Hello, friends!
After a very long wait and a whole lot of work on my part, the first episode of Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight is now out! If you haven’t had the chance yet, you can listen to it right now, right here on this website!
Moving forward, new episodes will be releasing every other Saturday at 19:00 EST with Patreon supporters getting access to episodes one week early, as noted on the release schedule on the Out of Sight main page. I decided to try the premiere feature on YouTube so people can listen to the episode together and live chat about it as it plays, which I think worked out decently well, so I’ll probably do premieres for future episodes as well. I encourage you to join in if you can! You can find the Out of Sight playlist here.
I have been asked whether there is a preferred place for you to listen to Roy Kaplan, given that you can listen to it directly on my website, or on podcast aggregators like Spotify, or on YouTube. The best way to listen to Roy Kaplan is whatever is most convenient for you–on the back end, all RSS listening (like Spotify or Amazon Music or this website or downloads) go into one pile of analytics while views on YouTube and Patreon are separate, but also the analytics don’t actually do anything for me because it’s not like there’s an algorithm recommending Roy Kaplan for people to listen to. Pretty much anyone who listens to Roy Kaplan will be doing it because of personal recommendation. Roy Kaplan is also an ad-free show–I don’t know if any streaming services will add pre-roll or post-roll ads or, god forbid, mid-roll ads, but if they do, I do not get any revenue from any of that. So I recommend that you listen to Roy Kaplan ad-free for the best listening experience.
So: how can you support Roy Kaplan if you want to? Now that the first episode of Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight is out and people can actually listen to what I’ve got to offer instead of just taking my word for it, it’s about time that I can discuss the money thing and what ways people can contribute if they want to make Season 2 happen.
First, I want to make it clear: Roy Kaplan is a free show. All episodes and their transcripts will be made available for free, without ads, to everyone. I’m doing this because I want everyone to be able to get the intended listening experience for Roy Kaplan regardless of whether they give me money about it. But by the same token, it’s not sustainable for me to keep making seasons of this show by paying out of pocket–spending over three thousand dollars a season and a thousand hours of work is not a reasonable thing for me to do. So I’ve made the decision that I will only produce Season 2 if I’m able to recoup costs of producing Season 1, which means that I’ll need to make 3300 USD from things like digital sales and Patreon pledges before I can start doing things like hiring voice actors again. And to be clear: making 3300 USD on Season 1 is the bare minimum that lets me proceed. At that amount of revenue, I am still making this show (writing, editing, producing, and acting) for free, and then funding Season 2 out of pocket again (to hopefully recoup after it’s done).
“Jesse, can’t you just do a crowdfunding campaign like all those other podcasts do?” I’ve mentioned this before, but I really don’t want to do a crowdfunding campaign for Roy Kaplan because I don’t have any incentives to offer and I can’t guarantee a production timeline, and I don’t want to be in a position where I’m holding onto money without having given something in return. So all the support for Out of Sight, whether it’s digital purchases or tips or pledges on Patreon, acts as a replacement for a crowdfunding campaign and it all contributes to making Season 2 possible. If Out of Sight can’t hit that minimum mark, then Season 2 doesn’t get produced. I think that’s fair.
With that out of the way, how can you support Out of Sight and help hit that minimum threshold where Season 2 can be made? There’s a number of ways, mainly split between during the season and at the end of the season. While the season is running (and afterwards):
- Patreon pledges
- 5 USD/month gets you access to standard quality episodes (128 kbps) one week before the standard release, as well as .PDF transcripts.
- 10 USD/month gets you access to the above, as well as free access to the HD downloads for each episode, which includes the cover art. I’ll also say thanks on the episode’s main page, for what that’s worth.
- 20 USD/month gets you access to the above, as well as free access to the season-end goodies, which I’ll discuss later.
- Patreon purchases
- 3 USD HD downloads for each episode, also releasing on the early release date, which includes the cover art and .PDF transcript. This is so people can get early access to individual episodes if they don’t want to do a subscription. You will note that buying two episodes a month is more expensive than just doing the $5/month pledge.
- I also have a 3000 USD and 300 USD dollar purchase which is basically just a donation. I do not expect anyone to actually do this but I put it in the shop because I thought it would be funny, but also because if someone can just pay for the season it would take a lot of strain off of me.
- Itch.io donation
- You can use the itch.io pay what you want function to donate whatever amount of money you would like. I am offering this via itch.io because it does not require an account, unlike Patreon.
