So I went from addition, which is the best program to do audiobook editing in, to one of the most complicated. And that was just the dumbest thing I've ever done because it made me absolutely hate Reaper. And I. I had like two years of like, never touching this DAW ever again. This is terrible. But I know that it's so good for doing, like, multi tracks and like, you know, audio, like, audio drama stuff. So I think I need to learning

it has some really good features.

Actually.

I was. I was very pleased to hear other people who used Reaper all the time say that it's inline destructive editor. When you're like, going into a single clip and changing. That is. Is garbage. And I'm like, oh, okay, great. Because that was also one of my big pain points. I'm like, that was my beef.

Right? Right, yeah.

Somebody was like, yeah, I still use audition for that. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm not doing both. But that's very.

It like validated a lot of feelings. This. This kvetch did. It was fun.

It was cute because I wasn't in it, but I did walk by the room where it was being held a few times as I was like, meeting people at the tables and whatever. And I could see you guys all standing in a big circle in this room through these glass doors just like laughing your heads off about something. I was like, okay, I'm glad they're all having a good time. And this is a healing experience. For them.

Yeah, I don't want to take up all the time.

No, no, no.

Yeah.

And stuff.

I went to the marketing discussion which was interesting. I would, there's certain things, ways in which it was very helpful for me. Let me see if I can, I'm not going to remember to do. I can't. My notes are going to be too scattered for them to even be useful here. But it was interesting because one of the answers was basically it was my broadest takeaway was that marketing in the audio drama space is so what's the nice way to put it? Not futile, but difficult, maybe. Is the way to put it challenging? Yeah, challenging. The biggest takeaway, I think probably the most useful, like one line takeaway from the whole thing was the idea that you should not be advertising, you should not be marketing to audio drama listeners. Audio drama listeners are people who already listen to audio dramas, are a small group of people and they are difficult to. The way the, the way it was put was all of the people who already listen to audio dramas, especially if they listen to a lot of them have a cue that's two years long. Like, if you, if you convince them today to listen to your show, you will get a review on, you know, podcast, Apple podcasts or whatever in a year and a half, you'll get it in three years. And if ever, right. Because they, Everybody's got a backlog. So the, if you want people, if you want to get people listening, you need to look outside of the current audience of audio drama listeners. You need to find something that's adjacent to what you're doing. So you, this is, this has resulted me, I've been thinking about it in the last, a lot in the last week. I'm like, okay, well, what's the adjacent population for? It takes a wolf, Horny werewolf. Is it just furries or is it like, you know. But the real answer is people who like noir, people who like supernatural fiction. It's honestly like the, the shortest way to put it is probably people who like the Dresden Files.

Yeah, probably.

Because if you like the Dresden Files, there's a lot of the same vibes here. You know, the actual subject matter is quite different, especially in its. Politics is maybe the wrong word. I don't know. I, I, I don't know what to say about Jim Bercher, except that he needs to stop using the phrase the tips of her breasts.

Oh, not the tips of her breasts.

I don't think that dude fucking says nipples in any of the books and he says tips of her Breasts A

fucking lot, damn it.

And it's just like. No, take, take it, take that phrase away from Jim Buscher anyway, so don't

do that, you guys. This is an audio medium. So nobody got to see how Mike's face just squunched in on itself while Scott was saying that. It was really good.

Yeah, yeah. So the, the, the thought process of how do I, how do I myself find those audiences that would be interested in my show but don't know what an audio drama is, or don't know what a podcast is or think they're. That they're not podcast listeners and get a hold of them is going to be an interesting question. I don't. I'll have to find. I mean just, just dropping a link on the Dresden Files discords probably, or not or Reddit or whatever is probably not gonna be good enough. But I'll have to figure out where those people are so that I can get my show in front of them, which will be very interesting. But the.

I bet at least a decent number of them are on Tumblr.

Oh yeah, Tumblr. I think I need to, I need to be more active because I think that's gonna be where I'll. I will find the horny werewolf are on Tumblr.

I gotta get back into Tumblr. When they got rid of all the, the, you know, the porn corn. The corn, yeah.

