Happy Almost New Year!

Just wanted to take some time to thank everyone for another fantastic year. I’ve been writing TBATE for a bit over 6 years and it’s crazy to think that the novel has over 1 million words and the comic is going to soon hit 200 episodes! Through the years, I’ve expressed repeatedly that this couldn’t have happened without you all and I still stand by that. Lurking through the discord and seeing discussions in the different chats and reading comments in the subreddit is something I do a bit more than I wish to admit, especially when I have work to do, haha! I know that we’ve had some minor drama in the community and issues with pirating and the like, but overall, I’m grateful for the community that has gathered around TBATE. The community is the spokesperson that represents TBATE and myself so seeing the positive and respectful vibe that has been spreading throughout the various facets of social media, I can’t help but feel proud.

With it nearing the end of the year 2022, I wanted to give a recap as well as share with you some plans (that I’m able to share) for the upcoming year.

RECAP FOR 2022

Book 9 of The Beginning After the End, Reckoning was published as an e-book along with the audiobook narrated by the terrific, Travis Baldree.

Book 8.5 of The Beginning After the End, Amongst the Fallen which had come out exclusively to Tapas in 2021 released in audio format as well.

• It was the first time that I tried writing a completely separate side-story and I took a bigger gamble by making it exclusive to Tapas but I’d say it was a successful venture, and more importantly, I learned that there are quite a bit of you that are interested in more of the world of TBATE outside of the main cast. Whether I decide to write more side-stories or not is still up in the air, but for the time being, I think I will be focusing on the main story. Who knows, though. Maybe after the series is over, I might want to do more side stories! I’ll keep everyone updated :)

The Novel on Patreon/Tapas

• As some of you have noticed and pointed out, numbers-wise, Patreon subscription is on a slight downhill trend. I know I put milestones to get to 4000 subscribers and that probably bolstered the numbers for a time being, along with the fact that more people subscribed during the peak of COVID in the beginning of the year. Through this experience, I realized that I was stressing myself out, trying to forcibly grow my Patreon like so many other authors by adding milestone goals and more perks when that was never the goal of my Patreon to begin with.
• Readers using Tapas to keep up with TBATE have grown in numbers, both the novel and the comic, along with people reading the ebooks on Kindle, Google Playbooks, etc. I mention this because at the end of the day, that’s what I’ve been working toward. I want to create as many options as possible for fans to read TBATE that work with their lifestyle. Publishing the ebook is the cheapest way to read the story and great for binge-readers who just want to down the whole book in one go. Tapas, I still see as a great place to publish because it’s an accessible place to stay current on the novel even past the latest book release on Kindle and for the comic. With sales and “fortune cookies” along with other ways to get ink, it’s quite easy to stay up to date with chapters without even paying. For Patreon, I do make it a point to express that in the end, it is for my more devoted fans who want to support me for what I do, but I also never take that for granted. Throughout the 52 weeks in a year, I think I’ve taken 3 or 4 weeks off of writing and I’m thankful for even that. Aside from the allotted chapters you’re reading ahead, I tried to do more fun things as thanks for this support by doing more illustrations, perks on discord, QnA’s, etc but at the core of Patreon, I know that it’s for my readers who want to support me and I’ll always be grateful for that.
• Also, Patreon and Tapas are places where TBATE can stay true to its origin in being a web serial (webnovel/lightnovel to some). They are published in chapters so that readers can get together and discuss and I plan on continuing this model in some form or another until we finish TBATE!

DISCORD

At the heart of the TBATE community is our Official TBATE Server on Discord! We’ve seen quite a big jump in numbers throughout the year, with our server increasing by almost 10k members (we’re almost at 30k members… wtf?!). In a way, our server stands apart from many out there because the creator is actually the server owner, but because of that, I feel I can’t always live up to the expectations that some may hold of me being present for discussions. While I do my best to pop in where I can, I also try to be mindful that this server isn’t about me. It’s about you all. I wanted to create a space where people can talk respectfully with others who enjoy the world of TBATE; me popping in every now and then to answer a question or just chat is just an extra bonus (because you get some canon answers and I get to troll you all in return).

Regardless of expectations and individual levels of satisfaction, I’m grateful to see how big our family has grown and how far we’ve come. I don’t say this enough, but I really am grateful for the moderators in our server. Some of you, depending on your interactions with them, may disagree, but it’s always hard being the good guy to everyone while wearing the police badge. The decisions that many of them have had to make weren’t easy and looking through the logs, I can see how much discussion takes place many times for certain cases before an action is taken. Our moderators, like in most other servers, are volunteers that are in it for the sake of the community that they’ve grown so fond of so… again, I hope everyone can make the time to thank Ryu, Clovelyn, Monne, Kas, Tom, Daniel, Kat, Shawn, Zeph, Nez, Steam, and Dragon for how much effort and dedication they’ve poured for both the Discord and Reddit community!

