MatHaz
patreon
First Post of the Year+State of the Patreon+Goals+More
🕑 Added 2023-01-08 12:00:04 +0000 UTCHi, everyone!
I hope you had a great New Year’s Eve. Lots of ground to cover in this post, so let’s get to it.
State of the Patreon
I have said this before, but I’m always surprised by how successful the patreon has become. Right now, we’re consistently hovering around 500 patrons. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. Either way, it’s a big deal. Huge.
It has gotten to the point where, if prices were a bit less wonky everywhere, I’d be seriously thinking about quitting my day job and dedicating myself to writing full-time.
No, even with things as they are, I am seriously considering it. At the very least, I can say my thinking has gone from [boy, that sure would be nice] to [okay, but what would I need to do to make it work]. It’d give me more time to write which would mean more updates and maybe even more stories.
So yeah…
Don’t get me wrong. It is not something I am about to do right now, but I think it is something I can now set as a goal. Does that make sense?
Regardless, I want to be a little more active this year, which brings us to the next few points.
Nine-to-Five Villainy
This might surprise many of you, but there is another story in this patreon. You can find it by searching for the nine-to-five tag.
Nine-to-Five Villainy had about 35 chapters done before I had to put the story on hiatus. I was busy with a bunch of stuff at the time, so I had to give myself a break somehow. Nine-to-Five was always the smaller story compared to Ave Xia Rem Y, so the choice was relatively simple.
Of course, the idea back then was to return to it in a month or two. Unfortunately, my schedule didn’t unbusy itself. It did the opposite.
I have been thinking about returning to the story lately, but I am also thinking that I could use the chance to rewrite Nine-to-Five instead. Truth is, when I think of what I wanted to write and what I ended up writing, I can recognize I veered off-course. The idea was always for Nine-to-Five to have a faster pace compared to Ave Xia Rem Y. For each story arc to work as a quick little adventure. Sort of like a comic book.
Instead, I think I spent way too much doing setup stuff and too little time letting things happen. There is definitely room for improvement there.
Writing Blog Posts
Another thing I intend to restart this year. It was very shocking to look at the writing blog tag and realize the last Q&A happened nearly a year ago. That’s crazy. I am at a loss as to how I dropped the ball so hard.
So yeah, you’re definitely going to start seeing those again. Let me know if there are any subjects in particular you want to see. Writing stuff in general? Lore stuff? Behind-the-scenes stuff? More Q&As? Let me know in the comments.
And now for the last item…
Novel Release
I want to release the first Ave Xia Rem Y book this year.
There. I said it. No take-backs. People sometimes ask me if I plan on releasing a (e)book version of Ave Xia Rem Y. The answer is yes, and I want to get that done this year.
Also, patrons will be able to download the ebook through the patreon for free. Because of course.
The main issue I am having right now is deciding which chapters the first book will cover. I have a few different ideas, so I will release another post going into detail about the options I am considering. I want to hear your opinions on this, so be on the lookout for that post.
Anyway, that’s more or less what I wanted to say. The main point is I want the patreon to be more active this year. And yes, because I know someone is going to ask, I want to see if I can sneak in a few extra updates of Ave Xia Rem Y this year while at it.
Let’s have a good year!
Comments
Braydon
Couldn't be more happy for your success because it's well deserved, my only regret is that there's not more chapters for Ave Xia Rem Y. Hope the audience continues to grow!
Codered999
I mean, harem is the plan for all that it hasn't fully happened. He's already got two devoted lovely ladies in his corner and Lady Song is likely to end up the third at the rate things are going.
burning_the_paper
Agree on both accounts, though I'd argue Ave Xia Rem Y is less about subverting xianxia tropes and story beats, and more about trying to justify them in a way that makes narrative sense, and by doing that it avoids the usual outcomes, while sticking true to the general premise. Also, wuxia and xianxia is no stranger to subversions or different narratives. Deer and the Cauldron has a protagonist that is almost a complete opposite of the typical wuxia protagonist (no hidden heritage, cowardly, no aptitude for martial arts, illiterate, greedy, lascivious etc.), and it's one of the most popular works of fiction in the genre. I imagine the West doesn't get to see more involved stories in this genre because the "fast food" is much easier to translate and monetize in comparison to more ambitious stories. I'd say the issue here is that there are far too many people nowadays expect near instant gratification and raise a fuss when they don't get catered to. To do justice to a harem it requires a lot of groundwork and character development, and even more time needs to be spent having the characters that make up the relationship interacting with each other to justify why anyone would agree to something like that, even with "cultural expectations" acting as a shortcut of sorts. I have no problem with the slow burn so long as there is an obvious payoff in the future, but again the problem of people wanting instant gratification becomes an issue.
JoBo12
I think you hit some good points. Trying to recommend Ave Xia Rem Y can be quite difficult. Not because the story is not excellent but because of audience expectations. Most people who want to read Xianxia are willing take writing of a little lower quality but expect a fast paced story with a high agency MC. AXRY is nearly the opposite in the beginning, slow paced and with only a little agency on the part of Liu Jin if compared to most other Xianxia works. I agree that the qualities of AXRY are usually more in demand among western epic fantasy readers who enjoy this stile a lot more. To say it exaggerated: AXRY can seem like a xianxia story for people who hate xianxia. Not an easy sell. The same holds true for harem readers. By now it is very clear that there will be harem content in AXRY but that content is so far into the story that it is hard to recommend it to people who are expressly looking for said harem content.