They got rid of the porn.

We can be. We can say all of the words we do not need to. Like,

Once they got rid of all

like the like the really super porny slash stuff, I was like, well, bye.

Yeah, but the, the population that is there is weird enough and are revel in their weirdness enough. I think that's going to be a very good lucrative market provided that I can get.

People who are on Tumblr are still horny. They're just mad that the porn is gone and like latching on to any.

There's a really good argument to say that when you get rid of the porn, the people get hornier because they don't have a release anymore. Yes, yes, that was an unfortunate phrasing,

but you're right and you should say it.

So yeah, yeah, I think, I think Tumblr will be a good one. I'm gonna have to think of, you know, ways to get that like Tumblr is a really good avenue for image based marketing as well, stuff like that. So there's there but the, the central thesis of I don't need to be worrying about. About marketing to Audio drama fans is a really good way to put it because, like, those people, if they want to watch the show or listen to the show, they'll find it, you know?

Yeah.

That doesn't. I don't want to diminish the value of doing things like putting things on, you know, doing a promo exchange with other trailer swaps. Yeah. Trailer swaps and things like that. I don't want to diminish the effectiveness of those. But that's probably not your best bang for your buck, as it were, maybe is the way to put it. That was really.

I have been doing a lot of, you could say research, but that sounds so adult. And it's not. I don't feel like that's what I've been doing, but I've been asking a lot of questions and just sort of, I guess, interviewing people when I go to cons, because I have to. I go to a lot of them, and I. It's just incredible how most. I mean, you're average. I'm. I'm speaking absolutely of the average person.

Yeah.

Just like somebody you would maybe run across on the street.

Yeah.

The average person definitely knows that podcasts exist. Like, they know. They, like. If you said something about, like, cereal, they would know what you were talking about, like, because.

Or Joe Rogan or.

Exactly. The podcast Fear is like talking head political. Or it's true crime. Yeah. And. Or comedians doing true crime.

Yeah.

So.

But that sounds rad.

It's very fun. Those are. Those are the podcasts that I listen to.

That's all.

That's like 90 of the way to behind the Bastards right there.

Yeah. Yeah.

So. So most people know what a podcast is, at least.

Yes.

But when I start to talk about audio drama, they just. Blank. They're like, wait, what are you talking about? Because most people think that podcasting is just people talking to each other. And so I. The spaces that, like cons. The con spaces are, like, ripe for, like, getting people to, like, see what audio drama is. And that's great and everything, but I think another place that we're sort of missing and we're not really thinking about is, like, book talk and places where people read books. Because a horny werewolf drama, that's, like, it's. It's supernatural. Horny werewolves and noir. It's like thriller, you know, it's. It's detective stuff all in one. That is, like, one of the biggest genres of book there is, you know, or a couple of genres there are.

Yeah.

And if you were to, like, walk into the, like, horny werewolf section of like people who read books and be like, hey, if you wanted to like listen like an audiobook to. But it's more like an audio play of like a horny werewolf story, people would just, they, they would like start like drooling. Drooling like just, just like feral. And because people who read that kind of stuff are usually very voracious readers

and so there's not enough of it to keep them silent.

There really is not. And people, I mean, mo. I mean, nowadays most people who read a lot also at least at some point will listen to an audiobook because they have to drive somewhere or they have to work or clean their house, do laundry. And so you, you just gotta find the audiobook listeners that listen to the genre that your podcast is in and, and see if we can figure out how to market to those specific people. Because that, that group of people, like, if you were to look at the size of podcast listeners, I'm holding up a little circle with my hands right now.

It's like an Apple sized circle or something.

Compare it to the people that listen to audiobooks in the same genre. It's like the size of my. So I'm, I would love to get with you guys at, at some point while we're not recording and trying to make a, an episode to how, how we could market to people in, in that sphere of the world. Because I mean, I just think it's, it's again, like I said, ripe for listeners.

