Posts Tagged ‘roundbottom’

New Roundbottom: Faery Wintering Nests

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

There’s a low-​​key new Roundbottom today detail­ing what faeries tend to do when it gets cold.  Feel free to drop on by and tell us how your local species pre­pare for win­ter, if your world has one.

We’re run­ning a sale until the end of the year, $5 off each mem­ber­ship kit, and large scale lim­ited edi­tion prints are now only $65 a piece.  After ship­ping and print­ing and every­thing, I don’t make much on these, so order a whole bunch okay?

I am lean­ing right now towards wrap­ping Roundbottom up again for the time being at the end of the year.  The real world is too scary right now for me to be able to con­cen­trate on cre­ated and telling such mostly whim­si­cal sto­ries.  That and I really need to find bet­ter ways of mak­ing money.  Roundbottom is a los­ing project, sadly.  If I sell more prints though, it’ll change my mind.

Roundbottom Memberships On Sale

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The Roundbottom Foundation mem­ber­ships (includ­ing a vari­ety of things includ­ing a pho­tonic print) are now on sale for $30 a piece.  You can find out more about this great Holiday gift here.

I had a pro­duc­tive week­end pho­to­graph­i­cally speak­ing.  Some inter­est­ing pho­tos push­ing a new tech­nique I’ve not really tried much before.  Some say that HDR is a cheat and is no sub­sti­tute for real pho­tog­ra­phy, but I just con­sider it another tool in my pos­si­ble toolbox.

I’ve been doing a lot of photography-​​related read­ing lately.  I went to the library on Friday and spent a cou­ple of hours look­ing for inspi­ra­tion in the stacks.  I didn’t really find any­thing, but on Saturday, we had to buy some Christmas presents for the nieces at Barnes & Noble and while there, I browsed a few more books.  These were much enlightening.

The big thing I am focus­ing on right now is really truly learn­ing how expo­sure works and how to con­trol it.  Most of my pho­tos are not exposed cor­rectly in cam­era.   It seems pretty basic, I know, but this is my focus right now.   I have to get the basics down before I can really advance my skills much further.

Dr. Roundbottom Limited Editon Prints Now $65

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Hello, good peo­ple!  Here’s the skinny.  I’ve low­ered the prices of my lim­ited edi­tion Dr. Roundbottom prints from $125 to $65 a piece.  That’s a 16“x20” print on high qual­ity paper, suit­able for fram­ing, etc.  Signed and num­bered.  Only 10 of each image available.

If you’re look­ing for a bar­gain on a mem­ber­ship kit, never fear.  I have some stock I need to try to get rid of before the end of the year, so I’ll be offer­ing a dis­count on mem­ber­ship kits for a sub­set of the images next week.

I’m think­ing of open­ing a low-​​cost gen­eral prints store for my nature pho­tog­ra­phy as well.  Let me know if such a thing inter­ests you and it might moti­vate me to actu­ally do it.

Before the end of the year, I hope to hone down the pic­tures I have taken in the last sev­eral years to a tight port­fo­lio of just the best work.  Just in case National Geographic comes call­ing, hah hah!

Oh, and if you would be so kind as to share the word about my reduced prices, I would be grate­ful.  Have a lovely evening, dear readers.

New Roundbottom: The Inkblot Spider…

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

…and her prey.  This week, I wasn’t able to get to a decent pod­cast script, so I worked up an image I’ve had in the hop­per for a while now.  This week details the pre­da­tions and some bio notes of a unique species of spi­der that feeds on moth pix­ies in Roundbottom’s world.  Check out the Inkblot Spider and share your thoughts.

In other news, I am weigh­ing a sale for my inven­tory of images that I have printed.  I’m con­sid­er­ing $30 mem­ber­ships from now until the end of the year or until I run out of pre-​​printed stock, whichever comes first.

