Iron Lung & the New Creator Economy
and how to take control of the means of production.
Cross-posted from AI Marketing for Storytellers.
Prior to Iron Lung coming out, I had no idea who the hell Markiplier was, so in case you’re like me, here’s the catch up — he’s a Youtuber who played the indie game Iron Lung a lot.
People loved watching him play — it’s a spooky AF game!!! — and he loved it…so much so that he spent $5 million dollars of his own money to turn it into a movie.
(This was also a wise choice because the movie is literally almost entirely Just Him Acting and Only In One Room, a submarine, which was a fucking smart play to keep things cheap and bounded.)
And then, when some movie theaters wouldn’t play it, he told his fans to call and ask it to get played, so it had a limited release, and is now streaming (which is how I watched it the other night).
He’s made over $50 million back now.
Just him.
All him.
Ever since I posted up my first vertical dramas of Bend Her — we’re up to episode four now, thank you very much — other authors have been popping into my DMs to ask me how I’m doing things, or if I was interested in selling my services.
Now, to be blunt, money has not flown at my face from this experiment so far — but, I’m still pleased, because here’s the stats from episode three —
and here’s a screenshot of episode three’s INSANELY LOW skip rate:
so it’s only going to be up from here.
But I bring up Markiplier, because I’ve been paying attention to the ‘creator economy’ for quite some time.
And here’s the thing —
this shit is happening.
Now.
But only for those who are willing to take the leap.
And those who are willing to learn how to do it for themselves, first. (And/or, Hire a Nate.)
Markiplier held onto ALL his rights, TOOTH AND NAIL.
Which — I love and respect more than anything, honestly.
And, is something you’re gonna have to do if you want to be a player in this space.
If you’re waiting around for someone to come and bless you — first off, by and large, those days are gone? But second off — a lot of these problems to surmount are not ones you can wait for solutions to, or just throw money at.
It’s not that I’m not interested in helping other authors (I’m here! I provide Nates!) — but that anyone who is like me likely wants to get their own shit out there as fast as they can, without any intermediaries.
Why would I outsource any of this to anyone else? If I gain more capacity, I have 5 other series with which to be using it, heh!
It’s apparently hard as fuck to find a good Youtube editor, because anyone who wants to be a good Youtube editor is a good Youtube editor because they have to be.
Because they want to do their own things, with their own channels.
No one gains those kind of skills while sitting on their thumbs — you’ve gotta have the fire in you already, and then once it’s there, you don’t want to work for anyone else, you just want to feed it.
Which is where you come in.
The more I look at people who’re successful in the arts, the more I see the same three things in common:
Obsession
An ability to bounce back from failures
And not giving a flying fuck what anyone else thinks.
Obsession gets you to the page — or to the video creation screen.
Bouncing back from failures means that you don’t give up after your first try fails (or your 70th.)
And not caring about other people isn’t all about not taking any flack.
No, what it means is that you protect yourself and your artistic soul well enough that you know that the story you are trying to get across, be it with words, video, or any other format — is going to be safe with you. So you can nurture it, like a fire, until it’s so big no one else can ever put it out.
Not caring what other people think isn’t about protecting you.
It’s about protecting your story.
There is a brief timespan here within which we have the ability to get ourselves noticed and profit from it. (I will report back when the profit part happens, lol, but it’s only been two weeks and I only started FB ads two days ago, lol.)
There will come a time when this window closes.
Not completely. Not forever. But the wide-open, wild-west, “holy shit, we can just make things now?” version of this moment will not last.
The tools will get more expensive, the platforms will get more crowded, and the algorithms will get harder to impress — plus, the middlemen will figure out where the money is and start building toll booths.
Which means the advantage belongs, right now, to the people willing to look a little ridiculous in public while they learn.
The people willing to post episode one before they have the whole machine perfected.
The people willing to make the bad version, then the better version, then the version that finally starts to move.
The people willing to own their rights, own their audience, own their mistakes, and own the fact that no one is coming to anoint them.
That’s what I keep thinking about with Iron Lung (which was fun as hell to watch, btw. Event Horizon set in a submarine? Sign me the fuck up.)
Not just that Markiplier made his own movie — but that he understood something a lot of artists are still trying not to understand: waiting for permission is going to cost you the opportunities of a lifetime.
This is where it’s going.
Do you wanna come with?
xo!
Cassie