August 2024: Back to Work

After a month spent mostly on vacation with family and friends, I got back to work in August—on all my projects.

Campfire

My primary goal for the month was to lead the development of Update 35 and get it to the point where it's ready to launch in early September. This update swaps out the underlying data format for published books, from the proprietary format we use in our manuscript editor for authors to the open-source and industry-standard EPUB format. That got done, and goes live on September 9th.

The other big goal was to find an author to work with on my next special edition project. This was a failure, as so far the authors we've contacted have either not responded or said the equivalent of "I think this would be cool, but give me some time before we do it". So I'm still working on that.

I spent a good amount of time this month finishing the current special edition project I've been working on, The World of Tea Princess Chronicles. Since nobody reads my little blog here and it's more for my clarity of thought than anything else, I'll even include the cover here:

I'm really happy with how these projects are coming along. We're doing something completely new in the world of ebooks—creating the digital equivalent of a deluxe hardcover edition, focusing on the unique advantages of the digital medium, like interactive maps and the non-linear exploration of the worlds of these stories.

We launched our very first special edition project in August as well: Faerie Fruit. It's now the bestselling ebook on Campfire, so it seems like we're doing something right with this strategy!

Last but not least, I flew to Scotland in August to meet with Jackson, who was attending WorldCon in Glasgow. I got the chance to meet several well-known authors like Ryan Cahill and Travis Baldree, as well as a couple of the fine folks at Wraithmarked. I'd call the trip a success.

Startup Poznan

Piotr and I scheduled the very first Startup Poznan meetup, and 18 people signed up! We'll see how many actually show up, but it's far more promising than we originally thought.

Excited to meet some interesting folks.

Rehance

After finding no customers through the limited amount of SEO and cold outreach that we have been able to bring ourselves to do, Ernesto & I are considering switching to a more easily distributable idea. I still think the thesis behind the product is correct: that there is a trend of software companies adding AI-powered copilots to their products, and that as that trend grows, there will be a need for a platform that helps these companies create copilots that can actually get things done for their users.

The problem is that something like Rehance requires a serious B2B sales force. This is a solution that will need approval from the top of the product org of the potential customer before it can be integrated; it will need buy-in by the design and engineering teams at the potential client business. That means long sales cycles and serious hand-to-hand combat to make it work.

Neither I nor Ernesto wants to do B2B sales or go looking to raise money to build a sales force.

Other Projects

I've been advising a new friend that I met through Rehance, Charlie, on his SaaS project—Trophy. It's a very interesting project, and one that I might be taking a more active role in sometime in the future, depending on my own schedule and where Rehance goes.

Plans for September

• Find and make serious project on my next Special Edition project for Campfire—ideally, on more than one of these.
• Decide on the Campfire 2025 Strategy (which I can't share here, since this is public)
• Launch Campfire's Update 35 and get caught up on the pile of issues that has accumulated for me.
• Come to a decision about my role in Rehance and Trophy.