Yeah, you're, you're 100 right there. Those are the, those are the voracious people. And if you told them, hey, there's a free audiobook that hits your genre for it. Yeah, you can just go listen to right now. That's a really good way to market that. You're right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just don't want to use TikTok though. Fuck crying. Anyway, sorry, what was that?

I was just saying, I have actually talked to Ella Watts about this. Like, she's mentioned it. Oh yeah, like, you know, I think, you know, like the people are missing a trick really to not kind of like targeting like audiobook listeners in the genres that they're making things and trying to position it as something like adjacent or auxiliary to that sort of experience. It's also quite interesting because it's slightly off topic, but I did listen to the same talk you're mentioning the marketing. I did have a digital ticket for Tafcon. It was kind of like standing outside peering through the window. You know, it's like that gif of Conan kind of like just pressed up against the glass. It was like that as an experience, so I wouldn't really recommend it for anyone, but it was still useful. But yeah, like, I heard that particular talk and I. I very much same sorts of thoughts as you, Scott. It reminded me of something that Daniel Orrit said. So I don't know if you're familiar with Daniel. He created an audio drama, full Cast, which is marketed and basically sold as an audiobook essentially through various platforms, a sci fi one a couple of years back. And he got his audience through basically starting YouTube channel, which is all about sci fi lore, building an audience audience there and then beginning to write this audio.

Is this the guy who wrote Sojourn?

Sojourn, yes, exactly.

Yes.

Okay. No, I know, it's the channel space doc. Yeah, no, I.

Yes, that's the one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I know, I didn't know my name.

Yeah, yeah, so I'm not the hugest fan of it. But he did say something that was quite interesting, which was that he believes that the audience that he's got for the Sojourn, which is, you know, not a huge audience, but it's enough to support them financially and kind of give them enough money to continue production. Like, he reckons that of his listeners, the majority of them are people who'd never listened to an audio drama before and were brought into the sphere from other areas of either his YouTube channel or, you know, like the wider kind of like sci fi community and outreach through that, rather than people who are audio drama fans to begin with, who are then convinced to listen to his one. And that kind of tracks with a lot of. Kind of the interactions that I've had, because a lot of the people in the audio drama space that I think that we inhabit have nothing to do with that production or like, don't really know about that. A couple of us have had like small parts in it, but generally speaking, there's not much crossover between those two worlds. Like, that audience, and that group of creators sits very much on their own yet is quite sizable. I think that's quite interesting because it does seem to be driven by the fact that when they started it, they very much had this focus on making sure that they were marketing to people who had similar interests, but in media in different areas, essentially.

Yeah. And thinking of. Yeah, thinking of the work as a genre piece first, medium piece, what kind of medium it is. Second is probably a really good way to put it. Yeah, this is, you know, in my case, I'm looking At noir, you know, supernatural. You know, that stuff that I'm. That is the important but not the audio drama part. Good to. Yeah, cool.

Yeah. Because. Because, you know, like, the project I'm working on at the moment, like, part of the reason why I kind of thought, well, maybe this might be something that people would want to listen to, is the fact that it is, you know, at its heart, a Regency romance and also a queer romance as well. And, like, you know, like, those two combined have an audience in and of itself. But, like, you know, even if I separate. But I could separate those out and even have, like, an even bigger group of people to market to. Yes. So, yeah, that's. That's. Yeah. The.

What else do we want to cover? Oh, yeah. I also went and Jackie went with me to the crowdfunding talk, which was. I don't want to.

I don't know.

I don't know what I was looking for. Maybe I was looking for something more concrete. There was a lot of. There was a lot of information in that. In that. In those. In that set of slides. And I feel like I don't know what my broadest takeaways were for it.

How do you feel about that? Well, it seemed to me like the talk was aimed at people who were trying to figure out whether they should be crowdfunding a project or not, and if so, whether they should be doing it as, like, a personal thing or a business. Yeah, like, that was kind of the main. And then kind of giving you some rundowns of, like, different platforms you can crowdfund through. Oh, oh, that reminds me, Mike. There was a UK specific crowdfunding platform that they talked about that sounded really cool, but that those of us who don't live in the UK cannot access to road subjects.