REDDIT r/tbatenovel

Honestly, it still baffles me how much the official subreddit has grown. In January of 2022, we had 21.5k members. Now? We’re at 38k members. Uh… woah?!

Much of my thanks to the Discord moderators applies to the Reddit moderators as well because some of them are doing both! However, I know how much craziness can get in through reddit and it takes a special kind of patience to moderate any sort of subreddit. Part of my downtime is me mindlessly scrolling through r/tbatenovel and while we definitely do have different trends overtaking most of the subreddit, I still love going through the posts… whether it’s the memes, discussion, or fanart, it’s awesome seeing so many people post quality content. Keep it up… and know that I may be lurking ;)

SOCIAL MEDIA

I can go on about the growth in the number of subscribers on my IG or Twitter account, but honestly, the hard numbers don’t do justice to the growth of seen organically in the social media space. Whether it’s Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram, Tumblr, or Twitter, I run into so much content about TBATE (I also am a pretty biased user so the algorithm might be helping, lol) that it astounds me! I see comments on just manga/webcomic reviews asking the creator the write one on TBATE and I can’t help but feel a bit proud (keep up the good work, my army o7)

One cool thing that we did this year with the help of Tapas is that we created a separate Instagram account for TBATE only(@tbateofficial).

Everyone is free to guess what that means for the Turtleme account but I felt it was the right time to make an account dedicated to TBATE for those not really interested in little ol’ me. *tears*

ANIME NYC

For those not aware, I made my first reveal at Anime NYC back in November. Suffice to say, there were quite a few of you there! Due to the constraints of the room being set at a 400 person capacity, the reservation tickets were sold out within the first hour, which is crazy. Crazier yet, 300 additional people put themselves on the waitlist. Apparently, the staff of Anime NYC were also quite surprised and they decided to assign me a “talent handler” to make sure I don’t get lost to each of the events that I had to go to. I was promptly herded accordingly to each of the signings that took place each day and got to see a lot of fans, which is crazy! I thought y’all were bots that acted like real people. Didn’t realize I actually had human fans… go figure!

Jokes aside, it was definitely a humbling experience, prepping for the panel and signing so many books and posters for the people that not only waited in line, but those who reserved ahead (because I only signed for 100 people each day cuz… I’m a noob at signing and didn’t want to overdo it). I got to meet such a diverse array of fans on that trip. Some were super nervous, which was cute, while others were quite excited and burst with questions about the book while I was signing.

So for everyone reading this that was able to make it to Anime NYC and see me, thank you! You made the experience a blast!

YENPRESS

Quite a big year for the comic since the PRINT VERSION was published back in August of this year! TBATE was actually published print in Japan first, but it was pretty cool actually seeing an English version in my local Barnes and Noble! Thanks to all of you, despite it being out online for such a long time, the publication was a huge success! How huge? Well, we’ve signed all the way to Volume 6 so I hope you can all show the same support you did for Volume 1 for each of the subsequent volumes, hehe! In the future years, I want to see entire WALLS of shelves dedicated for TBATE comic books (and hopefully for the novel as well)

TAPAS

In a way, I’ve saved the best for last. My origin story, in a way. Yes, I started writing and publishing on Royalroad alongside Amazon Kindle and Patreon, but honestly, I attribute a lot of where I am at to Tapas. (Tapas.io)

Tapas was the one that gave me a monetizable platform to publish my web serial and were the ones that trusted in me and TBATE as we spent a lot of resources into making the comic adaptation happen. I’m fortunate to have dependable partners in Tapas who are working alongside me to make TBATE as successful as it can be.

And over the course of TBATE’s comic adaptation life, I’ve seen more and more novel-to-comic adaptations happening in the states, which is a model that has existed for a long time in countries like Korea, Japan, and China.

In 2022, both the novel and comic has hit over 20 million views, which is mindboggling. This platform continues to be the official “house” of TBATE and I’m thankful for everyone that have come to use and love the platform despite its humble upbringing.

Wow, that was a long recap. It may be because I’m used to writing, but even I’m surprised by how much I wanted to talk about in this recap! Now, if I haven’t lost you yet, let’s talk a bit about some things that are upcoming!

UPCOMING FOR 2023

I have to be careful about what I say here because some things, I’m not allowed to disclose yet. Regardless, I’m super excited about the year 2023 and what it can potentially hold for everyone!

I can confidently announce that Book 10 (name TBD) of The Beginning After the End will be released in 2023! Better yet, the cover for the book is almost finished (but you guys won’t be able to see it until the book is out so… hehe).

