Informal Sunday #8: Happy One Year

Well, it's finally here, Universe's End's first birthday!

Well it was actually yesterday but w/e.

I made a bit of a note on this on the most recent Totality tier chapter (chapter 100) but, I wanted to start off by saying thanks to all of you. Universe's End was never meant to be my main series, in fact it was something I started writing on the side as a bit of a challenge to myself because I was bored of my other series (which has since gone on hiatus)

One year, over 500 followers, an average rating just shy of 4.7, a single good rating outside of the royal road top 1200, and nearly 100 ratings. I know some series rack that up in like, a month, but for Universe's End which has pretty much only ever maxed out at 2 chapters a week and has had essentially no outside forces pushing it, that feels pretty damn good, and its all because of those like you who love the story to drop ratings, reviews, comment on chapters or even go above and beyond and subscribe to the Patreon.

But, that brings up a question if this year has been as successful as it has:

Now what?

Well, the answer is simple, and it comes into three parts for my plans going for.

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1. Dreaded Retroactive editing

So I'll be honest, I don't like going back to early chapters and editing them, it takes up valuable time I could be writing, but unfortunately its sort of the first chapters people read because that's how linear time progression works. I've already gotten some chapters updated, but I'm committing to editing at least 4 chapters a week now. Less relevant to you all, but something that does matter in the long run.

2. Ads and cross promoting

I mentioned this, but in the past year, I haven't paid for a single ad or gone on any forums advertising myself, hell I don't even engage in cross promotion unless another other reaches out to me first. Originally there wasn't any sort of point for that, but at around month 9 I decided that I wanted to hold out until the 1st birthday just to see what a year of completely writing-only progress would look like. Now that the first birthday has come and gone I'm unshackled so I will be looking to start doing both of these things. If their are any authors you think would be good for me to reach out to about cross promotions, feel free to drop it in the comments or even shoot me a DM!

3. The Hard Part: Daily Chapters

Universe's End, as you all are aware, only does two chapters a week. The good part of that is for much of the year I've been busy with IRL, Work, coaching, etc. For the next few months at least, that workload has decreased, so I figured it was finally time to bite the bullet and look to start transitioning to a 4 or 5 chapter a week schedule. One, it progresses the story much faster, but more importantly, the biggest factor and commonality I've seen between stories that exploded is simply that they released chapters every day. While I'm well aware I'm not the next Tolkien, I can say with reasonable confidence that at least compared to some of those stories, the quality of writing in Universe's End is quite a bit higher that I don't see why a every day release schedule wouldn't also work for me. That said, its not exactly easy to pump out that many chapters, so I will likely not start that transition until the RR hits roughly chapter 100, giving me time to build a backlog without resorting to taking a break.

For everyone on Patreon, that means instead of 2-4-6 chapters ahead you'd be 5-10-15. Their is also a possibility that for the Mortal tier I may have to increase the price from 1$->1.5$ and a smaller chance that the Immortal tier would go from 3$->3.5$. It's not a choice I would make lightly, and I would say well in advance if I truly planned to go through with it, but that much extra writing doesn't come without a bit of cost.

Lastly, daily chapters will be done on a TRIAL period, so 2-3 months while I test 1. How I handle it and more importantly 2. If I see any significant changes in growth. If it doesn't really move the needle considerably after the trial period I'll probably just stick to a 3 chapter a week schedule and maintain that for the foreseeable future.

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Anddd that's really it, the plans I'm looking at going forward. As the post has said, I'm not quite ready yet, and if you all have thoughts, please feel free to share them. At the end of the day, Universe's End is where its at because you all have wanted to read it, and so I really do value all your thoughts. Universe's End is a one man team, I don't have editors or anyone around, so really the only way I can improve and keep delivering a high quality product and story is with all of you! So once more, thanks for making this year great, and on to another!