- Pinecast tip jar
- You can do one time or recurring tips directly via Pinecast. I’m pretty sure you don’t need an account to do this. However, you don’t get any benefits for donating this way, compared to pledging through Patreon.
When the season is over (towards the end of May), I’ll be releasing a few goodies for purchase:
- 15 USD full season download
- This is all twelve episodes in 320kbps, plus cover art, plus .PDF transcripts. It’s the same packages you can get for the 3 USD individual episode downloads. You’ll notice that this is way cheaper than buying the episodes individually, and that’s because part of the premium of buying the episodes individually is that those downloads let you get early access.
- 10 USD annotated digital script book
- This is the script book with all twelve full scripts, formatted for ease of reading and annotated with my notes about things I was thinking about when writing the script and other comments. It also contains a few essays about the production and writing process, which are not available elsewhere. It will contain an .epub, .mobi, and .PDF version.
- 6 USD art bundle
- The art bundle contains three versions of a poster, featuring the full spread of the twelve episode cover arts. The image file is at printing resolution, with a 11×17 vertical version, 18×24 vertical version, and 24×18 horizontal version. This is so if you want a Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight poster, you can get one printed yourself.
- It also contains the cover art for all twelve episodes.
- It also contains the digital art book, which has pretty much all the art I’ve ever made for Roy Kaplan, including old cover graphics and sketches for each of the episode cover arts, along with my commentary.
- 4 USD poster graphics
- This is just the poster graphics on their own, if you don’t want the other parts of the art bundle.
For ease of purchasing and to save a little, these goodies will be available in bundles:
- 25 USD full season download + script book + art bundle (31 USD value)
- 22 USD full season download + script book (25 USD value)
- 15 USD script book + art bundle (16 USD value)
These goodies and bundles will be available on both itch.io and Patreon. I kind of suspect that most revenue I get will come from the season end goodies because those are the things you can’t get for free over the course of the season. This does mean that I probably won’t make much money on Out of Sight until the very end of the season, which is kind of by design because I want people to listen to Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight before deciding if they actually like it and want more of it and giving me money about it. It doesn’t make a difference to me whether someone gives me money for Out of Sight early in the season or at the very end, so I encourage you to wait and listen to Out of Sight before buying or donating anything–the whole point of me not using a crowdfunding model is that I want to give people something when they pay money for it.
“Is there a deadline to hit that 3300 USD mark and produce Season 2?” Technically, no. Pretty much any time I get enough money to make Season 2, I can start doing that as long as I haven’t lost interest in the project (and at this time, I’d very much like to make Season 2). But the way things currently are, with me handling the writing and producing and editing and a very solid portion of acting, the soonest I’d be able to release Season 2 would be around the new year of 2027 (so a year and a half after Season 1 ends). Does it really take that long to make twelve episodes of an audio drama? If you’re the only person doing most of the jobs, yeah. I spent an absolutely nightmarish amount of time between May and November getting the twelve episodes of Out of Sight edited together, and I’m really not eager to have to do that much work in that span of time again–spreading things out over the course of 2026 would make my life much less stressful, and I try not to make my life really stressful when I’m not even getting paid for it in return. It would be possible to make things a lot faster if I had an audio editor on board but I don’t have the money to pay for one and the last time we tried working with a sound designer didn’t really work out (see: the massive delays in getting Out of Sight produced).
So, to hit that timeline of releasing by the start of 2027, I’d probably need to hit that 3300 USD mark by the end of 2025 at the latest so I could do casting calls and get voice lines and editing taken care of, though earlier (like around August) would be preferred. If it takes longer than the end of 2025 to raise 3300 USD, then Season 2’s production will be delayed accordingly. I have no idea what level of interest people have in Roy Kaplan–maybe I’m being overly optimistic to assume I can get all the money back, or maybe we’ll end up clearing the goal many times over. I can’t say. All I can do at this point is show what I’ve got and hope that if people find value in this show and want more of it to exist, they’ll contribute accordingly.
But for now, there’s no need to worry overly much about money. The show is still airing and there are eleven episodes left to go. There’s plenty of time for you to enjoy what’s there before worrying about the future of next season. For now, the best thing you can do is enjoy what there is, and if you do like it, share it with friends! You can also come chat with me and other listeners in The Pinwheel Lab Discord server, which would be fun because I always like to hear what people have to say about my stories :)