That sucks to be here, I guess. Yeah.

And it had some linkage with, like, one of your arts programs as well. So there was some sort of funding, like a matching program or something like that that might be available.

It was cool. We were like, oh, my God, we gotta tell Mike about this.

And of course, neither of us can remember what the name of it was. I think it might have been. It might have been one of the crowdfunders.

1.

There's, like, two things called crowdfunder, and it might be one of those.

Yeah, yeah, maybe check that out, because that could be cool for you if ever you're wanting to do a paid project or whatever. But, yeah, it was mostly, like, trying to figure out, like, whe. Like what you should be crowdfunding for. Like what types of things are things that people are willing to put money toward when you're asking a crowd of people for money and what types of things you should not be asking a crowd of people for money for?

Yeah, so maybe the, and this is, this is maybe my fault because I was going, I was looking for crowdfunding 201 and I think we got.

For crowdfunding 101, this was like entry level basic. Like, should you be doing a crowdfunder project?

And like, what is a crowdfunder? And like, you know, you know, here are the various platforms that are available. It was interesting. They did have a lot access to a lot of their. It was done by the people who maintain the giant, giant Google spreadsheet of every audio drama crowdfund that has happened in the last like seven years or something like that.

So they had cool data.

Yeah, they had 600 instances, which is great data. But knowing that like X number of, you know, X percentage may meet their goal when they're. And this is how much money they get, that is useful information. But it, it was a, it was kind of scattered throughout our larger talk, which was again, maybe just not what I was expecting. So I feel like I still have unanswered questions about running a, like running

a. Yeah, I feel like you have more granular questions. Like you, you did need that like second level of information.

Yeah.

That we kind of didn't cut because it was only like whatever. An hour long.

Yeah.

And they were like, we actually have too much stuff to fit into this hour long talk. So we're gonna be blasting through this like one on one information.

Yeah. So like things like you need to include a video with your face in it as part of your crowdfunding is stuff that I'm like, well, yeah, of course you do.

To me, of course not to say

that that is self evident. But to me I was like, oh yeah, I already, I kind of already knew that. And so the questions I have are like, okay, well we've got stretch goals and stuff like that. What kind of stretch goals are actually good? We, I mean, they barely touched on that. But like, obviously physical, you know, physical items require shipping and that basically gives yourself an additional manufacturing and fulfillment costs. You know, digital.

They also covered like, okay, if you're gonna do stretch goal rewards that are physical objects, you have to consider the time and cost of producing those physical objects and then shipping them out to people.

Yeah.

Which. All of which adds more cost to it. So if you're doing that for like a five Dollar reward tier, maybe that doesn't make sense. You know what I mean?

Like, and there's also a difference between stretch goals and rewards. I think we just conflated those where

it's like, yeah, sorry, those are different.

Yeah. There's like the tier rewards where it's like, okay, you give me 25 and I give you a mention in the credits. You give me $50, I give you a mention the credits and I send you a postcard and maybe a T shirt or something like. But like, those tier rewards can get a lot of additional money out of people because they, you know, they feel better about giving you more money. If they're going to get something back

from it, something special, they get treats.

And then on top of that are stretch goals where you get addition.

This.

If the crowdfunding gets this additional amount of money, we are going to do something additional for the thing.

Yeah. Like if it goes over 100% of the original goal.

Although a really good piece of information is that, like, you don't need to. Actually, this is maybe a takeaway that I didn't internalize until just now. You don't actually need to worry about stretch goals because hardly anybody gets to them. Is kind of the answer that, like, it is. So the, the number of people, the number of the percentage of projects that got 200% of their funding is like 5% or less.

Yeah, it's like very small. I feel like that's kind of something you maybe worry about if you're three days in and you fully funded already and then you're going, oh, okay, So I have 27 more days of this Kickstarter being open. Maybe now we think about stretch goals. But. But in the lead up to preparing a Kickstarter campaign, you maybe don't even need to worry about that.

Yeah. Or at least it shouldn't be at the top of your list of things that you should be stressing about.

Yeah.

