I’m a “creative professional” who runs a business — my wife and I make videogames, and have a studio (BancyCo) under which I do that. Sometimes we employ other people for our projects; at other times, it’s just us grinding away.
A significant percentage of my time is spent on bizdev — networking, keeping up with the industry, and trying to find opportunities for our games. I also have to think about marketing and sales a lot. How much should we charge for our games? How many copies can we sell? How do we get featured?
On and on it goes, burrowing into my brain, day and night, endlessly worrying about so many factors that are, in the end, largely beyond my control.
This spills over into my hobbies too. I write and draw comics when I have the time. But because of how my brain works, this has easily come to feel like work — like a grind — these past few years.
So I’ve made a decision; I want to decouple the art I make, as much as possible, from commerce. I want at least the personal work I do to be rewarding and “just for me” — like this blog is — to protect against that ever-present pounding in my brain to do more, sell more, see numbers go up.
So I’ve made all of my comics free online. If I go to a show like TCAF again or put our books in stores like The Beguiling, I’ll charge for those physical editions to cover costs. But online, I just want people to read them.
I’m tired of always selling.