AZ
I'm actually looking forward to how Mat handles the harem aspect given how well he's dealt with all the other xianxia tropes.
burning_the_paper
There's bad stories in every genre - the people that get bent out of shape over the harem aspect (in a xianxia story no less) are just a very vocal minority. Also, I think the tongue-in-cheek title helps it stand out from all the other xianxia stories with pointless bombastic titles that all blur into one another.
Dimitri Valenkov
Ave Xia Rem Y always read to me like an epic fantasy with xianxia setting while refining the tropes of said genre. The name itself to me feels like more of a statement that this is how a xianxia should be rather than whatever is out there. It kinda frustrates me how the bad works in the harem genre cloud peoples perception to not read this wonderful gem of a story.
Matt DiMeo
Every time your story comes up on reddit, people think it’s got harem in it. I swear you’d have double readership if you took the harem/name joke out of the description. People who want it don’t find it, and people who don’t want it never start.
David Wei
Congrats on reaching the point where you can think about making writing a full time job. That's a pretty big milestone. Here's to making it a reality!
burning_the_paper
While I would certainly like more content per week, it must also be said that not everyone writes at the same speed - I'd rather have one chapter per week if it meant that the current quality was kept, instead of more chapters that suffer from Mat having to keep pace with a breakneck release schedule. And as Mat has said, the current situation is not one where it would be easy to go into writing full-time. I'd love if he did that and was publishing two or more chapters of Ave Xia Rem Y per week, but I can also understand why he's hesitant to do so, both from a financial perspective, and from a creative one.
burning_the_paper
I think the first book should end with chapter 31, with the last line being the bombshell revelation that Liu Jin is getting married. Then you can have chapter 32 be the natural lead-in to the intermission that makes up the start of book 2. As for the length, that would be around 300 pages - though I have no idea if the way RR calculates page length is the same as how Amazon does. Most KU books I've seen are around 400 to 500 pages in length, though a lot of authors try to be sneaky and increase the inline size to spoof the page count. Would including a few more interludes in the book be a good way to bring the length up to cca. 400 pages perhaps?
burning_the_paper
If you're going to be releasing a book version of the story - a choice I very much support - be sure to look into what options you have in terms of making a cover. With the spreading use of Stable Diffusion you could very well just have it machine-generated, or look into contracting an artist. In terms of what the cover is going to be about, I leave that mostly to your decision, but I'll say that it should convey that the story is going the harem route, which is usually done by featuring the heroines (and possibly the hero) on the cover. I say this because there's a pretty vocal minority that gets very upset about any story that includes a harem, so giving them a clear indication to steer clear would save you a lot of headaces. On the other hand, while shilling the book around harem communities I've had people complaining about the slow pace of getting to the good (harem) part, so you're likely to get complaints from that side if you put emphasis on the harem part without delivering in what they would consider a timely manner. To go tl;dr - a good way to get people to notice your book, and make sure they don't mistake it for one of those cheap books that use stolen content from other authors is to ensure the cover art and lettering look professional and bespoke. People will judge the book by its cover, and since you'd be a new, unknown author for many that would go doubly for Ave Xia Rem Y.
JoBo12
btw have you ever considered making a discord server?
JoBo12
I think it is a good decision to release book 1 of Ave Xia Rem Y. From what I heard Amazon revenue is really good and helps bring in new audiences, in particular KU seems to be where it is at. But I do have a question regarding that. Have you considered releasing the book under a different name than "Ave Xia Rem Y"? I love this story but I have always felt that the title while descriptive really hampers the marketing of the story. I know I passed over the story a few times while browsing RR before actually deciding to start due to the title. Further, finding a good end point for book 1 is indeed not easy. I have heard some rumors that amazon gives an algorithmic boost to authors once they have 3 books released so it might even be worth doing smaller books. Additionally you have chapter 70 as a breakpoint, though it might not be smart stopping there since after chapter 70 the direction of the story is not very clear. Maybe something like 1-32 for book 1, Father's Tale - 63 for book 2 and 64-83+Interludes for book 3 could work. But these might also be too short for individual books. Just wanted to give you my quick thoughts as a reader. And yes, more blog posts sound cool. Lore and Q&As are always cool but just write what you enjoy.
AZ
Plus 1 on the 2-3 chapters per week wagon.
Guy
Looks like it'll be a fun year 🥳
Frank
I love the idea of more content. But more chapters, a book release, and a return and possible rewrite of Nine-to-Five Villainy with regular work on top of that sounds like a lot. So take care and have a great and successful year!
octav
"And yes, because I know someone is going to ask, I want to see if I can sneak in a few extra updates of Ave Xia Rem Y this year while at it." - a man can hope, dream even
Yoav
I would honestly love more q&a and lore posts
Hunter8k
Last 2 lines are the most important 👀 Also tbh I think that if you increase the number of chapters on Patreon and increase the release rate to 3 or more chapters per week, the number of patreons will atleast double. The most successful authors on RoyalRoad make $10k+/pm easily on patreon and Ave Xia Rem Y has nothing lacking till now except the number of releases