With Book 10 almost finished (I think it’ll finish somewhere at around chapter 425-427) I wanted to let you all know in advance that, for the first time since my heart literally stopped beating, I will be taking a month-long break (4-week break) from releasing. That means I will be putting my Patreon on pause for the month (because while many of you have expressed it’s fine, the guilt for not releasing for more than week would eat me alive). The date hasn’t been set, but once Book 10 has finished, there will be a 4 week hiatus so that I can rest, recalibrate and prepare for the last 1 or 2 books.

ARTWORK

I’ve recently taken a liking to using polls to decide which artwork to make for everyone (Because in order for it to come out in the comic, we may have to wait years and I’m not that evil). The next upcoming artwork of Arthur vs. Wraiths is being drawn which I’m super excited about, and I’ll have more throughout the rest of the year. Many readers have questioned why there aren’t even more than what has already been released, so I just wanted to clarify that, despite the final product being a nice-looking jpg file for you to look at and admire, for me, it is quite a bit of work. Aside from the monetary commitments for each artwork, it takes time to find the right artists and it takes even more time to describe the scene for the artist and go through each round of edits to make sure the details are both accurate to the novel and is just visually appealing! Still, I’ve made it an effort to come out with more artworks throughout 2022 and I’ll be making an effort this coming year as well!

PATREON

As I stated above in the recap, I’ve decided to change the way I think about this platform. Externally, I don’t think that too much will change. I’m fortunate enough to have so many supporters willing to go above and beyond to support me and my work. However, I want to approach Patreon in the manner that it was supposed to be for me. I’ve expressed many times for readers not to think of the rewards given for Patreon subscribers as equal to the monetary amount that they contribute, and I still very much think this way. Why? Because obviously compared to reading on Patreon, you’re not getting the best “bang for your buck” compared to reading it on Tapas, Kindle, or on pirate sites that are home to some of the most entitled people I’ve seen. I never meant for Patreon to be monetarily “worth it” for those who support me through it, but I felt like I was slowly starting to feel that way.

I want to try and change my thinking so that whatever perks or things I do for my supporters on Patreon, I’m not doing it out of obligation, but because you guys have given me so much support and I want to thank you.

Again, I don’t see much of the structure changing but I just wanted to point out the shift in perspective that I’m going to try and make so that I don’t stress myself out.

YENPRESS

I mentioned it in the recap, but Yen Press has signed for the next several books, some of which will be released in 2023! Book 2 is already out for pre-order so you can snag one if you’re interested, but I also believe Book 3 (and maybe Book 4?) will be released in 2023! I’ll keep everyone updated on the dates once they’re set :)

EXPOs

As you know, every year, there are quite a few comic and anime conventions held in various states. This year, I was slated for Emerald City Comic Con but wasn’t able to make it so I attended Anime NYC instead! For 2023, I’m honestly not sure which ones I will be attending but I’ll do my best to try and meet more people! I realized that I need to get out of my shell more and build the courage to make these public appearances more. Anime NYC was a great experience and I hope to have more like it!

Aside from that, I just wanted to end this longass post by saying that there is a lot in store. I’m going to be making an exciting announcement sometime in 2023 but I really can’t say what it’s about (but y’all are free to make conspiracy theories). Just want to let you know this announcement WON’T be about an anime deal so don’t get your hopes too high on that haha xD. Still, I think it’s still pretty exciting and I can’t wait to share it with you all when I can!

Last but not least, thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting me and TBATE this year, and I hope to see you all in 2023 :)

Love,

TurtleMe (and Roy)

Tl;dr

2022 was a busy but very happy year!

• We had some major digital releases: Book 8.5, Book 9, and Season 5.
• The physical edition of Volume 1 of TBATE hit bookstores internationally! Not only that, but physical editions have been confirmed all the way to Volume 6!
• Our community grew immensely on all platforms. Discord and Reddit saw surprising growth, and I hope that they will continue to be places where you can all talk about TBATE without any worries.
• We opened up the TBATEofficial Instagram account where readers can find fun and exclusive TBATE-related content. My personal Instagram is still up and running, and I’m hoping to fulfill your requests for more looks into my life next year, haha.
• I had my first convention at Anime NYC and got to meet readers face-to-face for the first time since TBATE was created.
• Like the previous years, I owe a lot of my wins in 2022 to you all and Tapas.

Here’s to hoping that 2023 will be even busier–and happier--for all of us. I have a lot planned I can’t necessarily share yet, but for some sneak peeks:

• Volume 10 of The Beginning After the End will be completed next year. (The cover is almost done, too!)
• After Season 5 wraps up, the TBATE comic will continue with Season 6!
• Expect a lot more artwork for the novel. I’m going to make sure that there are beautiful–and accurate to my vision–visuals for my novel readers, so you don’t have to wait until the comic catches up to see new characters, haha.
• And of course, expos and conventions where I can meet more of you in person.