The answer is YES.
But first . . . I am sure there are some of you that noticed that this site has been pretty quiet, and I’d like to address that before getting into the rest.
Websites can be pretty cool but I will be 100% honest: our site never got much in the way of traffic, so updating it with shareable content was starting to become an unnecessary hassle. It was nice to post some interviews here and again, or cover art, but not enough people were showing up for it to make a difference. Sales of books were largely unaffected by updates to the website, and we even had some of our best months, last year, well after we stopped messing with the site. Couple this reality with the fact that we were neck-deep into production on our video game, Heckpoint, and the site quickly became an afterthought.
BUT! we are still stretching our baby legs. I think the site can be improved. A big part of improvement, however, is learning what works and what doesn’t while also trying out new things, which is what we’re going to try and accomplish over this next year or two.
When we started the buyout process, Don and I went ahead and created individual sites for Rooster Republic, Strangehouse Books, and New Kink. In hindsight, we were overachievers and it is clear to us, now, that the sites should have been consolidated to one. Going forward, the Rooster Republic site will house all relative content for both Strangehouse Books and New Kink. Bits of news, interviews, cover art . . . all of this will be on the homepage. We will build individual tabs for each imprint’s back catalog, which will link to respective Amazon sales pages.
We’ve other plans for merchandise and the like, but some of that is still in early talks. As well, we are still deciding on how to integrate the video game side of things or whether that is a step that even needs to be taken. I think it does, and I want to make sure when we do it that we do it right.
And that brings me to this final bit of news:
Rooster Republic is definitely making a movie. Shooting dates are still being finalized but are expected to be during the late summer, with post-production to take place during the winter months when it’s too cold to go outside anyway.
This project is a pretty big roll of the dice for us, and we’re pretty excited to see it coming to fruition. Lots and lots of work will be going into this feature over the next several months, and we plan on being as transparent about the process as we can be.
We’ve had a great couple years as the new owners of Rooster Republic, and we look forward to taking this enterprise to some interesting places!