a quick note on my single-tier patreon and why it’s that way!
Sunday, August 1st, 2021I’ve been asked a bit recently about whether I plan to add more tiers to my Patreon, so I wanted to briefly get into the reason why I probably won’t be doing that.
I’ve been running this Patreon the same way for about three years now (!!), which is: a single pay-what-you-want tier of $1 or more ($1 is the minimum signup Patreon will allow). Anything I post on there is available to all subscribers. Does that mean that most of my signups are for $1? Sure. But it’s very important to me not to paywall anyone out of anything. I set it up so I had a place to put all the character side content I’m writing for the Archivist Wasp books and Firebreak, as well as extras like deleted scenes and original endings, all of which works really well with the single tier format, but regardless what I put on there eventually, accessibility is my #1 priority.
I mean, look. Books are expensive. If you’ve read mine and you liked them enough to want to hang out in those worlds with those characters a little longer, the least I can do is make that as easy as possible. Sometimes people point out to me that many authors make a $1 you-have-my-gratitude tier and start the actual content at $3 or $5 or whatever (totally understandably: most authors do not make much money at all and we’ve still got to eat, obviously), but I want to try to avoid running mine like that for as long as I can possibly manage.
That said, if there’s ever anything you’d like to see me offer over there, just let me know in the comments (or DM me on Twitter) and I’ll see what I can do. And, of course, thank you so much for your support! Patreon has its flaws but it’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to any kind of steady income, which is honestly pretty helpful in an industry where a book brings in royalty checks a grand total of twice a year (if it sees royalties at all). But above and beyond that–I love working with the characters and worlds of those books, and it means the absolute world to me that you’ve given me a reason to continue. <3