Reward tiers is probably much more important.

Plenty other stuff to stress about. Stretch goals not at the top of your list.

Yeah.

I've been a part of so many Kickstarters at this point, and most of them are audiobooks because a lot of small publishing houses don't have the money to buy to pay a narrator for their audiobook. And they have the extra boon of this is a author that most people already know. And they're like, their next book is coming out and we want to get it in audio format. And so it's really easy for them to do that. So usually the books, the Narrations that I do are funded very quickly. But I remember Shelterwood, we didn't even make half our, like, projected what we needed to start that project. And that was like a really, like, people were really excited for that too. It was very weird that it didn't even make half. Did they? In that, in that talk, talk about like what to do or how to plan, like if or when your Kickstarter

does not fund, only in as far as to prepare your expectations for the fact that you may do everything right and still fail.

Yeah, they talked a little bit about like knowing as you go into the beginning of a Kickstarter, whether you're planning on making that show still if you don't make this money, like, okay, Tal, who was one of the moderators, was like, yeah, I was gonna make side questing season four. No matter what, I'm gonna Kickstarter it. But if I don't make that money, it's still getting made. It's just gonna take longer. Whereas some projects just aren't gonna happen if you don't make the money.

Well, and the irony there, the irony there is because. Because they did mention this, which is it is actually helpful for you to succeed, to go for the only get the money on the fully funded version. I forget what they called that. But yeah, the Kickstarter model where you don't get. Yeah, the all or nothing model is actually more successful than the partial funding model, where if you fail, you'll still get some of the money or you don't get to the goal, you'll still. Not to say you fail, but if you don't reach the goal, you'll still get some of the money. That actually doesn't give people as much incentive to get money, apparently. And also like, so like the, the most famous one that did that was Indiegogo and they've actually completely switched to the Kickstarter model now too. So even doing the partial funding system is harder. And that means it was funny because the advice was if you're going to make it anyway, you should just go ahead and do the partial funding one, because any money that you get is good and you'll put it towards the project. But also those are the smaller platforms that don't have as big of a, of a, a footprint. So like, people don't necessarily already have a login and their credit card information already in a small site the way they do with Kickstarter. So you really probably just want to be on whatever the biggest platform is.

I just want to be a Kickstarter Really? Yeah. Their bottom line was like, just use Kickstarter. Like, that's the one that kind of works. Yeah. For what we're doing, which sucks.

I hate monopolies. I would love to support smaller, but like, you know, we can't. We can't federate crowdfunding.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think the government should just be paying us to make art. Is the bottom line. Like, why are we asking you?

Only they're. They're doing a. I think it's Ireland is doing a like base universal basic income for artists program.

Yes.

Like a pilot program.

They travel.

Incredible.

And they're going to keep it in place. Yeah, yeah. And like that's.

That's fucking rad as shit.

Love that.

Love that.

Leaders of the human race are effective as well.

Like, you know, in terms of like creative output. Like, Ireland's really good.

Wow. Who would think?

Yeah, who would think? I know I've got a buddy with a, with an Irish passport and I'm like, I know I am like a year older than you. Could you adopt me? Could I be your son?

Move to Ireland and make art with garlic money?

It's going to be really interesting and exciting to see what comes out of Tafcon moving forward because again, having been to hundreds of cons at this point, it was really easy to see, you know, this could probably use some work. And this could probably use some work. But they did so good for a first time con. Good for their first con. I have to. I have to. I'm going to be a little petty jerk for a second, but I have to say it was really funny when you guys were talking about Kickstarter 101 and Scott, you probably needed 201. Yeah, I probably shouldn't have gone to the basics or like voice acting one because it was just really frustrating because they had. I think it was Emma. She's part of Wolf 359. Yes. She was fantastic. And she had wonderful things to say. She was very intuitive and she obviously had a lot of insight into the whole process and the job of being a voice actor. Um, but a lot of the questions were answered with like, so you need to just remember that you have a scene partner and you need to like talk to them like it's a conversation. And I turned to Mel and I was like, no fucking way. But I was just. And I understand that that is the basics of voice acting and I love that there were people there in that audience that probably got something out of that. Wonderful. I'm not saying it was A bad panel. I just shouldn't have been there.

