#MarkedbyOdin and XavivVerso fans I have returned from my Asia Tour 2023 and I come with many updates and surprises. So, nothing better than a #LetterfromtheAuthor, the 87th issue already! To update you after more than 3 months travelling across Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan and Japan.
You can watch the video version here:
AN EPIC ADVENTURE
I have to admit that although the decision to embark on this adventure was made at short notice, I am very happy that I took the plunge. Taking time to rest, recharge, imbue myself with energy and positive people, has managed to give me back the desire to want to eat the universe, no matter how impossible it all seems.
Thanks to that, I have been able to bravely face the challenge of going to different countries to meet with publishers, film producers, animation studios and other professionals. The objective was to introduce them to my projects, The Mark of Odin and The Stone Lotus, with an eye on expanding them in Asia. I have planted many seeds in all these meetings and I hope to be able to reap the fruits very soon.
FIRST FRUITS
And as soon as just yesterday I announced that I have signed with the literary agency Squirrel Communication & Culture to represent me in Vietnam. From now on, his literary agents will be in charge of looking for opportunities and negotiating agreements to ensure that both The Mark of Odin and The Stone Lotus can be translated and published in Vietnamese.
As you know, Vietnam is a very important country for me. Not only personally, for everything it has given me, but for being an emerging region with great growth potential. With close to a hundred million inhabitants, there are countless avid readers waiting, even if they don’t know it yet, to join the #MarkedbyOdin and the XaviVerso.
Having Vietnamese literary agents will greatly facilitate options in Vietnam and also open new doors in other regions. Being an independent project, even with more than 140,000 readers around the world, it is very difficult to get the necessary doors open. That is why it is important to have key allies that make it possible to make the impossible possible.
Throughout the summer and the coming months I hope to be able to share with you new surprises and agreements. Some fruits are riper than others, but I am certain that we are in a new phase of expansion and I envision that 2023 will bring great growth.
DIGITAL RENAISSANCE
One of my great handicaps in recent years has been getting the Mark of Odin website established and finished. With the publication of The Stone Lotus, it became even more obvious to me that my strategy and approach had become totally obsolete. Our growth and sales in these years have been greatly affected due to day-to-day technical and operational deficiencies in the system chosen in its day for The Mark of Odin.
That is why this summer my main objective is going to be to remodel the entire technical section of this project and evolve it towards the new reality that XaviVerso supposes. This implies changing the server, developing new web pages and centralizing our presence in social networks.
NEW STORE AND ONLINE COMMUNITY OF XAVIVERSO
We are going to develop a new XaviVerso website, where I will centralize the digital and physical sale of all my books. In this portal, a community with gamification features will also be created for all readers. My aspiration is to continue publishing books, both of my current stories and new intellectual properties. I want to offer a place where you can buy access to these new dreams and be able to have a progression experience and get benefits for your loyalty.
We are an independent project, with limited resources, so this was the natural path to take, centralizing the entire purchasing process for all my books. The other alternative is to create stores for each intellectual property and it is not feasible. Thus, if new independent books appear in the future, such as El loto de piedra, they may have their own sites, but they will use the XaviVerso portal as a store and community.
THE NEW MARK OF ODIN
The other cornerstone will be the development of a new Mark of Odin website from scratch. In this one we will keep all the contents of the old website, but we will change the development system, we will eliminate the store and we will finally introduce many of the functionalities that I wanted to have since the first website in 2012. In other words, a more robust gamification system and functional, that empowers the #MarcadosporOdín community and where you can enjoy all the extended content of the saga.
CENTRALIZATION IS THE KEY
As you can see, I am looking to switch to new, more centralized and efficient systems. In this sense, we are going to propose changes to avoid duplication and concentrate our resources and communications as much as possible. That is why we are going to review all our channels on social networks and study the possibility of merging or limiting them. While Mark of Odin will maintain a good part of its own identity on social networks, as we already began to do this last year, we are going to focus everything possible on the XaviVerso.
One of the first changes you can expect is that, in the absence of an option to merge Telegram channels, we will close the Mark of Odin channel and keep only the XaviVerso channel. Currently we are already using the XaviVerso as a single brand on Discord, TikTok and WhatsApp, the idea is that in the end we use a single brand to share our news with you. This way you will only receive them once in each social network, instead of doing it in several accounts. In the future, if I create a new saga, I will study whether to give it its independent channels or also keep it within the XaviVerso.
OF REFORMS IN SUMMER
To be able to develop all these changes and the migration to a new hosting provider, it is possible that we will be a season with the websites closed and unsold in the Odin brand store. We want to take the time to get the new pages right and make sure everything is rolling when we do the global relaunch.
Be careful, while we do not have the online store available, we will offer alternatives so that you can buy the books through WhatsApp, email or other alternative channels.
NEW CONTENT
Parallel to all this, I hope to be able to take time to write and prepare the pending contents of Mark of Odin: Ragnarok. Also, we want to try to produce something very impressive for the relaunch. I can’t give details yet, but let’s see what we can do with the budget I’ve set aside for all this.
AN EXCITING HORIZON
Although I am still dragging the jet lag and the exhaustion of the galloping rhythm that I have had in recent months, I am very excited about the challenges that lie ahead. I have a feeling that the great leap that we have been waiting for so long is getting closer. With your love and support, I am clear that it will come no matter what. In the meantime, as always, I encourage you to join our Discord community, the Telegram channel and also add us to your WhatsApp contact list (greet us at +34 671 48 96 90) and continue sharing your book impressions. Not only in the Opinions section, but also on external platforms such as Amazon, Google Play, Apple, Kobo, Lektu or Goodreads. Having a good rating and opinions there helps us a lot to attract new readers.
Remember, everything is connected.
Xavier Marce
