dev diary: first book success (Patreon)

this will be a bit of a sleepy dev diary… i’m writing it late because i’ve had trouble focusing this week (personal stuff i decided not to share, i’m ok tho)

so, the store page for another piece of candy vol. 1 went up! as of writing this, there are only a few copies left, which is actually perfect because it means 50 was a good amount for patron-only orders!!

the reason i wanted to limit the first batch of books to patrons-only was because it’s my first time shipping out merch on my own, and i didn’t want to get too overwhelmed with orders. doing a limited stock type thing just to try it out was really for the best i think, because i have limited space in my apartment to store the merch anyway haha.

there was a lot to figure out to be able to get this far… i ordered the books back in mid-july, and they got to me in early august. then i ordered the charms mid-august, and they got to me a couple weeks later. i should’ve ordered them sooner so i could put the store page up right away, but i was preoccupied with the audition event… now that i’m more used to this stuff i can schedule things out a little better.

the other major thing was setting up accounts for bigcartel (the storefront i used) and pirateship (for buying shipping labels). i luckily have a friend who’s very experienced with selling their own merch, so all the recommendations for these services came from them. they have a label printer, so i’ll be heading to their house to pack all the orders… but in the future i might invest in a label printer of my own for convenience!

the next round of book orders will be public so i’m planning to stock up on at least 100… i’m not sure when i’ll actually launch those, since i want to make some more progress on my games first. merch stuff has taken up a lot of mental energy for me since it was so much to figure out, so it’d be nice if i can space it out a bit. i don’t think i’ll be AS drained for volume 2 since i’m more used to the process, but yeah, definitely worrying that if i try to do merch simultaneously with gamedev i’ll fall behind on my deadlines (those deadlines were never too strict to begin with, but you know!!!!)

uhh let’s see… oh i think last week i neglected to mention, i haven’t forgotten about the jaelights collab song i keep teasing! i just need to make the video for it, but obviously i’ve had a lot of other stuff take priority. i imagine i’ll have the energy to finish it sometime this month, but neither of us is in a rush to get it out (she’s so kind waaa), so if it gets pushed back again it’s not too big a deal… it’s been hard for me to work on music-related things tbh. just a bit of a mental block. i’ll get over it soon i hope!

i think that’s all i had to say for this week. sorry again for the late post, i try to write these in advance whenever possible, i’ve just had a lot going on haha. thanks for reading~