You shouldn't have been there.

Exactly.

I shouldn't have been.

Well, we have a discussion about this where it's like, the expectations of what you are going, like, making sure a panel is clear about what. Who the people who should be there. Right.

Like.

Or. Yeah, I just heard my voices put

a 101 on there.

One thing I wanted to say, which was just a funny thing, which is I continue to be absolutely jump scared by people's heights when I meet them in person. The only person I can say that was ever about the right height was Mike. Sorry. Sorry, dude. You are. You were. Or. It's good. Yeah, I was like, oh, yeah, that's. That's a Mike person. That's. That's about. Yeah, it's a reasonable person. Everybody else has been like, oh, you are much taller than I thought you were going to be or so funny. Or very much like, oh, you were a shorty. You were. You have a tall voice and a short stature.

Tall voice and a short body. I was surprised that Sam is shorter than I am because I find, generally speaking, that I am on the short side. We also.

I was wondering we might also be the same height because I had converse on and you had big chunky boots.

I did have big chunky boots.

I'm wondering if we're maybe the same height, but it was. It was very funny.

How tall are you actually?

Nope, never mind. I'm shorter than you, but I am. I am very much a. Wow, you are way shorter than I thought you would be. Person all the time from everybody. Every one that I've ever met. So.

Yeah, you have. You have a tall demeanor.

Yeah.

Tall voice.

I was so. I was so surprised how tall Ari was. I was.

She's tall as hell.

Tall as Ari.

She's so beautiful and she's so tall. And it was just wonderful. Yeah, it was wonderful. It was. It was great. It was great meeting everybody in.

My wife is six foot three, Everybody. Yeah, you can.

She's gorgeous and wonderful. Meets. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was really, really fun.

And we played something really good at mini golf. She wiped our ass.

Just annihilated everybody. Yeah, I had wonderful time being super terrible or. Or maybe just unlucky because I had the black ball. I don't know.

Oh, man. Yeah, Sam had the black mini golf ball and it kept just like vaporizing into the ether. Like, hit it and it would like, like fly off the. Off the course and just.

Or it would dance somewhere it would dance around the top of the hole and they'd be like, nope, and then just jump right back out. It was great.

Yeah.

It was doing all kinds of crazy.

Was if you ever get a chance to meet people that you only know online in person, you should do it.

Mini golf is the activity.

Mini golf.

That's a good one.

100%.

Okay. I wanted to. Okay, one quick thing and then we'll wrap up. For those of you who.

Or for.

I mean, this is probably not a good answer for either Mike or a question for Mike or Sam, because you all are both either weren't there. Or Condors. But I'm thinking the next time I do one of these, what. What am I going to do differently? Is my thought process. Because, like, I think. Oh, God.

I was just going to ask if you plan on having a show releasing by the next one of these.

Man, I really hope so.

I think if you do, then you could, like, table as a creator and be like, hey, here's my show. Because, like, a lot of. I was the only fan artist there, by the way. Everybody. Like, there weren't any other ones. It was literally only me. So, like, most of the tables, there were people who make podcasts, and we're promoting the podcast that they make or their podcast network or whatever. Yeah. So, like, you could table as a creator if you have. It takes the wolf releasing or about to release the next time.

No, on that thought, I was. I had a different thing entirely, which was not as good. No. I was gonna say I need to bring more business cards.

Oh, you should. Yeah. You should also bring business cards.

If I really. What I should have done was tabled as this show behind the Locked Doors.

Oh, interesting.

Because we were just talking about how there's not. I'm not gonna say there's no reason to market to other audio podcast people, but, like, that's not the mark. Like, I don't need to capture those people if they want to watch the watch. But getting people for this show who I could, because I could literally pull anybody aside. I'm like, half the people at that con. I could have pulled into a room and done an episode of this really quickly with.

Yep.

We talked about doing a quick episode with those of us who were present, and then we were so busy and doing different things that we didn't do it.

