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- KC Newsletter! October 2025
KC Newsletter! October 2025
Thank You For Your Patience
This issue: Novel release recap, new writing blog, Business Plans
This month’s finances and what all got done!
I released a whole entire book this month that’s what got done! I also posted six new comic pages that I had been waiting to get to for several years at this point so I really hope you enjoyed them!!
Paycheck remains stalled out at 913 a month! Not many new folks appearing like I’d hoped after the novel drop, but it’s early. Maybe things will pick up! By my count we’ve sold 93 copies and between that and another supporter being extremely generous this month, we’ve just about broken even on this book even after sending out all the book club copies. Neat!
Let’s move along:
Book club rewards, December postcards!
HEY SO UH. I have been so focused on getting the novel out there that I am pretty much a full month behind the December round of postcards. From the bottom of my heart: My Bad. I do have a very clear idea of them, and since I’ve hit the point I can outsource a lot of the production elements that take up extra time I think we can still get them out IN December, but they’re certainly not going out on the 1st like they usually do.
That means I’m extending the deadline for signing up this time! Normally I would have required it in October, but if you want to get in on the anime mail I’ll still put you on the list until uhhh. Let’s say November 8th. You can check out all the KC tiers here on my ko-fi, or any of the other ways listed on the comic site’s support page. Ko-fi is by far the simplest though, in my opinion. I would also ask that anybody already pledging double checks their mailing address, but I literally just sent out a round of books to the addresses I have, so here’s hoping you already did that recently! If you do need to change something please email me, none of these platforms inform me when personal info gets changed, because nobody building them has ever actually had to use them lmao. I did check my list directly against ko-fi manually this time, so if you were up to date in the last two weeks you should be fine.
In news that better reflects my competence: all the book club books are on their way! Lovingly packaged and tied up with the very important string. Some people are already getting theirs!
thank u Reader Skye i love when people take pictures of their KC stuff eeee
I will note: Paypal finally became completely unusable for postage, so I’ve had to swap to a new service for shipping things. Mostly this has worked out well, but I learned that none of the international things I’ve sent in this batch have tracking beyond the shipping hub in the US. If you’re expecting something from me and you’re outside the states, and your tracking is reading that it was delivered to Illinois: it wasn’t! It should still be on its way to you. Keep an eye out for it in the next few weeks, and if you really start to get worried please reach out to me over email. I don’t have tracking either, but maybe I can go to the UPS office here in town and see if they can help out. As always I do have tracking for all the rewards I’ve sent out, so if you’d like to check on yours just give me a shout (and maybe remind me what your mailing info is, some of y’all use different emails) and I’ll send you the info attached to your stuff. Slightly less alarming, the new system loads info from paypal automatically and I didn’t notice it for a hot minute; sorry if you got a package with the wrong name on it recently. I will try to remember to adjust that in the future.
Thank y’all so much for hanging in there and being willing to give the novels a shot. Even if you just take your copy and immediately hand it off to someone else it really means a lot to me that y’all have been willing to stick around for this new thing that might end up being the only thing eventually. I’ll keep at both things as long as y’all let me!
✨Distribution✨
You guyssss distribution fucking RULES. I sold out of my own novel copies really fast (by my metrics, anyway), but unlike my comic books you can get the novel from damn near anywhere! You don’t have to wait for me to be able to afford to restock them, and if you can find the shipping cheaper elsewhere you certainly have my blessing to get it there instead of through my shop. If you really want that signature and your little trading card and all, I should have more in my hands in late November. Otherwise, here’s a quick and by no means comprehensive breakdown of some of your options for physical copies:
First, I still highly recommend you request a copy from your local library! The ISBNs remain,
Variant Cover (With Phin and Ulrich): 9798999462503
Destination Cover (The Travel Poster): 9798999462527
You can also use these numbers at your favorite bookstore! You can get it from your favorite queer bookshop, you can go to Barnes and Noble, you can get it from the dang Walmart if you really want to. There’s also the Amazon listing, which has covers and everything now, and every time I look up the title of this book another weird little online shop has it in their catalog. These are all legitimate listings, and I still get paid! Follow your heart.
