WIP of an NPC in our game. She’s tied to my character in many ways. Their strings of fate are wrapped around eachother so tightly they are almost one string. They are locked forever in a game of cat and mouse that spans lifetimes. 😤✌🏻
Presenting the precious youngest child of the Crystal Empire’s royal family, Cashmere Pashmina Mariée Arum Heartfilia
Born to a family celebrated for their magic abilities, Cashmere was expected to be just as exceptional. Instead, she was born with a condition that caused her body to reject the very magic running through her veins, much to the disappointment of her family. Refusing to acknowledge or treat Cashmere’s condition for fear of news of their condition tarnishing their carefully maintained reputation, Cake and Conquest instead placed even higher expectations upon Cashmere. Cashmere was to study alongside her elder siblings and learn at the same rate as them while also being expected to excel at magic well beyond their body's limits.
Publicly Cashmere was known as the beloved youngest princess of the kingdom, the epitome of grace and the pride and joy of her entire family, someone you couldn’t help but adore. Privately however, she was regarded as a disgrace and a threat to everything her family has worked so hard to achieve.
For years, Cashmere fatefully played the role their family had written for them for fear of disappointing them further. However, the curtains would soon fall on her tragic play of ignorance and obedience.
On the night of Cashmere’s 21st birthday, a lavish ball was thrown. On the surface, it was a celebration of Cashmere’s birth as well as her official coming of age, in reality it was nothing more than a way to announce that she was officially of marriageable age.
This very celebration would double as the stage for Cashmere’s final act.
I wanted to do a little something for mermay with a little monster design! She’s lightly inspired by my OC Ekānta and a very old mermaid piece I did in 2019! All around was a fun idea to revisit!
Back to regular scheduled art pile to share, then it’s artfight prep time!
taylor titmouse's guide for improving your itchio store page
(The Night Guest)
a few years ago i wrote a big angry post about how bad people are at marketing their own work and what they can do to be better at it. since then, the advice about twitter has largely become unnecessary and irrelevant, but the advice about what information you should be putting on your product page is still important and [through gritted teeth] nobody's fucking doing it.
so this post is going to be a step by step break down of what you can do to improve your itchio store pages to make them more informative and customer friendly. you're reading this because you 🫵 want to learn and improve. or you're just curious and/or like it when i yell. but either way taking my advice is your choice and if you don't feel like doing any of it you don't have to, much like nobody has to buy your books. if you've ever lamented why nobody buys your work but you're not making it easy for them to do so, it's 🫵 your fault and you annoy me immensely. take responsibility for your bad business practices.
anyway, let's make you better okay?
(and also note that all the store pages i'm using as examples are for adult works, but there's no explicit images in this post. you'll only see anything if you click through the links)
BANNERS
you probably already clicked and read through that image up there, because it was big and eye-catching and at the top of the post. i fucking Got you. that is, ideally, what the banner will do. while the banner is not strictly necessary, it's a "well, why not have one?" situation. it makes the page look more deliberately designed, and it's a great additional sample of what the customer can expect from your work.
if your product doesn't feature art, simply making an image with the title will also work well, as i've done here for A Hundred Hungry Mouths. that book didn't have enough interior illustrations to justify burning one for the banner, so i left the cover out of the "screenshots" field and edited it to be the banner instead. simple!
(if you don't want to figure out a good banner size yourself, mine are 1120 x 325 pixels with transparent, rounded corners)
BOOK COVER
i think this one is a no brainer. i hope to god it is a no brainer. if your book has a cover, make sure it's set as the first screenshot (if you're not doing the banner tech i mentioned above). i won't advise you on what a good book cover is, because that's a whole other post and wildly subjective. but you should have one. even if it's a sketch collection. even if it's just an illustration from the sketchbook with a title edited on. it will look so much better than nothing.
hopefully you also already know that though, so here's some itchio specific advice. what itchio considers the cover is actually the thumbnail that displays elsewhere on the site. you are much better off making a discrete edit for this rather than uploading the actual cover. compare the thumbnails i made by hand for r/l monroe's books vs the thumbnails for the early books i didn't bother with.
one of these looks professional. one of these looks lazy, and there's a reason that section is relegated to the very bottom of my page. if you don't want to go the length of a bespoke thumbnail, take your book cover (or whatever illustration you want to use) and set your square selection tool to a fixed aspect ratio of 6.3 W to 5 H. find a good crop, then resize it to 630x500. perfect thumbnail.
