Planning for Year 3 of SIDEQUEST

Greetings patrons, I wanted to give you a quick behind the scenes for how things are going here at Icarus HQ.

As mentioned in the recent update, thanks to a combo of factors of the last 6 months, including the OGL fiasco, multiple health problems, and other commitments, I'd felt like I was consistently treading water with the magazine in terms of delivering on time, so I made the choice to push issue 25's release back a month to late-July.

Over the last week I've been doing a LOT of planning work to try and avoid this situation and I wanted to give you just a small peak at how that prep is going. 

Content Calendar

I do the earliest prep for SIDEQUEST on a content calendar spreadsheet which allows me to allocate articles to issues, and track the progress of each article with color. Red means to be written, yellow means in progress, orange in layout and so on.

As you can see below, I've blocked out the content for each issue until next June. I removed all the text to keep some things a surprise, but this is something that I think will make a huge difference over the next year. I usually only work in a 1-3 month block, but planning for a full year means I can organize content into similar themes and I can plan to have content accompany holidays (Halloween and Christmas issues in particular). 

The two biggest benefits of this system though are budgeting and marketing. By locking in the majority of topics for the next year now, I can budget each issue's writing and art spending. If things work out how I believe they should, year 3 should have more custom covers than ever before, as well as more custom art in general. Almost every issue currently has a plan for a new monster, legendary magic item, or iconic character to receive new artwork.

From a marketing perspective, knowing what's coming months in advance is really helpful for me to prepare advertisement assets, but also it means I can start naturally integrating patreon promos into youtube content because I know what kind of content I need to make for a natural plug. For example, October's issue is going to have a strong tie to map making that will line up with a video that's been on my to do list for a while! 

SIDEQUEST Year 2 Annual 

For those of you who want to get issues 13-24 in print, the SIDEQUEST Year 2 Annual KS is ending in <48 hours. Printing individual issues is still not viable at our scale, so the annuals offer a great chance for folks to get the content in print and on their shelves. 

We're fully funded and have unlocked all the stretch goals, meaning you'll be getting the highest quality book possible, as well as a special edition cover variant, so be sure to check it out. 

If you enjoyed this look BTS and would like to see more posts like this that peek behind the curtain, let me know below! 

Much love
Anto