I knew I was like, no. Coming up to the weekend, I'm like, there's no way we're going to be able to do it. But if. But if I could have had A way to, you know, like, okay, like, real quick, look, let's do a 15 minute show. Tell me about your show. Tell me about your process. Tell me.

Oh, that would have been cool. That would have been really cool.

I could have run a bunch of little guest episodes. That would have been really cool. Yeah, I should have done that. Oh, well, I should have just recorded

myself literally doing that because, like, when I did step away from my booth, I just walked around to every other table and, like, asked the person sitting there, like, hey, what's your show about? Like, what's the. What's the premise? What do you think is fun about it? Like, tell me about it and pitch it to me.

Yeah.

And I walked around with Amy and Mel, who were like, you know, just kind of following me around. I was like, you don't have to, like, wait around with me while I talk to every single person on this floor of this building. And they were like, no, we want to get this information, but we're introverts and we don't want to ask the question. So it's really useful for us to just like, stand a foot behind you while you talk to everybody.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I did do that. I was just like, pitch me on your show. Because my, like, list of podcasts I listen to is kind of short. Like, I only have a few that I keep up with and I want to try new ones, but I'm always like, you know, seeing the title of a show floating around and not really knowing what it's about or if it's going to be for me or whatever. So, like, having the person who makes the show or writes the show pitch it to you and be like, here is what I'm really passionate about and here's what I like, making really, like, gives me a better idea of the list in my brain of things I think I would enjoy. You know what I mean?

I think it's also really important.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, no, you're. You're good. I think it's also really important to point out that, yeah, marketing to other podcasts, blah, blah, blah, like we've said before, but. But this show, marketing to other podcasts makes sense because we are a show that talks about, like, how to. Or how you do or something like that. And this is something that people who create podcasts or thinking about creating podcasts would probably want to know about or at least least, like, would.

This is like a talking shop show.

Yeah, exactly. I think we definitely should market and probably only market to other podcast creators.

Yeah, right.

If you like cereal, you should try behind the locked door.

Right, Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Running through line of like, which of us has chronic illnesses that are preventing us from creating things? Once again, that's the cereal.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Did anybody else have a thing that are like, oh, I should do this differently next time?

No, try and be in the same geographic space as the event.

Yeah, be in the country for it.

I really hope we have a UK contingent next year.

I'm getting bummed that the time you were in the United States I was disastrously ill and could not be there.

Oh my God, I'm so mad.

You are not the only person to have those feelings, Jack.

I'm sure that's true.

Well, see, the obvious answer to this is we all just go to the uk. Okay. I mean, let's just hop on a flight and go obviously.

Let's figure it out.

Just take over Mike's little orchard with the Americans.

Look, everything's going to be kind of an ash string, kind of like burnt out husk.

Like I know one way or this weather, there's not going to be that

much, you know, enticement.

Yeah.

So the real answer is we all need to meet in Svalbard or something where it'll be.

One thing I was going to say was because I haven't heard this mentioned is the organizers of this convention, Taka on, have said they are going to do one next year and have tentatively mentioned that it may be in a different location.

Yes.

Location they mentioned is the East Coast. I wanted to know, would that have any impact on whether you would want to attend or not?

I'm still going.

It very much depends on where on the east coast because let me tell you something, for this convention, we parked a block away and I hauled up one heavy box of prints and a couple of, couple of stands that are, you know, two and a half feet wide. Up down one block at one city block and up a flight of stairs. Not a huge deal. Not too bad. I'm not getting on the New York City subway carrying a 2 1/2 foot display frame. Like, I'm not doing it. The people on the subway already hate that you're there. I'm simply not tabling if it's in New York City.

Well.

And yeah, there's lots of places that are not New York that could be East Coast. So.

Yeah.

Hold on, hold on, hold on. So the flower that was this year, the flower that was the Tafcon flower that was like the Colorado or the Boulder or something flower the flower for next year is for dc, so.

Okay.

Are they doing a dc?

DC would be fine. I would do dc.

