I released two effects and thanks to a good reception I have tentative releases and collaborations planned through to a year from now.
I'm not an expert by any means, but it's probably nice to get some words from someone who is somewhere in the middle:
- 1) Half the advice you get is great, the other half is terrible. You'll know which is which later. LOTS of people will tell you that your idea is bad, and then suddenly every single person will tell you that it's the best thing ever. This may have little to do with the idea itself, but rather just a slight shift in people's automatic impressions once they've heard a good thing or two and so you have a little bit of a halo at their first real contact with you.
- 2) People love new things, and people hate new things. That's the nature of what you're getting into: A world that is largely powered by the thrill of the next "new thing" while also being quite conservative in most ways. I don't know what the final lesson here will be, though it's clear that the nature of this world makes it pretty easy to be a one-hit-wonder with an alright idea. I think that this could be played into something better, though.
- 3) Most people are generally good and honest. This is generally true in life, but there are worlds/professions where people want to crush you if you look young and talented. This seems not to be one of them. Reliable is a different story. Everyone has their own lives, and most won't care about your stuff until there's a special reason to think that you're worth taking notice of. On top of that, some will just happen to be in a "care" moment, some won't. I imagine if you have 2 separate timelines where you have an idiot idea in one and a great idea in another, you would have similar amounts of rejection at the start in both. Once you get going, though, I think that a good idea will get grasped by a lot of imaginations, and a bad one will fall into the background noise. We'll see. Those people who are both helpful and in a care moment are lifelines, though.
My most recent release was
Bridge. It was an independent release, sold through my own website. If you want more specific details, I did a bit of an analysis on where interest came from, what caused its success, and some more in-depth stuff on piracy (because I'm a geek, and because success meant I had a great sample size to work with). I'm happy to share.
Oh, and I should say:
4) Have videos that actually shows what you do. Everyone talks about videos. Mine are not amazing but they are illustrative (most shot with a $20 camera and random helpers), and were probably the biggest contributor to success so far besides some key people (who were first wooed by videos). And maybe
5) There's lots of people who talk big and just want a freebee. No judgement on them, but have a "budget" of review copies and choose wisely.
Good luck!
-Aaron.