Well, it’ll be three months on Tuesday since the official release of my debut novel, Mornnovin. I’ll admit to slacking off on the business side of things once I got all of my Kickstarter backers taken care of, but wow the whole thing was a lot of work. I’m a writer, not an entire publishing house including a marketing branch (except as an indie self-pub, that’s exactly what I have to be. Ugh.)
So, I said I’d look into setting up a Patreon creator account so that people who want to support my writing going forward into this series would have a way to do that with their money and not just with nice words of encouragement – which are also welcome. It was my nebulous thought that I’d begin releasing some of the Asrellion short stories I wrote as my 2015 NaNoWriMo novel this way. Buuuuuuuuut. When I decided to finally get serious and deep-dive into the Patreon ToS, I tripped over this:
…yikes?
I’m no lawyer, but that looks like a bad contract to me. I certainly don’t have a good feeling about it. Like, I’m honestly sort of confused about how it is that they actually have creators willing to sign that…? They go on to explain that this is so they can market your work to potential patrons, but the language of the agreement is so broad. And I just can’t get past the “irrevocable” thing.
Unless that clause changes and becomes less yucky at some point in the future, Patreon is going to have to remain a big nope for me.
Which leaves me back at Square One on the question of monetization and how best to let people purchase my short stories/support me as an artist. I could add a PayPal button to this blog and release the hostages as password-protected posts – an inelegant but workable solution – but the cost of upgrading the blog to the minimum package necessary for that would mean an additional $60 a year, which could very well negate any payments that might come in.
In other words, I’m not sure at this time what to do. Needs more thought. Patreon off the table, other suggestions welcome.
And hey, while you’re here: you could buy my book (or review it if you already have?)
To close out on a high note, here’s a photo of my husky wearing my husband’s glasses.
Autistic Wordpainter 