I’ll admit that I’m dis­ap­pointed with my suc­cess regard­ing mem­ber­ship kits.  I sold 9 kits, and I really appre­ci­ate those of you who bought them.  Unfortunately, sales have dropped off entirely.  I’m con­sid­er­ing giv­ing up entirely on lim­ited edi­ton prints and sell­ing every­thing on the site for $20 a piece.  Any thoughts?

It’s hard to keep at this so much when I feel like it’s not as pop­u­lar as I want it to be.  Traffic is low, sales are nonex­is­tent.  I know what you’re thinking–do it because you enjoy it, not to make money.  Well, no.  I’m sorry, but I’d like to make a liv­ing from my cre­ative endeav­ours and I don’t think there’s any­thing wrong with that.  I enjoy the project, but if there is not a large enough audi­ence to jus­tify my time and energy in the project, then I will have to move on to some­thing else.  I have a lot of faith in the gen­eral con­cept of the project, but I am increas­ingly cer­tain that it won’t turn a profit at all.  My best bet is prob­a­bly to use all of it as back­ground research and turn out a novel.  Keep the site updat­ing on a lower fre­quency and turn the whole thing into a good rea­son to pub­lish the book (beyond it being really good or something).

I’ve been mean­ing to write a book for a num­ber of years now.  I started writ­ing my first book attempt just before my father was diag­nosed with can­cer.  I’ve given up on that book along wth most of  of my writ­ing.  But the truth is that I haven’t been able to let go of that cre­ative urge, that drive to make some­thing that mat­ters, even if it only mat­ters in the form of fleet­ing entertainment.

But even though I’ve given up so much, I haven’t been able to give up on Roundbottom.  Maybe it’s because the char­ac­ter is a thinly dis­guised ver­sion of what I wanted to be once upon a time.  I don’t know.  But I want to keep try­ing to make some­thing of this in some form, even if it’s not the web­site and the weekly updates.  I just don’t know exactly what the best use of my time would be.  Look, I have stu­dent loans that would make you wince.  I may never be out of debt in my adult life with­out devel­op­ing some sort of alter­na­tive rev­enue stream to accel­er­ate my pay­off. I’m try­ing to buy my free­dom here.  If this doesn’t work, I’ll find some­thing else to sell, and I’ll keep try­ing until some­thing comes out of my gourd.   Because I want my free­dom so bad I can taste it, and right now, these projects are the best thing I have to accel­er­ate my earn­ing that.

New Roundbottom Podcast

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The 5th edi­tion of Field Sounds has gone live on clock​punk​.com.  This week,  Miss Watkins relates a story from her child­hood and reveals more details about the City and its past.  Sarah’s per­for­mance never ceases to impress me.  I hope you will give it a lis­ten and let us know what you think.

New Roundbottom: An End to the War and a Friendship

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Good morn­ing, ladies and gents.  It’s that time again.  A new post has gone live over at the Informatitron.  It seems the doc­tor and friends have put an end to the Bird Queen-​​Boggart ordeal, but not with­out a price.   This post sur­prised me, as it runs about the length of a tra­di­tional short story. I never intended to be so… wordy on the site, but I sup­pose you can take the nerd out of the writ­ing, but you can’t take the writ­ing out of the nerd.

More good things com­ing up on Roundbottom this month.  The more mem­ber­ships I sell, the more I can pour into hir­ing mod­els and doing more elab­o­rate photo manip­u­la­tions.  So please, if you enjoy read­ing Dr. Roundbottom and lis­ten­ing to his exploits each week, con­sider buy­ing a membership.

Are there images that you want that are lim­ited edi­tions, but you don’t want to drop so much cash on a print?  I’m con­sid­er­ing drop­ping the lim­ited prints entirely at the moment.  There’s been lit­tle inter­est in them, and while I was really hop­ing that they would pro­vide the boost I need to see this project through into the com­ing months, I sup­pose I could just sell every­thing as a mem­ber­ship kit option or stand­alone small, cheap, unlim­ited prints. Anyway, enough about that.  Coming up shortly, a photo of the day.

