Brief Apology + Future of the Patreon + Merchandise! (Patreon)
Content
To begin with, let me apologize for having such an erratic schedule lately. I've always prided myself on the regularity of the comic, and the last month or so has been incredibly off-and-on with regards to updates. I've had a lot of very important "real life" things to do, from getting married to buying a house. There won't be an update tomorrow as well, as I have a ton of errands to do related to the new house. Updates resume as normal on Tuesday. Once again, I'm very sorry for this.
Now, onto the more fun news.
As you can see, I have designed new buttons for Ennui GO!. These are for the kickstarter for Volume 4, the surveys for which I have sent out today. Now obviously, I'm not going to be doing any merchandise stuff until after the kickstarter is over, as that takes precedence.
However.
I think it's time to have a conversation about that. I'm most likely going to be slightly changing up the Ennui GO! patreon. The $20 tier at present is incredibly limited, and allows the backer to suggest a comic page that I'll make, pending minor adjustments. That tier has never been SUPER popular, and more often than not the people that DO pledge at that level don't even suggest a strip anyways. I don't think I've gotten a suggested strip idea in months despite there routinely being 3-4 people on the tier.
That being said.
I think instead, I will open up the $20 tier, remove the suggest-a-strip feature, and instead ship out buttons to any backer on that tier. Each month, $20 tier backers would receive 5 Ennui GO! buttons of their choice from a catalog that would expand each month. Kind of a collectible thing I suppose. I own a button press and all the supplies, and it's very quick and easy to operate, so this wouldn't really take any time away from the comic.
Is this a thing you would be interested in? Let me know in the comments below.
ADDITIONALLY, there is one other piece of merchandise I am very interested in making. I've recently become aware of an avenue to get cheap stuffed animals made. If there is sufficient interest, I could make limited runs of Ennui GO! plushies. I'd probably only make about 100 at a time, sell them until they're sold out, and then perhaps either make a different one, or re-print them. A few people have asked about this in the past, so there's some interest there. But if there's enough, I'd feel confident to go ahead with that and sell them in the BigCartel page.
What do you think about that? Is that something you'd be interested in buying? And if so, what character would you want to see made into a plushie? It'd most likely be Izzy, but I'd still like to hear opinions. Please, let me know what you think in the comments below.