Changes to Jaguar Patreon, 2019

Some of you have already noticed the look of my Patreon page changing along with the tiers and tier rewards! So I thought I’d explain what I’m going to be doing next, and why.

As you know, I am now a full-time writer and artist! Which is great, because after running the numbers, I’ve discovered the way to maintain my income involves writing 5-7 books a year and it’s going to take a full-time effort to pull that off. I think I can swing this, but only if I am honest with myself about whether I’m focusing on things I can’t afford to spend a ton of time on. And one of the things I spend a ton of time on is Patreon… in the sense of “I give away more content for less money than almost every artist and writer I’ve researched.” 

Creating stuff for you to enjoy takes time and effort, and if I don’t want to end up in a cube again, I have to be more realistic about what I can do and what I should be charging.

I can see some of you getting nervous. Don’t worry! The changes aren’t major. Here’s the new plan:

• The $1 tier is now the tip jar. While you’ll receive any public posts I make, like Caturdays and the Kherishdar serial, and access to the All Fan Chat Days, I want people to think of this as the ‘I just want to throw you a buck but I don’t expect anything back’ tier.
• The $5 tier is still the baseline Discord level, and it also earns you a post on Fridays: world-building or a short story or art.
• There is a new $10 tier which unlocks another post on Monday. Business posts will now be a $10 perk. This is also the new audiobook level, so future audiobooks will be available at this level. Also any audio I decide to record myself. The Monday post might also be an extra world-building or art or story post, if I don’t have any business or audio stuff to share.
• Perhaps the biggest change: the lunch bags are going away! I have been considering putting up a separate Patreon for them but I’m not sold on that idea. Photographing, prepping, and posting them every day takes me a lot more time than I’ll admit to, and doing it for a dollar a month isn’t a very good idea if I want to stay solvent. :,

We’re looking then at a four-day posting schedule (down from 6):

• Monday: $10+ Tier post
• Wednesday: Serial (all patrons)
• Friday: $5+ Tier post
• Saturday: Caturday (all patrons)

With ad hoc postings for news or announcements when they come up.

 You are, of course, welcome to pledge any amount and not select a tier if you’re not interested in the rewards, or overpay a tier if you feel like buying me extra groceries. I will be grateful. 

Special Offer

Many of you were already overpledging your tiers, and I’m grateful. (Please be sure to select a specific tier so you’ll be able to see those awards!) For those of you who decide to move up a tier, I’d like to show my appreciation by sending a wallpaper to everyone who moves up to the $5 tier, and a sticker to everyone who moves up to the $10 tier. I've got three different designs for the sticker, too! I think they're all fun. This special offer’s good for the next two weeks, so you have plenty of time to decide whether you want to jump up! I’ll be drawing that wallpaper on Twitch, so be sure to follow me there if you want to watch it happen.

Discord

...which brings me to Discord. If you’re pledging at a level that grants you Discord access and haven’t tried it yet, I really encourage you to do so. The people using my server tell me the Discord server reward alone is worth the price of their pledge. People who are on multiple servers often tell me how unusual mine is: not only because I’m on it so frequently (because apparently fan discords are rarely visited by the creators), but because it’s active and the vibe is courteous, fun, and supportive. If you haven’t tried it yet, here’s the link to how to claim your Discord reward.

So that’s the deal on the Patreon changes.

Throughout my career, I’ve always tried to be honest about the cost of doing business as a creative professional, and I'm committed to explaining why artists of every kind should be paid for their efforts. Making stuff takes time and effort; packaging it in a way other people can consume and easily enjoy is also work. As you all know, because you’re awesome people, it’s naïve to point out that ‘as an artist you’d be doing art anyway.’ Artists often do stop doing art for any number of reasons, and chief among them are things like ‘people don’t appreciate it’ or ‘if I spend time on this, that’s wasted time because society says so’ and ‘I’m too tired to do this because I’ve had to work an eight hour day already.’ And the doodle on someone’s paper doesn’t magically appear in your email every morning: it has to be scanned or photographed (if physical), cropped and resized for monitors, watermarked, uploaded somewhere, framed in some kind of post or email, described and sent.

Writing’s the same way… the difference between the noodling a writer might do for themselves, for fun, is a world away from the polished product that lands in your hands as a physical book or on your device as a formatted ebook, with a coherent plot and enjoyable characters and front- and backmatter that make you feel the important part of the author’s ecosystem that you are.

I appreciate each and every one of you! Whether you’re handing me a dollar a month or $100, the fact that you’re willing to compensate me for my work is important. It makes you part of a revolution—the one that boldly states that creative professionals aren’t doing invisible work that ‘deserves to be free’ because ‘art belongs to everyone’ and ‘artists would do it anyway.’ Paying artists is a counter-cultural act of rebellion, and by embarking on it you are upholding a pretty amazing standard in defiance of a world that is intent on reblogging or reusing unattributed work and shrugging it off as okay because ‘everybody’s doing it.’

You should be proud.

As always, I’m honored to be one of your chosen entertainers. I hope you’ll stick around for an amazing 2019. This is going to be a great year.