Posts Tagged ‘patreon’

News

Patreon and Spotify! Living Together! Mass Hysteria!

(Is it still cool to quote Ghostbusters?)

Connect Patreon & Spotify!Anyway, one of the best things about Patreon is I can give my community a private RSS feed to listen to the exclusive shows. One of the worst things is, if you’re not familiar with an RSS feed, that’s a high bar to get over.

But now you can connect Patreon with Spotify and get the exclusive content on that platform, which is very user friendly. Learn more here. 

And if you’re not a Patreon supporter yet, you can get ad-free, extended, and early episodes of my shows by supporting!

Family, Personal, Projects

Making Patreon changes, and taking time off

I’m Making Patreon Changes and taking time off. Happy Holidays!TL;DR:

  • I’m making Patreon changes! Check out the annual payment option and the mini workshops!
  • Please take my poll to tell me what you’d like to see in my patreon!
  • I am taking the rest of the year off; you might see me online, but no official content creation till Jan. 3. Happy Holidays!

PATREON ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS

I’m making Patreon changes, some now, and some later on in January. First, you can now subscribe annually, pay everything up front and get a discount! It’s a great way to show your support to me, and in return you’ll get a discount of 15% when you do – that’s nearly TWO free months! In addition to reducing transaction fees, you’ll help me create quality content faster and reduce the chance your credit card declines in the future.

For existing patrons, the following steps will help you switch your pledge to annual.

  1. Log in, hover over your profile icon in the top right corner, and select Manage Memberships
  2. From your Active Memberships page click Edit next to the pledge you want to change
  3. You’ll see a familiar checkout page where you can select Annual 
  4. Click Update. Note: you’ll be charged upfront for the discounted price

New patrons, visit my Patreon page where you’ll see the option below the “Join” button of your chosen tier.

Check out this help center article if you have any questions about how it works.

MINI WORKSHOPS

Next, I’m offering a few different perks to Patreon. The thing I’m most excited about is Mur’s Kick in the Pants, which will be a semi-monthly micro workshop I’m holding in the Discord. I will be sending out a writing prompt, and then half an hour later we will meet, audio or video, in a discord room to discuss how the prompt went.  People can share if they want, or we can just talk writing. No big workshops, no long stories. Just quick prompts and quick support! This is at the $7 and above level, aka the Blue Ink Stained level.

The Red Ink Stained level, $30 and up, will feature Tuckerizations and your name in the credits for all my videos!

The Green Ink Stained level at $3 will stay mostly the same, but I’ll be implementing podcast shoutouts to every level.

If you’re supporting at a level that has been unpublished, don’t worry, things won’t change for you. I just won’t be taking new supporters at those levels.

POLL

I would love to hear what folks want out of the Patreon. I’m doing a public survey over there and would love to hear your thoughts. While I’m making Patreon changes, I’d love to make sure I’m doing them for your benefit too.

BREAKTIME!

And, with the holidays here, I’ve decided to take a break from, well, everything. I want to have a quiet holiday, so I’m stepping away from streaming and podcasting this month. I might do a stream or two for fun, but no official ISBW episodes. But definitely I hope everyone stays safe and healthy and has a great New Year!

 

News

Patreon done F’d up real good

Because it’s swirling all around me, I assume everyone has heard of the mind-boggling change to the Patreon fee structure. But since some of my followers just got the news I had a Netflix option (which has since run out; they had it for three years), I will spell it out for you.

  • Before: You pledge $1. You pay a dollar. Patreon takes a fee (apparently it varied anywhere from 12-20%). I get the rest.
  • Now: You pledge $1. You pay $1.38. Patreon takes a fee, I get the rest. (The math: where Y is your pledge, (Y x 2.9%) + $.35.)

Patreon is trying to sell it as the creator gets more money and we all want that, right? Under the new structure, creators take home 95% of the money. But they passed the fees on to you.

Well, 38 cents isn’t really a big deal, right? You can barely park in a city for 15 min on that. But here’s the catch: that’s 38 cents per person you support with $1.

Many people like to spread their support around, throwing $1 pledges at several creators. Before, if they supported 10 creators, they paid $10. Now they are charged a fee for every pledge, so they will pledge a total of $10 and pay nearly $14.

Now it’s starting to look kind of sketchy. OK. Really sketchy.

