So I logged into the war room after launching the MAGIC & MANNERS Patreon project and got hit with a bunch of suggestions on how to improve the page, which I’ll be doing, but one of them was “more explaining about how the funding works”, so I’ll do that in a blog post.
So. Funding with Patreon is Not Like Kickstarter. Patreon does not ask for one large donation; it asks for many small ones. And when we say small we can mean “ten or five or even one cent”–micropayments are totally cool with the Patreon model.
Patreon allows you to cap your monthly donation. If it’s a year-long project with 50 chapters (as I anticipate MAGIC & MANNERS being), if you want to cap your monthly payment at $1, so that over the course of the year you pay $12 for the eventual e-book, that’s totally cool.
I’m setting a cap of my own on the number of chapters I’m willing to post: no more than 1 a week. So, for example, if you have opted to donate $1/chapter, over the course of the month the most you can possibly get hit for is $5 (in July & October, I think, which are the months this year with 5 Wednesdays, which is the day I expect to post). But if you’ve set your own cap of $3/month, that’ll be your total donation regardless of the caps on my end of things.
I want to emphasise again that this isn’t like Kickstarter: if you tell Patreon you want to donate $10/chapter, it’s not a one-time donation of $10, it’s $10 every week! And, I mean, don’t get me wrong, if you want to and can afford that, that’s great, but as the project creator, I’m not expecting people to be able to donate at that level! My goal/hope is really to basically get 250 people at $1 each–or, of course, ideally more than that so that editing and whatnot can be part of the whole project process. :)
Basically I’m going to give the Patreon project a month to fund. If we haven’t reached the base level of $250/chapter by the middle of March, I’ll call it a failed experiment and close it down. If we do, of course, then there will be new chapters every week, which would be lots of fun. :)
Questions? Hit me with ’em!
I’m sorry, I’d rather just give a set amount. I really don’t like the many small fees. I mean REALLY don’t like it. I’ve always supported you but I just can’t if that is the way you are trying to fund it. I’ll have to wait and just buy the ebook at the end.
You can certainly go there, set it up to do a payment at whatever amount you think is appropriate, and cancel it after the first one, too, if you prefer to do only one payment. It’s vastly simpler to do that, I agree. :)
It took me a while to get my head round how Patreon worked, however for me it is better as I can manage small regular payments more effectively than stump up a larger single payment. I decided on the maximum amount I was willing to pay for 50 chapters then worked out the per chapter figure.
The way Patreon seems to work is that if there are not enough subscribers then there won’t be an ebook to buy as it won’t be written. Really enjoyed the chapters posted so far and would love for them to continue – we’re half way there with only 45 subscribers so fingers crossed more people will join in. Pretty please… ;)