SAMPLES
this is the thing that makes me the angriest. it makes me SO angry. so many of you are out there making your store pages, trying to sell me prose writing or your comics or your artbooks, and then not showing me any of your work. i'm grabbing you. i'm shaking you. what is your fucking problem. what are you THINKING. have you ever bought a book at the store without reading a little first? would you buy a graphic novel without flipping through the first few pages to see if you like the style? no?
SO WHY DO YOU EXPECT ME TO? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
this is so basic. i should not have to keep telling people this but it keeps happening. PUT A FUCKING SAMPLE UP. TAKE SCREENSHOTS OF THE FIRST PAGES OF YOUR WRITING. GIVE ME THE FIRST FEW PAGES OF YOUR COMIC. SHOW ME AN ILLUSTRATION OR TWO FROM THE ARTBOOK.
they don't even have to be the full thing! with my artbook collections, i'll pick a few crops and make one condensed promotional image. or i'll take one good one and slap a banner over it. i put something. you can check out different examples/styles of this on The Womanulet, Poker Night with the Arizona Dogs, and Return to Shadow.
for all of my prose writing, i include at least the first 1-3 pages of the book. you are actually delusional if you are a prose writer and you're trying to sell your book on the cover and pitch alone. you have to show me that you can write, and give me a chance to tell if i'd like it. i cannot think of a good reason not to. if you're embarrassed to have any of the writing public, you should not be selling it. if you don't want to give any of it away for free, get your head out of your ass. who do you think you are. there is no good reason not to include a sample and i don't know why so many of you don't.
OKAY THINGS GOT A BIT HEATED THERE SO LET'S TALK ABOUT TEXT
we're going to cover sales copy now. it's hard to write. it is absolutely miserable to write. but you have to. if you're trying to sell me a story, you have to tell me what it is and who it's about. who is our protagonist? what challenge are they facing, or what are they setting out to do? who will they encounter, and what might happen to them? you don't have to tell me the whole story, but you should set my expectations. let's break down the example pictured above, from The Night Guest.
Ever since the death of her husband, Mrs. Arakawa has run her inn alone. There's never been a guest the seasoned innkeeper couldn't handle… but she's never had to host a hungry oni. It'll take all her wits and wiles to survive the night in his service--or else she may find herself in his mouth.
in three sentences, i've established who the book is about, the conflict, and the sexual hook. there's a sexy widow, there's a scary oni, and they're probably going to fuck nasty style by the end of the book. that's enough to get the idea of what this is and whether you'd like it. it can be difficult to know how to pitch a story without spoiling it, so this is something that takes observation from other books, and practice. it is hard! i hate doing it! but it's vitally important to getting the reader onboard with your work.
but mr. titmouse! you cry. i'm not selling a story! i'm selling an artbook!
okay. you can still tickle my balls about what's in there. here's another example from my hades 2 artbook Return to Shadow.
Sometimes there are games that, had we been born into a better timeline, would prominently feature awesome sex. Bad endings, romance scenes, flagrant eroticism. Hades 2 is one of those games--beautiful, fun, and with monster designs that deserve to be appreciated for the fantastic fuckmobs they are. Together, we can imagine this better timeline.
it's a bit more slick, a bit more sales pitchy, but that's fine. there is no narrative here beyond 'boy i sure wish hades 2 had porn in it'. i'm enticing you into a space. it's a book of hades 2 porn. don't you also want to look at hades 2 porn? wouldn't that be awesome? i think it's awesome. i want you to also think it's awesome. you (as author) should be convincing your potential customer that what you want to share with them is awesome.
