New Year’s Resolutions
Happy New Year from Gladstone's School for World Conquerors. It's New Year's Eve and the time when we start to think about our goals for the upcoming year.
Happy New Year from Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors.
It’s New Year’s Eve and the time when we start to think about our goals for the upcoming year.
Here are our goals for next year.
1) To create more merchandise because we might spend two years on a graphic novel and it sells the same as one T-Shirt which may take a day to design.
This includes Shirts, Coffee Mugs, More stickers, possibly Toys and Action figures, Magnets, (potential book like slipcase for Gladstone’s Single issues so readers can put it on their bookshelf next to the books) and sketchbooks with embossed Gladstone’s Covers.
2) To expand our audience and mailing list through Kickstarter advertising and opt ins such as a free Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors Book 1 for digital download.
3) To channel good thoughts on the film and TV end for Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors because we’ve put in the work and we’ve earned it.
4) To trust the talents of others. This means Kickstarting and hiring writers and collaborating. It’s been 10 years since we began Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors and I know all the details of the story, but it might be a wise move to bring in other writers with fresh energy to work on the series. My archetype in the hero’s (or super-villain’s journey in our case) may be that of the mentor over time and as a facilitator. We also want to hire writers with established audiences to bring their readers to our series.
5) More representation, diversity, and inclusion in our cast as well as for people we hire. We already have a diverse book with a school for super-villains and Ghost Girl is Korean, Speed Specter is Filipino, Mummy Girl is ancient Egyptian, Ashu Gladstone is Indian and Martian Jones and Man o’ War are aliens. I lived and taught in Asia and the Middle East for 14 years and stacked the cast more that way with Asian characters. Originally we meant to have a black cast member but then that turned into Martian Jones and our black cast member is green. He was more inspired by Pete Ross from Smallville. The characters have been on a cosmic quest and we need to wrap that up to introduce more characters. I fumbled the ball on that one and we intend to pick it up and hand it off to do right. This is a circulatory system and we need to make sure that the blood flows everywhere. We have plans for more diversity and inclusion for Gladstone’s in terms of the cast and hiring creative teams. The main problem is that we are slow because we have an ongoing storyline that’s at the cosmic quest point and we’re averaging three years per book. We also need to create a budget to do this.
6) To get started on book 4. We’ve been doing the Gladstone’s double-features and one-shots so I hope we get those off of our plates soon and to readers so that Armand and I can get to work on Gladstone’s Book 4.
7) Choose your Own Adventure Prose Stories:
I hope that we can raise money on Kickstarter to hire some writers for some prose ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories with the Gladstone’s characters.
8) A Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors Role Playing Campaign:
I also wanted to hire someone to create a Gladstone’s role-playing campaign printed as a single issue book. We need the create a budget by selling books and merchandise and hire someone to do this.
9) To start to think about different formats for Gladstone’s. We would like to create a ‘half omnibus’ collecting Gladstone’s 1, 2 and 3 because it would be nice sending one book out in the mail and collecting $50 or $60. We may also do cheaper version of the books in TPB form and do school tours once COVID is conquered. We may cut the 200 page books in half and then charge half the price for them. So instead of three books we have now as HCs, we would have 5 books and the total price would be about the same for those who picked up and supported the Hardcovers and we still have plans to do those.
10) To Kickstart to raise funds for new projects instead of dipping into our own pockets. This is challenging because we might not have new items for our die hard backers, but we would like to do some smaller Kickstarters and also recover costs that we put into the series before. We need to strike the right balance with our current audience and get them behind this as we try to expand to a larger audience.
11) To try to get side hustles going on for shirts and items that aren’t Gladstone’s so we can sell more merchandise to support Gladstone’s.
12) To have, maintain and build good relationships.
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