So I’ve been reading Conan! What is best for Patreon? and Ursula’s blog post & ensuing comments about Patreon, and talking to friends about my Patreon project and thinking about long games and all kinds of things.
I’ve been thinking of Patreon too much like Kickstarter, really. Too short-term large-goal oriented, whereas I think the Conan link above probably nails it in terms of it being a slow burn and a long term process, and the comments in Ursula’s post drive home the no-content-produced, no-donation-taken aspect of it to me.
I really very much want to do MAGIC & MANNERS, and I have ideas for other books in the Austen Chronicles. If I’m going to pursue them in this fashion–which is still how I would best like to, ideally with a chapter a week but no patron donation collection if I don’t produce–then I think I should set goals that will let me go ahead and *do* it, and hope that over the long term it builds an increasingly large audience.
This content is intended to be posted publicly, and it will be. I think what I’ll do is post first for the Patreon supporters, and after a several-week delay, start posting the chapters on my website. People who support the campaign will get an electronic edition of the book at the end of it; people who don’t can read it on the webpage or buy it when it becomes generally available as an e-book.
I would really, *really* like to be able to offer long term patrons something else shiny and spiffy for their support, but so far I haven’t been able to think of something practical/affordable. Maybe an option to buy a print copy at cost when the book is done, but even that’s asking people to spend a little more money, which makes me twitch, so I don’t know.
But for the moment, I’ve reset the milestone goals for the project down by a considerable margin, and starting next week I’ll be posting chapters for the MAGIC & MANNERS patrons!