OH speaking of that: Old Firehouse Books here in Fort Collins has it in their local section! This is the first and only shop in Fort Collins to carry Kidd Commander, and I really like them so it will probably stay that way. If you’re in the area and want to pick up a copy without having to ship it, and you’d like to make me look like someone they ought to keep working with, you can go to their downtown shop and pick it up! Otherwise, the library here ordered TWO whole copies, so if you’re feeling charitable you can take it out for enrichment now and again to help make sure it stays in their circulation. They also have volumes 1-4 finally! Thank u libraries…
I guess it’s a thing to address too now: if you buy a book I wrote from Somewhere Else, and you bring it to me in person somehow, I will be happy to sign it! I do not charge for my signature, but you might need to bring your own pen depending on where you find me lmao
Of course, there are always digital versions too! You can find DRM-free epubs in my shop and on itch.io (and I think the kobo is also DRM-free), and you can also get a kindle edition from the amazon page.
ARCs and review spaces
I talked about this in the digital reward email I sent out this month, but I’ll mention it here again since it’s kind of a bigger deal lately: having distribution options means this book can interact with retail and library spaces, which means reviews and ratings are suddenly important! I’ve never pushed too hard for that sort of thing because social media enthusiasm to build a fandom is more important for a free webcomic than ratings; the physical comics are hard to keep in stock and there’s not really anywhere for them to go that would require something like a goodreads review, so I’ve never asked y’all to fool with it.
For the novels, which are paywalled for now, reviews in the usual places are pulling a lot of weight. All those libraries and bookshops already regard me with contempt for being an unknown, self-published author, and the only thing they have to go on is reviews and visible reader interest. If you read the book and enjoyed it, please consider talking about it somewhere! I’d really like for people to be able to get them at their libraries, and a lot of curators won’t be convinced to take a chance on KC at all because of its pedigree. Some of them might consider it, and their decision will very likely depend on whether I have enough reviews. You can find the ones we got and maybe add your own on Amazon, Goodreads, or Storygraph!
Posting on social media still really helps here too, feel free to share parts of it for reviews or fandom posts! The best way to get into something new is to See It so if some passage speaks to you and you want it on your blog or whatever please go right ahead! The tags are Kidd Commander, Grist to the Cannon, or just GTTC; make sure you label your posts so other readers can find them! Lend your books to your friends, do a readalong, send it to your favorite booktok reviewer I don’t care lol. I kinda talked about it here but essentially: you bought the book, it’s yours, and stifling peoples’ ability to share it isn’t gonna help anybody. If you do find yourself in possession of an Illegitimate Copy, just don’t contact me to ask forgiveness please! I will never know the difference if you don’t inform me, and you can make it up to me by bullying your friends into reading it.
The majority of the advance readers who signed up never reported back, I’m not sure I’ll be fooling with that again next time BUT. I really appreciate y’all who did the homework!! I got a lot of really kind and thoughtful feedback that’s done a lot to carry me through the last month, and even if there were fewer than I was hoping for it was very nice having a nonzero amount of reviews on release day. I’ve made a note of the names that showed up, and you might get another free book next time if you’re still around and up for it.
New writing blog!
The problem I’m currently running into with the novels is there’s not much to talk about between releases, and while I am well into book 2 already it’s gonna be a minute! No matter what, the next book I put out is going to be Volume 5 to finish out Green Thousand Sing, so we’re gonna be waiting a while. I think most of y’all on this newsletter are already in the best possible place to keep up with Kidd Commander, but if you’d like some social media to follow, I’ve set up a tumblr for prose stuff! Not sure how that’s going to look in practice just yet, but if you’re the kind of person who keeps up with media by seeing posts about it in the timeline, you can follow Sprawlworks. I thought about using my author site for this, but Lee thought a proper sharable/subscribable social media would be smarter for this and I agree. I do also have a Bsky, but that one’s a comic page reminder too so if you JUST want prose, the blog is the way to go.
State of the artist
I crashed REAL hard after the novel dropped, so I took about a week where I did nothing but knit and rollerblade lmao. I think I’m feeling better now! It’s gonna be tight trying to hit the next comic deadline alongside another convention and the postcards so it might get pushed back a little, I’ll let y’all know. I promise I’m trying to take care of myself, there’s a point where Pushing Through does more harm than good and I try to be aware of where that is. If I need to wander into the hills for another week I’ll leave a note on the comic site.
Take care! Have fun reading the book!!
-Aria