I've made a change to my Patreon which will ease the pressure on both me and my subscribers during these difficult times. Instead of being a monthly Patreon, it's now a "per creation" Patreon. What this means is that subscribers will be charged only when I posted a designated paid post to their tier. This would mean that I could skip a month for some tiers. I wouldn't get paid, but patrons wouldn't be charged, either. I would still be able to post free bonus material for subscribers, too. Presently I only foresee doing one paid post per month (or less), but if I should do more, subscribers have the option of not paying for more than one paid post per month. (Patreon has a cap subscribers can set so they won’t be charged more than they expect or can afford.)
There are a few reasons behind this change, most relate to the kind of year we're all having, but one has to do with the main project I’m working on itself. The pandemic-related reasons are that I’m only reading a fraction of the number of books I used to read which means that hitting upon a book worthy of a post for subscribers to the Bookaroo tier is getting more difficult by the month. Especially since when things are very stress-y and death-y I read junk fiction or nothing at all. Most of my meagre stores of concentration these days are going into what I’m writing, not what I’m reading. The other, somewhat grim, pandemic-related reason for the change is that a “per thing” Patreon would protect subscribers from being charged if I suddenly became ill and was physically unable to write.
There’s also a practical non-pandemic related reason to change to a “per creation” type Patreon. I'm working on a big long project, some of which is already written and some of which isn't. I'm bouncing back and forth between the next sequential chapter for Patreon and later chapters (some days I work on later books!) and that makes it tricky to drop serialized chapters to my Patreon every month. My biggest concern with this series is keeping continuity over five books for however long it takes to write them. I’m constantly going back and forth both within books and between books checking and changing details to make sure it all hangs together. I’m weaving a big thing together and that means that some months I won’t get a nice neat sequential chapter finished up for Patreon. Also, this has been a very stressful year and that has affected my output. I know I'm not alone in this: a lot of authors are stressed out and having some difficulties. Making these changes to my Patreon will ease up the deadline pressure on me and the financial pressure on my subscribers.
The only change subscribers should see is that they may not be charged anything some months, depending on what I write and how much I write that month. I’ll still post bonus material, short stories, audio, etc. occasionally, too, free to subscribers as always.
I’m hoping these changes will make it easier for both me and my readers to get through the times ahead.