Choosing to increase your fees, or ask for more money, is a frightening job for creators. We are often on limited budgets, and are humbled and amazed that someone wants to give us even a dollar. And for me at least, the one dollar supporters add up. I make not-insignificant money from those dollars.

The result of this? My canceled pledges for the last day:

Screen Shot of Patreon Support loss
This is very minor compared to a lot of people’s.

Supporters are leaving. I have lost a few, and many more have reduced their pledges. I know creators who have lost dozens. I don’t blame the supporters at all; I support many people and am going to have to look at my own pledges and decide how I want to spend my money based on my fee increases.

So what do we do? Let Patreon know we’re unhappy, that’s for sure. But I’m looking into other options. Currently, you can support me via PayPal Me and Buy Me a Coffee These are less than ideal solutions since they aren’t based monthly and a reward structure is MUCH harder to handle. But if you feel the need to leave Patreon but still want to support, you can. There are other crowdfunding sites I’ll be researching today, so I’ll keep you informed.

Thank you for all the support you give me.

 

 

Books, News, Projects

New Patreon Tiers, Newsletter, and more!

ARC of SIX WAKES SQUEEEE

First the SUPER EXCITING OMG NEWS – ARCs of SIX WAKES have arrived, and they are sooooooooo shiny.

Loooook at it. ———————>>>

Anyway. Other things, I’ve revamped my Patreon tiers to include some fiction, early access to podcasts, and some other treats, including a level where I will send you a drunken annotated copy of my books.

And the last in the marketing scheme, I am building a newsletter, so if you wanna sign up, check it over there in the sidebar. Note that I abhor popup newsletter solicitations, and will never do that to you. That said, I hope you sign up anyway.

What will you get? News. Man, it’s a newsletter, what do you want? Secrets as to what was deleted in a book? Giveaways? GOLD? Well, I can do some of those, actually, but not the gold. Sorry. Maybe if I manage to sell another book soon.

That’s it, really. Check out the Patreon for new tiers. Sign up for the newsletter. LOOKIT THE NEW ARC OF MY BOOK.

Books, Projects

Afterlife VI: STONES is done!

stones-cover-sm
Cover Prototype, by Pablo Defendini

In 2011 I did a Kickstarter campaign to support the ebook design of The Afterlife Series. Multiple agents had tried to sell it, and it never caught an editor’s eye, despite being the most popular thing I had written at the time (for my listeners, anyway.) I put a high stretch goal on there, promising if someone pledged $1k I would write another novella in the series. I didn’t think it would actually go.

It did.

Life got complicated after that. Never mind that I had no idea what I was going to write. No spoilers, but at the end of Book 5: War, the fate of the characters was pretty well sealed. Then I got a deal to write two books for Orbit, and I got into an MFA program. So I blinked and three years had passed. GAH.

Long story short (shorter, anyway) this year I finally got down to writing the novella, then sent it off to a classmate for editing, then sat on the edits for a while. I just recently got through them all, and sent the book off to my designer. It’s done!

I emailed a PDF of the book to the Kickstarter supporters, and people who had supported me via Patreon (hint, if you support now you can get the free PDF long before it goes to the ebook stores!) So the book is out there to a select group, and it will be available via B&N, Smashwords, and Amazon as soon as the design is done.

But for my part, except for the ebook uploading and all that, The Afterlife Series VI: Stones is done.  And the relief I feel is monumental.

Participant-2014-Web-Banner

I’ll be doing NaNoWriMo this year, again. I don’t have a good track record, but what the hell, it’s fun. I’m not sure what project I’m working on, but I have a couple of things going on right now so it won’t be hard to settle on one.

And again, if you are a Patreon supporter, you will get a daily NaNoWriMo audio file. NOTE: If you’re a supporter and don’t do NaNo and don’t want the files, you can temporarily change your support level to “no reward” and you won’t get the emails. You will still get your weekly mail from me, and you can change back in December. That said, if you are currently at No Reward and want the files, you need to change to at least the $1 reward.

Meta

I’m in the Patreon club

I’ve struggled for years – years – to make a good premium content method. It’s been clumsy and my supporters have been very patient with me. Now the product has caught up with the need, and Patreon is here.

So I’m putting a halt to new supporters of my Fabulist group and am giving out new perks to Patreon supporters.* I hope you check it out, I think it’s a great way to support someone’s creative work a little bit at a time.

Become a Patron

* Existing Fabulists, I’ve posted about this in our private community, check it out there if you have questions.

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