Okay, friends, I did it: I launched a Patreon! Now, I want to explain my goals for this project and lay out what I hope the future holds.
Why?
I would love nothing more than to be a full-time author. As soon as I say this, I know that the monkey’s paw will curl; there is a fundamental shift when something transitions from a hobby to a job. But I also know that writing is the thing that I’m best at in life; that writing probably brings me the most happiness in life; and that I find writing one of the least stressful things in my life.
But this Patreon is not an attempt to be a full-time author. I am very lucky to have a good, well-paying job that affords me the mental and financial space to be creative in my recreational time. It is not realistic to believe that I will be able to earn enough from Patreon to replace that job. For the time being, my writing must stay as a (semi-professionalized) hobby, and my goals reflect that.
- First, I’d like to cover my hobby costs. There are no looming expenses: I’ve paid the hosting costs for this website several years ahead of time, and I have the tools I need to write easily and on-the-go. But looking down the road, I know that there will additional costs that need to be covered (domain re-registry, computer replacement, etc.), and I want to be in a place where my writing can pay for itself. More to the point, I would like to go to a coffee shop to write, buy a coffee to fuel a writing session, and not feel guilty that I’m somehow being frivolous, like I’m deluding myself into believing I’m creating something. Instead, I can look at that cup of coffee and think “this is real, tangible proof that people believe in my writing, and that I’m putting something out into the world.”
- Second, I want to commission art for my stories. I think my stories are better with art. I think that an illustrated story is more than the sum of its parts, and that readers like the combination of narrative and visualization. But as I write more and more, I’m outstripping my personal ability to commission art. My hope is that people who like my stories will also want to see those stories illustrated, and that we can make that possible, together, by spreading the cost out among many people.
- Third, I want to write longer-form stories. I have several ideas for longer, more complicated “romances.” While nothing is stopping me from immediately starting on those ideas, I’m concerned about how well they would go over as serialized stories on this website. Would people check back in to read the next chapter? Would the length put some people off? A Patreon gives me a supportive, less public space to work through those questions and figure out how, exactly, I want to deliver these longer stories.
In short, I’m not looking to make money off of this project. My hope is to “reinvest” everything I earn back into the writing process, be it through buying coffee or through commissioning art. The end result will be more stories and more art for everyone, and I think that’s an engaging goal everyone can get behind!
Why now?
I spent much of 2018 mulling a Patreon; in fact, much of the welcome language was written over a year ago and published basically unchanged. I didn’t launch because 2018 was dominated by writing commissions; I wrote very little for myself and very much for other people, and I felt it would have been inappropriate to launch a Patreon while I still owed outstanding commissions.
I am incredibly grateful to those commissioners, and I’ll probably open commissions again in the future. However, I am sitting on months and months of deferred personal ideas that I really want to get out into the world. A Patreon gives me an organized, structured place to make those ideas into reality.
The other reason, oddly enough, is that Tumblr has ceased to exist as a viable place to share my writing. For most of 2018, Tumblr was the location to find my stories and for me to communicate with my readers. The site’s crackdown on NSFW content has caused a diaspora of both creators and readers, and the solutions are imperfect. Twitter is an acceptable place to communicate, but it is not designed to host long-form stories. In contrast, this website is a perfect place to host my stories, but it’s a private site, not a social media platform. I hope Patreon is able to split the difference and allow me to recreate a sense of community.
Why the tiers?
I thought very hard about what I reasonable, non-exploitative tiers would look like. As I said earlier, I have a good day job; I don’t need the revenue from this Patreon to make ends meet, and my tiers should reflect that. Furthermore, I don’t want to lock anyone, especially non-patrons, out of important content.
$1 gets you early access to my stories. In a lot of respects, this is the “impulse buy” tier, but priced such that you’re not out significant amount of money for acting on impulse. Do you see I’ve written a new story, and you want to read it right then, and not wait until it is posted publicly and with art? Then this is the tier for you! If you only want to contribute a little bit, then this reward serves as a small justification to yourself that it is money well spent.
$3 lets you have a say in what I will write next. I often have several ideas that I want to work on, and I don’t have a good sense of which I should start next. This tier buys you access to my monthly polls, like this:
Going forward, I’ll also solicit this tier for potential prompt ideas. While it’s not a commission and I’ll modify the ideas to my liking, feedback like this will help point me toward what types of stories people would like to read!
$5 gets you access to some “behind-the-scenes” content, where I explain some of my writing process. For instance, here’s a cropped excerpt from the behind-the-scenes post that went with An Embarrassment of Riches:
I’ll also use this tier to lay out some of the overarching ideas for my longer-form stories. It’ll give me a semi-private place to sound out ideas with a friendly audience, and allow me to backtrack and retcon ideas that don’t work before taking the stories fully public!
Anything else to add?
Actually, yes!
I’m very ambivalent about having a Patreon. I want it to succeed, I want people to pay me to write cool things, I want to be able to commission artists, I want to build a place where I can communicate with my readers.
I’m also very, very reticent about monetizing my hobbies.
Whichever stage of capitalism we’re in, it sucks. Every area of our lives is being confronted with and eroded by this seemingly unstoppable, pervasive need to market yourself, to sell yourself, to sacrifice yourself, all to make ends meet. It’s not enough that you have a car; you should be using that car to taxi people around for less than minimum wage! It’s not enough that you have a computer and can afford internet; all of your personal data should be bought and sold without your consent or profit! It’s not enough that you have health insurance; have you tried launching a GoFundMe to not die? The goalposts on what constitutes “enough” keep being moved, and we regular people are asked to dig in deeper, to do more with less, to pay for services that were once free—and if you ask for a better deal, you’re a coward who hates your country.
Day in and day out, we are being ground to death, worn down by a heartless system that wants only to grow its bottom line.
And then, in some Faustian bargain, we are invited to be part of that system—never part enough to actually make a difference, or to get ahead, but enough that we are complicit in it, that we use our cars and our internet and our lives to try to bleed the next guy, just so we can survive a little bit better. We are allowed to participate just enough to buy into the idea that this is a fair system, a meritocratic system, and that our failure is proof of that fact: that we should just try harder, work more, need less.
I feel bad that I am asking people to pay me to help make stories. But more than that, I feel bad that I am asking people to pay me—that I am taking this thing that is special and personal and unique and that contains deep truths about myself, and then quantifying it, commodifying it, saying that for only $3 you can tell me what to do, and for $5 I’ll tell you all the secrets.
We shouldn’t have to live this way. We shouldn’t have to make daily compromises between “what we need” and “who we want to be.” We shouldn’t have to beg at the table for scraps, and then, beggars all, turn to each other for scraps.
These stories are my way of articulating that the world can be different, and that it ought to be different. The best that I can do is try and use fiction to articulate another kind of reality, a world that is better than ours, kinder than ours and more just. And the compromise I must make—a compromise in both senses of the word—is that I have to buy into the system and put up a price tag.
So welcome to my Patreon. Come for the monster girl transformations; stay for the fully automated luxury gay space communism.
