From time to time, I get asked how people can read my work and how they can support my creative endeavors. When I say “Patreon,” it’s not uncommon for people to ask “what is Patreon?” Not only is this a valid question, it’s one that has a unique answer depending on how a specific creator is using it, so I figured that I would provide a fuller explanation of the platform, how I use it, what you get from it, and how it helps me.
What Is Patreon?
Patreon serves as a sort of crowd-funding platform to help independent creators like myself. Users can sign up for a monthly subscription that supports the creator, and in return they get access to various creations. Most Patreons have a range of tiers at varying price levels that offer different benefits. Like most subscription services, the payment is taken out once a month on the day of the month that you signed up.
How Does Faefyx Use Patreon?
While I love writing novels, getting one written, edited, to an agent, and published, is an extensive process that I can’t commit my full focus to while also trying to make ends meet with other work. For that reason, I use Patreon as a way to release short-form content to the world on a regular basis. This allows me to keep up momentum, get my work out to readers more regularly, and helps to build an audience.
While there are multiple tiers for my Patreon, I have all of them offer the same benefits at this time. The nature of Patreon is that it is a financial way to support me. However, I want the barrier between my work and the reader to be as little as possible. Therefore, the bottom tier is just $2 a month and offers the same as any other tier and I just ask that people contribute what they can or what they feel is reasonable.
What Do You Get From Faefyx’s Patreon?
While I use my Patreon for short-form content, that doesn’t always mean short stories. I release a mixture of standalone short stories, serial-form longer stories that are released as I write the chapters, and collections of short stories that are set in the same universe. When you sign up for my Patreon, you receive the monthly content that I put out, but also gain access to everything that I’ve already put up on the platform, which includes mystery, science fiction, and fantasy stories of different types.
There are also some exciting additional developments in the works that mean that I should be able to expand exactly what that offering is soon, but there’ll be more news on that in the near future (and I’ll try to remember to update this post at that time).
How Does Patreon Help Faefyx?
Patreon support obviously has a fairly direct financial benefit for me: aside from a cut taken by Patreon, the subscription fees help me to move closer to the dream of making a living from writing fiction. However, even the smallest financial contribution makes a huge difference, because the number of Patreon backers that a project has greatly affects its visibility and the odds of it garnering further attention. While it is my goal to one day make a complete living from Patreon and (hopefully) book deals, you can see that my milestones on Patreon are all related to the number of Patrons supporting the project, not the amount that they are donating.
I want to get my work in front of people in the hopes that my stories can elicit joy (and other emotions) from them. The more people that support my Patreon, the more people can get to enjoy my stories and provide feedback, comments, and discussion about the narratives and ideas contained within. Additionally, with the ever more competitive market for fiction publishing, it is increasingly common for publishers and agents to explore how much of a social media following or existing support on a platform such as Patreon a writer has before they decide whether to move ahead with that writer.
Supporting my writing on Patreon not only helps me financially, but it helps me to get my writing in front of more people and can ultimately help me to get noticed for my creative efforts. Please consider supporting my Patreon today, reading my stories, and sharing my Patreon and stories with friends who might enjoy these tales of intrigue, survival at the end of the world, and fantastical lands.
You can sign up for my Patreon for as little as just $2 here:
Cheers
Good post.