I need to sell 110 copies per month to at 5usd per copy to have the ability to get someone nearly fulltime on this. That's just 1 aspect: there is marketing and product management and development. For this person to really really do well in this I have to sell 1500 copies of various Products per year.
1500 copies = 6-7 Electrum Tier Products. Why Electrum tier? Because we believe we have a niche and that we need to produce more stuff for our Niche.
To make something to sell every 2 months. Nicco and I have to produce a lot of tools and products every two months.
Right now I'm investing in better gear for Nicco. Particularly drawing tablet and a more powerful computer. A friend lent me his gaming desktop, left it in my house, and let me use it and we will use Anydesk so nicco can render stuff his Laptop cannot. So we have a tools we need to be ingenious about - Nicco remote desktop a PC to render complex scenes and I plan and project management the goods.
What would be sustainable is Product Development 2 (Nicco + 1) + Marketing 1 (who makes the marketing and documentation materials. Keeping a wiki and dealing with customer support. ) - I end up being an investor for start up capital and get a good return (better than inflation) after a few years.
3 people would mean 4,500 copies of 5usd products per year at the very least. But most probably it would mean 10,000 for the freelancers at breakeven: programmers and software development services that we will need. 20,000 would be ideal - but as of now I cant see as realistic. TO be realistic is having forums of customers going "we like your product and this is what we want to see in the future." "This saves me X amount of time and my players enjoy Y so much. We'd like to see more of Z."
20,000 sales of 5usd - where products are continuously updated and milestones means polishing the product even more.
Near Term success right now is the following: Our Milestone Deliverables in 1 month. Mneme world generator took about 6 months, 8 months was SMASHING MY HEAD on the SHIPS problem. NO ONE WILL BUY A SHIP BOOK if there was NO place to adventure. Sure they get a Ship book but having no place to go - means people wont USE THE MATERIAL. I know I can get away with a PICTURE book of ships - that's easy - its easy to Kitbash a Ship.
BUT kitbashing a ship - without reason or logic of how its supposed to work will not differentiate us from the many ship products already existing. Polish MNEME world generator - Detail Near Space by Stellagama with procedurally generated worlds for a 2300-2500 timeline setting. Have up to 6 to 7 hex radius from SOL with sufficient detail. More detail than the current adventure books out there - a detail that GMs need to be ready to change direction when the players change their minds.
Then Produce the Ship Spreadsheets, Blender Model of Ships and SCENES - star port + down port, and the various Worlds we generated. Let the people who BUY the book HAVE THE MODELS - let them know how to render them, modify them, HOST sessions where we walk through fixing it up for a game. have a Ready Scene for rendering.
Nicco + Me can produce the milestone addon products, and the Ship generator. I need one more person in product development and maybe I can be marketing for a couple of years till it can afford a dedicated marketing.
Maybe the ship generator will take 6 months now that World Generator exists. Hopefully the Addons will get us to 250 - that means 15+ systems detailed and mapped for games. Then after the 15 star systems + we spend 6 months on the Ship generator.
I can Restudy Javascript and remember enough to teach someone then FORGET IT* as I get back to focus on my day job. I just need the Other Product Development person to be inclined to spreadsheets and javascript so that we will continue to make tools to go with our Books.
*At 40s to 50s skills are forgotten - I'm a project manager for IT and the Plant - these skills - my love for all this science is sustained by my scifi Hobby - I cant find others who enjoy it outside the hobby. Ive been focusing in having relationships with schools for my various open source projects.
If Nicco and I can make the ship generator we can make a LOT of detailed Cepheus Engine TL7-9 Ships. Ships with no Gravity manipulation - spin grav, ion engine, reaction drives, radiators...
We can make DRONE swarms, bomb pumped lasers, 100mm point defense chain guns, food vats - from bug vats, protein vats, to textured algae vats, etc... we can make many different modules - 5usd of exhaustive elements - from TL7-9 and how the practice and doctrine evolved.
We can make the gear, the Vacc Suits, with rigged models of the vacc suits. the firearms.
I want Ni No Kuni, Breath of the Wild, Genshin Impact, Ghiblesque shaders and styling for the gear and characters. that Miyazaki artistry of grand scenes and slice of life - Cozy world-building. 2500 setting where several economic and technological collapses have occurred - with Ghibly orchestra playing in the back of my mind as the ship travels to strange and distance parts.
I want gigaton asteroid Homestead Innertia-Bank (spin tether) bases, families centuries old, hundreds of billions of humans, all the technological and cultural landscapes that can be imagined (see our d66x6 cultural table) - imagine designing habitats with Miyazaki whispering "tell a story with that machine, give it Life?"
all while make the science Accessible, people can pick and choose, and as peoples tastes change, so does the setting. As they GROW the systems grows with them.
Whats funny is that in a Setting so far in the future - its alien and familiar - the rockets that are so new to us - decades old will now be centuries old and so much will stay the same.
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