Welcome
to QRD #68, the eleventh installment in our guitarists interview
series. The cover art this time is by Shaun Sandor. The
interviews are with:
Chris Ruffolo of Rocket Miner
Greg Kozlowski of Architectural Metaphor, Secret Saucer, Antrilon, & Nebula Trip
James Youngjohns of Anna Kashfi & Last Harbour
Chandra Shukla of Xambuca
Raine Liimakka of Can Can Heads
Shane de Leon of Miss Massive Snowflake
Aaron Snow of Landing, Surface of Eceyon, Tinniens, & Paper
Lauri Hyvärinen of Horst Quartet & XXXXXX
Rainstick Cowbell
Jasper Stadhouders of Cactus Truck & Spinifex
Marcus Skinner of Bird Traps
David Dobbs of Vampires
Bonnie Mercer of Breathing Shrine, Dumb Numbers, & Paul Kidney Experience
So as I hinted at last time with issue #67, this may be the end of our themed issues for a little while (the series will continue, just sporadically in unthemed issues)& I'm going to try to get the content out a little more timely from here on out. Part of the plan for making that happen is this new crowdfunding site called Patreon (basically a perpetual Kickstarter where you pay what you want (I suggest a dollar) whenever we put up a new issue). As both you long time & short time readers know, I've been struggling to figure out how to best spend the time I have on various artistic pursuits for a long time. Should I work on comics or music or doing interviews for QRD? While I know that money is not necessarily the best way to judge such things, it does give me a certain idea of what should take greater priority. I'd love to work on QRD a lot more & put it out every couple of weeks instead of every few months. I'm fine going on as is, I'm just trying to figure out if QRD gets ten times the website traffic as my comics & music, does that mean it should have more time dedicated to it? If a hundred people feel it's worth a buck an issue I'll make sure to get out six issues a year, two hundred people & I'll do twelve issues a year, a thousand & I'll up it to twenty-six issues a year.
In semi-related news, with Silber I just started offering some discounted digital subscriptions to upcoming albums releases. I know it's an old trick, but I really want to be able to reward old school hardcore fans, create new hardcore fans, & have a little money to pay artists before a release even comes out. We'll see what happens.
I picked up a couple of new affiliates that you'll see in rotation in the sidebar ads. It's been a few years since I've even bothered to try to follow this ad revenue model & the way I fell into it was from noticing affiliate links on sites I was ordering on. So anyway, first off is Little Bits. Little Bits makes weird little plug & play electronic compartments that can be used to make anything from synthesizers to robots without any need for soldering or real technical expertise. Second off is Things from Another World. TFAW is a great place for getting your comics online. I'm as willing to admit as anyone that local comic shops often have really poor service & I'd rather see people getting comics online than just not getting them at all.
So next issue will have some reviews in it for the first time in who knows how long & some more casual & interesting conversation oriented interviews than we've had in a while. Talk to you next time.
Thanks for your interest & support, it means a lot to me.
Chris Ruffolo of Rocket Miner
Greg Kozlowski of Architectural Metaphor, Secret Saucer, Antrilon, & Nebula Trip
James Youngjohns of Anna Kashfi & Last Harbour
Chandra Shukla of Xambuca
Raine Liimakka of Can Can Heads
Shane de Leon of Miss Massive Snowflake
Aaron Snow of Landing, Surface of Eceyon, Tinniens, & Paper
Lauri Hyvärinen of Horst Quartet & XXXXXX
Rainstick Cowbell
Jasper Stadhouders of Cactus Truck & Spinifex
Marcus Skinner of Bird Traps
David Dobbs of Vampires
Bonnie Mercer of Breathing Shrine, Dumb Numbers, & Paul Kidney Experience
So as I hinted at last time with issue #67, this may be the end of our themed issues for a little while (the series will continue, just sporadically in unthemed issues)& I'm going to try to get the content out a little more timely from here on out. Part of the plan for making that happen is this new crowdfunding site called Patreon (basically a perpetual Kickstarter where you pay what you want (I suggest a dollar) whenever we put up a new issue). As both you long time & short time readers know, I've been struggling to figure out how to best spend the time I have on various artistic pursuits for a long time. Should I work on comics or music or doing interviews for QRD? While I know that money is not necessarily the best way to judge such things, it does give me a certain idea of what should take greater priority. I'd love to work on QRD a lot more & put it out every couple of weeks instead of every few months. I'm fine going on as is, I'm just trying to figure out if QRD gets ten times the website traffic as my comics & music, does that mean it should have more time dedicated to it? If a hundred people feel it's worth a buck an issue I'll make sure to get out six issues a year, two hundred people & I'll do twelve issues a year, a thousand & I'll up it to twenty-six issues a year.
In semi-related news, with Silber I just started offering some discounted digital subscriptions to upcoming albums releases. I know it's an old trick, but I really want to be able to reward old school hardcore fans, create new hardcore fans, & have a little money to pay artists before a release even comes out. We'll see what happens.
I picked up a couple of new affiliates that you'll see in rotation in the sidebar ads. It's been a few years since I've even bothered to try to follow this ad revenue model & the way I fell into it was from noticing affiliate links on sites I was ordering on. So anyway, first off is Little Bits. Little Bits makes weird little plug & play electronic compartments that can be used to make anything from synthesizers to robots without any need for soldering or real technical expertise. Second off is Things from Another World. TFAW is a great place for getting your comics online. I'm as willing to admit as anyone that local comic shops often have really poor service & I'd rather see people getting comics online than just not getting them at all.
So next issue will have some reviews in it for the first time in who knows how long & some more casual & interesting conversation oriented interviews than we've had in a while. Talk to you next time.
Thanks for your interest & support, it means a lot to me.
Hrt
Brian John Mitchell