Do not quote me, but that's what Amy said. Amy said that's, like, the flower of, like, dc.

Amy's really smart, and I believe her, so.

Me too.

That makes sense.

Yeah. I think unless there's some sort of life change between now and then, I feel like I'm quite likely to go.

Go.

Yeah. I want to go again. It was, like, so fun. Like, regardless of any of the logistics. It was just so fun to be in person with my friend. I, like, got back to Kansas. I was like, where are my homies? Like, hanging out with. What the hell? Yeah.

Yeah, I want to go again, just

to see everybody, but if it's dc,

I want to go because a lot of people that I work with in podcasting live in dc. A lot of Shelterwood people live there. Mel would like to table for 236. Mel also used to live there, so

Melbourne in the area. Yeah, exactly. Friends a lot.

There's a lot of reason for me to go next year, so I plan on going.

If it's dc, I'll be so happy. Please, not New York City.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm sure for running a convention, cost between DC and. Oh, my God, New York would be quite different, so.

Oh, yeah, that's different.

I feel like New York would be a very. I don't know, New York just seems like a bad place to run conventions because it's already full and there's so many people there. You want to. You want some place full? Yeah.

And, like, everyone who lives there is fucking mad that the tourists are there. Like, they don't want you to be there. You're in their way. They got places to be. Like, it's just not. It's not that pleasant. Okay. I have opinions about New York City because I went there for classes while I was in grad school, and I hated it. Anyways.

Okay, let's. Real quick, let's. Let's do some. I feel like we've covered this pretty well. We've done a pretty good debrief. Let's set some goals for two weeks from now, which will be early June sometime there.

No, early July.

July, yes.

This is June.

It's currently June.

Yes, we are in June. Oh, my gosh.

June right now. Happy pride.

The year's, like, half over anyway. Okay, So I. I have to get the re. Recording done between now and then. I now have. As you all can see, I have a recording Space set up. There's even like a beautiful booth. Yeah. There's.

There's sexually lit.

Yep.

Yeah. So that. That is. I have to get that. I'm going to continue to edit episode two, but I have to get the recording done and. And yeah, I'll do it this week, in fact. So that's my goal. Sam, I believe your next usual.

I have two. I have two goals. I have. I'm finishing up a. Own voices narration and I will also. I think that I am going to make goals for Azim West. I'm going to refamiliarize myself because I've just been away from it for so long. I think I need to. I think I'm going to start simple and not make it hard on myself. And I'm going to just set my goal as re listening to a bunch of episodes just to. And I'm gonna have the Bible that you. That you did, Jack. And I'm going to just get back into the world, get my headspace back where it needs to be to start writing again.

What I don't have in the Bible at all is Stuff from the west episodes of Unspeakable Distance. So as you're doing that, if you feel like there are really important details you want to fill in to that series Bible from the west stuff, please feel free to do that.

Then that's. That's what I'll. That's what I'll do. Then I'll. I'll listen to both yours and mine and I'll put in the Bible stuff from my side and get ready to start writing again.

Okay, cool.

Jack, how about yourself? So recuperating or are you gonna.

Yeah, I have to like, catch back up on my life in Kansas probably before I. Yeah. Set more concrete goals because I have to do like my laundry and stuff like that. But yes, like, Sam, if you end up with stuff you want to talk about or questions or whatever, hit me up and we can find a time to like hop on the phone and talk about stuff if you want.

Excellent.

In the next two weeks.

Mike, how about you?

I think, you know, just get another episode under the belt if I can just continue the progress. I think by that point I will have 100%. Definitely got over the halfway point. I'm already technically there, I think by word count. But like, you know, like some of the episodes have turned out to be a bit longer than I intended, so don't know exactly how it's going to work. So. But if I write next one, I've definitely written more than half of them thing cool and start approaching people to be in it. Cool.

So exciting. Very exciting. I wish I was British.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I thought about that as well.

I feel like a really shitty.

Feels like a missed opportunity, honestly.

Okay, great. Then in that case, we will catch the audience back in two weeks. Bye. Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Yep. Sam.