Harvest Time Part Five
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It’s that time of year where I reflect on where my mind is at in regards to the future of the site and how it operates.
For the first time in a long time I’m considering some significant changes that would affect this site going forward. They wouldn’t go into effect until next year, but it would likely upend the current structure of how this site works.
But before I get to that, a quick update for current supporters of the site.
The next book is coming together nicely. As was stated when you signed up to support for 2021, the schedule has shifted a bit. In the past the annual book has come out at the end of January/early February. In 2022 the book will come out in late April/early May (barring any unforeseen circumstances). The next book doesn’t have a name yet, and there is no real theme to it either. But it’s, like, 97% new material and it includes all of my favorite material that I’ve come up with in the past year or so.
There are also three more issues in this season’s volume of the newsletter. They will be coming out in October, December, and February. If you’re a supporter and have an ad for this upcoming issue, send it along to me in the next couple weeks.
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the potential changes that are in store for next year. And I say “potential” because these are thoughts I’ve only been contemplating for the past few days, and who knows if I’ll feel the same 6 months from now. But I sort of want to put it out there now so it doesn’t come out of the blue. And maybe some of you will have some suggestions or input that will inform what happens next.
Here are the factors I’m dealing with regarding the future of the site….
Writing a book a year is an insane pace - It’s one thing if you’re creating standard card tricks. That’s the sort of stuff you can figure out mostly by yourself. Even then, people rarely put out a new book of card tricks every year. But if you’re trying to come up with new performance concepts and presentational ideas that require you to test them out on real people, the amount of work becomes especially daunting. It’s not just all the time spent writing (which is significant), it’s also all the time creating and testing the ideas, both the ones that work and the many more that don’t. That would be a lot even if I wasn’t writing the equivalent of 1500+ pages of content every year for the blog and the newsletters. When put altogether it’s not sustainable.
The reader-supported nature of my work is the only reason it exists at all. I spend so much time working on magic because you all have allowed me to make it part of my profession. Without that support I’m sure I would continue to be creative with magic, but I wouldn’t have the time to devote to it that I do now. I’d probably come out with a book every 10 or 12 years.
I’m only interested in a (relatively) small audience of like-minded people. This is the one that’s hard for people to understand. Writing about amateur magic (especially the stuff I write for the books) is a very personal thing. I’m not writing how you should do magic, but how I do magic for the people in my life who are important to me. I’d rather share this with a small audience who feels a connection to these ideas rather than a large audience who is just casually interested in it. For that reason, anything I release will pretty much always be limited edition.
Working around an annual book schedule has kept me from producing other products and projects. I’ve had some stuff simmering on the back burner for literally years now because there was always something that was a higher priority to work on.
So, that’s what has been on my mind. Coming up with a way to keep the site operating, without being tethered to the schedule of an annual book. But doing so in a way that still affords me time to put out a regular stream of new material (blogs, ebooks, books, tricks, etc.) just not on the same schedule. I think I have the answer. Or at least the beginning of the answer. We’ll see.
From the start, these Harvest Time posts have been about how to keep the site sustainable and small. Back in the first post in this series, I said that my philosophy was that I wanted “No Casuals,” meaning I was going to gear the site and what I do with it towards those who are genuinely into it, even if that pushes some people away. The plan I’m working on will likely do that even more, and I’ll probably lose the supporters who were just in it for a book they could flip for more money somewhere down the road. That’s okay. As I said, small and sustainable is the goal. The worst case scenario is that there’s not enough support for my new plan to keep the site going. In that case the audience will go down to zero and the site will require no work at all. That’s small and sustainable too! It’s win-win, baby.
Further details on all of this will come probably March-ish of next year.