New Roundbottom Podcast: Ghosts and Faeries Oh My

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

It’s Monday, and that means we have fresh Dr. Roundbottom news on the inter­webs.  This week, it’s a Field Sounds pod­cast solv­ing the answer to the last podcast’s mys­tery, and also, Miss Watkins tells a story of her first encounter with a spirit.  A cou­ple of new char­ac­ters never heard before show up, too.  All around, it’s a fun cast.

One other thing.  If you have been look­ing for­ward to pur­chas­ing Roundbottom mem­ber­ship, now is your chance.  The Foundation is open for new membership.

The print store has also been moved on site and now offers pay­pal but­tons for each lim­ited edi­tion print, which is most of them.  Note that order­ing one of the lim­ited edi­tion prints gets you a full mem­ber­ship kit as part of the bar­gain.  16x20 prints!  They’re HUGE and absolutely gor­geous.  You know you want one…

And to my fine, fine com­menters: keep it up. You peo­ple above all oth­ers are keep­ing me at this project.

Roundbottom Foundation Memberships Now Available

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The kits are ready to go.  Head over to the Foundation page to learn more.  They include every­thing I men­tioned before:  8“x10” print, selected from one of four, a let­ter of thanks,  and a  per­son­ally addressed mem­ber­ship card in a wax-​​sealed enve­lope.  The let­ter includes a pass­word to get you into the Members Only area of the site, which has behind-​​the-​​scenes tuto­ri­als, essays, record­ings, and more.The cost?  Only $35.

An offi­cial announce­ment will go on the Clockpunk site with this week’s pod­cast episode, but I’m mak­ing a spe­cial announce­ment here to my friends.  Who will be mem­ber #00001?

Limited edi­tion prints of all other images are going on sale this week as well.   Prints will be 16“x20”, lim­ited to edi­tions of 10, and will cost $125.  These prints include a free mem­ber­ship.   So stay tuned for an announce­ment for how you can order those if you so desire.

The Roundbottom Foundation mem­ber­ship makes a great hol­i­day gift for the steam­punk fam­ily mem­ber!  Buy a cou­ple of dozen and your whole fam­ily will be set.  It’s the gift that keeps on giv­ing all year long!

Which E-​​Commerce Method?

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I need some advice from those of you who have sold things online.  I have a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent routes here and I’m not sure which one is best.

First of all– the mem­ber­ship kits are ready to start going out the door.  They will start sell­ing on Monday if not sooner.  The only ques­tion is, which method should I use to sell them?

I have two options I’m look­ing at.  One is that I use an Etsy account and pass peo­ple inter­ested in buy­ing a mem­ber­ship over to the Etsy web­site.  The fees look okay.  One thing I don’t under­stand though is that Etsy charges you by the count for the things you list.  But it looks like every­one just lists a quan­tity of one.  ANy expe­ri­enced Etsy sell­ers that can explain to me why peo­ple do that?  For the mem­ber­ship kit, do I just list it with a quan­tity of one, then, what, relist each time some­one buys it?  Not clear from the FAQ how that works.

The other alter­na­tive is to use Paypal Payments and cre­ate but­tons on the site.  You can use Paypal Payments to col­lect pay­ments via Paypal or credit cards.  Fees look roughly the same as Etsy.  The down­side here is that Etsy would pos­si­bly get me extra sales from peo­ple just brows­ing Etsy.

And then maybe there are options out there I’m not even aware of.  So, poten­tial buy­ers, fel­low merchants–what’s the best way for me to do this?  I’m hop­ing to have some­thing set up by Sunday night, so please let me know your opinion.

Need Voice Actor Who Can Do a German Accent

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I need a male with decent record­ing equip­ment will­ing to record about 2 min­utes worth of lines in a German accent for the next Field Sounds.  I need it by Saturday.  Can any­one help me out? I can pay $20.

Podcaster peo­ple??