Ok everyone, announcement time.
I am beyond excited to announce that Paul Jenkins has agreed to join our team as a strategic advisor and contributor.
If you don’t know who Paul is, here is a great blurb I found on Simon and Schuster’s website about him:
“Paul Jenkins has been creating, writing and building franchises for over 25 years in the graphic novel, film and video game industries. Over the last two decades Paul has been instrumental in the creation and implementation of literally hundreds of world-renowned, recognizable entertainment icons. From his employment with the creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the age of 22 to his preeminent status as an IP creator, Paul has provided entertainment to the world through hundreds of print publications, films, video games, film and new media. With 6 Platinum selling video games, a Number One MTV Music Video, an Eisner Award, Five Wizard Fan Awards, and multiple Best Selling Graphic Novels, Paul Jenkins is synonymous with success. He has enjoyed recognition on the New York Times bestseller list, has been nominated for two BAFTA Awards, and has been the recipient of a government-sponsored Prism Award for his contributions in storytelling and characterization”
Some more links to check out also:
What Does This Mean?
Joe and I started on this adventure just smoking weed and having fun. However, we would be kidding ourselves if we didn’t admit that a large part of that fun was imagining a future where we could come up with stories about this fat, lazy wizard, and other tales, as a career. While we are still a ways away from that reality, the success of the book mint on book.io gave us the glimmer of hope that it might not be as impossible as we previously thought.
By having Paul officially in our corner, with his name attached to the project, we’ll be able to take our productions to the next level, professionally. Paul comes with an insane amount of experience creating content at the highest level there is, and now we’ll have access to his knowledge and resources as we continue to grow the legend of The Wizard Tim.
How Did This Happen?
Full disclosure, I've known Paul for years. He’s a friend of my mothers. That being said, I’ve absolutely never been on his radar as a potential creative partner before. A few months ago as we were getting to a completed story with Wizard Tim, I reached out to him on a whim, and he graciously agreed to meet Joe and I for lunch.
That lunch was amazing, and we heard tons of amazing stories about Paul’s history in content production. He also gave us advice on our story, and more specifically around his experience with NFTs (of which he has a lot of), which we used and I believe worked out for the best. However, it pretty much stopped there, with us promising to keep him in the loop and him assuring us he’d be around if we needed anything.
As we continued down our path, I continued to update him on our progress.
Then, once we sold out the book through our book.io mint, things began to coalesce. Now we had a real tangible success story, and we were at a pivotal point.
Paul asked to set up a call to recap everything and I told him a lot more about Cardano and the Book.io platform. The more we spoke, the more the messaging resonated with him and his experience in the industry.
As we discussed, we came to what we think is a good reciprocal relationship.
So What’s In It For Paul?
One of the defining characteristics of Paul's career, is the effort he has put in to help upcoming creators. He originally worked with TMNT creator Kevin Eastman to start Tundra Publishing, specifically to help creators, in which they literally wrote something called “the creators bill of rights.”
Currently he operates his own production company called META Studios (the name long precedes anything with Facebook) which stands for Media Education Technology Advancement in which he specializes in educating and working with new creators.
Through all of it, Paul has made it a point to use his platform as a means for standing up for the rights of creators.
Now, with the new NFT based content capabilities that Book.io is pushing out on the Cardano blockchain, Paul is excited to help be a part of a different way of publishing content. One that means creators don’t have to operate at the whim of industry giant legal teams deciding what they get, but rather they can just collect direct royalties from a smart contract built into the transaction with the consumer itself.
While he has been active in the NFT space (he wrote the WAX series Bitcoin Origins in the early days of 2020), Paul still has a lot to learn about Cardano and crypto in general. So in return for us giving him a better understanding of things here and socializing him in the community, Paul has agreed to also help out in a more active way and lend his name and resources to our project.
Needless to say, it seems like an excellent trade for us, and the Cardano community as a whole.
In fact we have already started. We have helped make an introduction to the team at Book.io and Paul now plans to mint one of his original novels with them. The novel is called Curioddity, and you can expect to hear a lot more about it in the coming weeks.
We have a lot of other plans to help out Paul with his own content, while also making big plans of our own for The Wizard Tim.
What Are Our Plans for The Wizard Tim?
Joe and I both have a passion for storytelling, but we have very different skill sets. While Joe is a master of wit, and has an uncanny ability to write five thousand words at the drop of a hat, I have a background in production, management, technology and a genuine love for the business of content. Together, we want to harness our passions and try and push the boundaries of storytelling in the modern world.
It’s evident that there is a desire for quality narrative content in our society. We see that in the continued success of book franchises, streaming television platforms, and story-based video games.
Now, with the capabilities of blockchain getting introduced, we can start to imagine incredible things that merge the ideas of interactivity, ownership, identity, collectability, and more, with traditional storytelling.
So where do we start?
We’re going to revise the first book, and work to make the audiobook more professional grade. This is our foundation story and we want to make it as rock solid as we can. With Paul’s help, we plan to make this first book, and associated audio drama truly professional grade. This will set us up to be ready for a much larger mass market release and better our chances of success with a larger audience.
We’re going to lean into Cardano, and explore storytelling utility with our community. Cardano has already proven to be a worthwhile proving ground for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. As of now we have a community of over 700 people who hold our first book, and that number is growing. We want to continue to bring value to this community through more stories, NFTs, and other new experiences. Paul is going to help us there too, as he’s had tons of experience with cross-platform narrative storytelling. In fact, we have an announcement coming out this Thanksgiving that is related to this… more to come here.
We’re going to keep having fun. We started writing these stories as an outlet to laugh with, and at, each other. So we’re gonna keep doing that. If it’s not fun for us, we’re probably not going to do it, because that’s pretty critical for making sure that anything we do is of any good quality.
Why Should Our Community be Excited?
So many reasons, but, here’s my top 4:
Paul is an extremely accomplished writer that is now joining a Cardano project. This is providing even greater visibility to the Cardano NFT space which benefits our whole community.
Paul is going to start bringing his own original content to Cardano. Starting with his first book mint on book.io, Curioddity. Paul also has a HUGE catalog of content that includes books, comics and more that he has interest in bringing here as well.
With Paul’s help, Joe and I are planning to bring The Wizard Tim to the next level. While the first book and audiobook NFTs are going to remain untouched, as the original ultimate collectors editions (only 2000 ever, and presumably even less of the audiobook since there probably won’t be any airdropped against assets that are on a marketplace at the time…), we’re going to make professional revisions and updates to the book and audiobook to bring it to the professional level that it needs to be to achieve mainstream success
Paul, Joe, and I don’t want to do the same thing as everyone else. We want to explore new and original ways of delivering content, and Cardano is going to be the platform that we explore those possibilities.
Conclusion
We’re so incredibly thankful, and excited, about the support we have received from EVERYONE in the Cardano community so far. Without everyone reading, contributing, and just following along, there is no way we would be this far into realizing this dream of ours.
With Paul’s new partnership, and the continued growth and support of the Cardano, and now The Wizard Tim community, we honestly believe that we can turn this into a truly successful franchise.
Thank you for making that real for us.
Now, stay tuned, as we make this fat wizard a household name.
TC
Tl;dr
Paul Jenkins, a world renowned and multiple award winning cross-platform content creator, is joining The Wizard Tim team as a strategic advisor and contributor. Joe and I in return, will be working to onboard him in the Cardano ecosystem for him to bring additional original content, bringing more amazing content to Cardano and greater mainstream visibility into Cardano NFTs.
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