Hello there~馃懟
Thanks for your interest in participating in this year's Queer Halloween Stories Bundle! As the application window closes up, we want to remind everyone to make sure to fill out the Google Form and submit something to this jam. If you've already done that, then kick back and relax!
As mentioned on the front page of the jam, we use the Google Form to verify that you're a queer creator on itch.io, as well as get detailed information on each submission. We've created several tabs in the resulting spreadsheet in order to collate data and make the review process as swift as possible.
When we were setting up the jam page, we found that itch.io's custom fields sections were a bit funky when it came to single-choice field buttons labeled as "Required," as it "will force the user to select ALL of the available options." This wasn't ideal for our needs, so we stuck to the tired and true Google Form to collect most of the information.
Meanwhile, this jam is the method we'll be using to populate the bundle, as outlined in the documentation. This is how many of the larger co-op bundles on itch.io are created, so it's a process you'll get familiar with when you participate in many bundles.
That's all we have for now. If you know any friends who'd benefit from participating in this year's bundle, please feel free to invite them as well.
We look forward to working with you!
We did it! Thanks to everyone for being so quick to respond, as our bundle URLS are now live and ready to go for when October 1 rolls around. You can find those here:
So now, what's next?
Cohost is effectively shutting down at the beginning of October so we won't be able to make any posts there by the time we launch! 馃槶 As folks who participated in the bundle last year might remember, people coming from Cohost gave us a major boost to the $60 Fright Edition with huge tips, so this is a massive blow to us and everyone who frequented that site.
Cohost was one of the few blogging-style social media sites that don't interrupt logged out users by asking them to join or sign in just for scrolling through user pages, which is another reason we liked it so much. Luckily, one of our pals from Fiendish Fiction gave us an invite to Pillowfort so we've opened up a new account there! Shout out to WhiskeyWorks for being awesome~ If you're there, we'd appreciate a follow!
We've also put out a call for members of the press and content creators to feature our bundle! If you know someone who would love to get their gay hands onto some queer stories for next month, feel free to shoot them a link to this application to request review keys. Additionally, we put this call out on our social media sites:
We're working on getting some graphics templates ready for you so you can promote your projects ASAP! In the meantime, you can head over to our carrd press kit website to grab the fact sheet. Don't send anything just yet, but being prepared early is key to success~
Keep an eye on your inboxes for more instructions in the coming days. Once again, thank you to everyone for participating!
- The Queer Halloween Stories Bundle team
P.S. Are you not getting these emails delivered to your inbox for some reason? Try subscribing to our public thread here! We'll be crossposting important communications there so you don't miss a thing.
Hi there! We don't have an official account on Reddit and most of our team don't frequent the site as much, so our low Karma might not allow our posts to be effective. We'd love it if you could share your Reddit threads in our new topic for Social Media Posts!
Salutations, everyone! 馃巸 We've got fantastic news for you all, as well as some tips leading up to our launch so you can tell folks about the bundle.
BTW, you might be getting this email twice (once from itch.io, the second as a BCC) since we've heard from some folks that they aren't getting the itch emails. Please be sure to subscribe to our public Bundle Organizing Updates thread in the Jam Community board!
itch support was able to get back to us in time to add the 5 projects we weren't able to put in manually, bringing us back up to 144 projects in the bundle! We're grateful to them for getting this done before launch, and we're hoping that they can help us adjust the revenue splits evenly down the the decimal percentages as well.
We've since updated all of our promo images back to say "140+" instead of "130+" Projects too. Speaking of which...
Just like last year, we've prepared a few templates for you to use in order to spread the word about your participation in the bundle! You can find these in a Google Drive folder we've set up, particularly in the Graphics Template folder. That folder includes a document file with instructions on how to edit the image files to add your itch cover image in, as well as a basic text template you can base your posts on.
We know that's a difficult question that's getting harder and harder to answer these days. If you aren't already following our official social media accounts, you can find them below:
Feel free to share the bundle if you're on other platforms! We use the hashtag #QueerHalloweenStoriesBundle on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Twitter, and #Queer Halloween Stories Bundle on Pillowfort and Tumblr. Please use the hashtag that makes sense on your platform of choice! You can share your posts in our Social Media Posts thread so others can find them too.
You can also share your participation in the bundle by sharing it in newsletters, blogs, your own Discord/instant messaging communities, and even via itch.io's own Email Owners function in an individual page's Interact section (be careful not to over use this!)
The Queer Halloween Stories Bundle will be available until October 31, 2024, so we have a whole month to ask folks to support it. Besides the initial announcement, here are some idea prompts for things you can write about too:
We hope that gives you all some inspiration! We'll see you when the bundle goes live!
The Queer Halloween Stories Bundle Team