THE INFORMATIONAL PARAGRAPH
whether you find this one necessary depends on the work. i think it's always a good idea to have somewhere to give contextual information about your thing, and if you're working in erotica you've got to have somewhere to put your features and warnings. this is also a good place to put your comps and inspirations--a good way to set your reader's expectations. basically, anything that doesn't fit into the narrative pitch, you'd put here.
here's an example from Chique: The Sunken City:
Chique: The Sunken City is inspired by RPGs and hentai games, and contains three short stories, each an encounter with a denizen of Sodden, exploring different associated kinks and fetishes. Books in this series have no reading order.
tells you what vibe the book has, that there are three different stories within the book, and that it can be read without reading any other books in the series. straightforward, easy to understand. no problem.
for adult books you don't have to be 100% thorough when listing out the featured kinks, it's okay to just hit the highlights. i've become somewhat agnostic about this in the era of "if you even mention a naughty word we'll Get you" internet. but i would suggest you put as much as you feel comfortable revealing, and what would be most attractive to a reader. you don't have to list every individual sex act, just remember that this is part of your advertising. you want the person who's really into what you're cooking to know that it's on the menu.
THE OTHER LITTLE INFORMATIONAL PARAGRAPH
this is self explanatory. please tell me how many pages there are of your comic or art book. tell me the wordcount for your prose. MOST of you are already good about this and don't need me to tell you to do this. but if you weren't already doing this, a) i don't understand you b) start doing it.
I THINK THAT'S MOSTLY IT
you've been so brave and tough for letting me yell at you this far down your dashboard. i hope you've learned something and will change your behavior for the better. i want you to make money. okay? i yell at you like this because i want you to make money. i want to GIVE you money. but you have to make it easier for me.
to wrap up, here are my other general pieces of advice to make your itchio page look and function better
if there are multiple books in the series, put a link to the rest of them somewhere on the page. i put them at the bottom, as you can see on this Roger book from the middle of the series.
i personally prefer itchio pages that are styled for dark mode. black always looks good in the background, and #232323 gives you a nice neutral gray for the text area. however, making the page match the palette of your book cover is also a good choice, so long as you keep it legible. no white text on light backgrounds and vice versa.
bare minimum, make the links the same color as your cover. it will immediately tie the page together and make everything look more deliberate. the less 'i made this in two minutes and left everything default' you can make your page look, the better. have some pride, you know?
not an itchio specific piece of advice but ohhhh my god put your links in your bio. put your links in your BIO. PUT THEM IN YOUR PINNED POST. PUT THEM SOMEWHERE!!!! you cannot expect me to scroll your account to find links you posted a week ago! or even an hour ago! put it in your bio or pinned post!! do not make me work to give you money! you are wasting valuable self-promotion space on DNIs that nobody cares about.
okay that's it. that's everything. you made it all the way to the bottom. i'm so proud of you. slaps your ass. now get back out there and fix your shit.
(if you found this helpful, how about buying one of my freakin' books?)
Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.
The diversity of problems that different transgender people face kind of boggles the mind, tbh.
Gender and culture and expression of both of those things are so individual and the problems that come with them are also incredibly individual. And people like fight over what problems are worse.
At a certain point I feel like we’re arguing that our cage is worse than our neighbor’s cage because they get to have a potted plant in there or something. Friend, the potted plant has nothing to do with the cage that you’re stuck in.
Passing, non passing, transfem, transmasc, androgynous, binary, non binary, neogender, fully transitioned, never transition, partially transitioned, stealth, out and proud. So many different situations. So many different problems. We should all be pointing our death lasers at The Man instead of each other though I think. I think that would be a bit more efficient.
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