The prevalence of Patreon

I don't think it's a matter of the system not working. Writing (as a general rule) isn't going to give you a living wage, and AFAIK that's been true for a long time. Going through Patreon strikes me as more or less the same as the self-pub Amazon authors who can produce decent content every couple of months. And as a reader? Nice to get a short story via Patreon that it'd take the author much longer to place with a paying publication.

On the other hand, if you're not the sort of writer who churns out material on a regular basis, or if you're more inclined to longer work rather than shorter, it's not going to do much for you anyway. (Hurley in particular is really good with short material.) Additionally, I suspect it's the kind of thing that's only helpful if you've already got a decent audience (which, as you point out, a lot of these authors do).

What I don't know is if it's becoming like a web site: something readers just expect you to have. But I suppose in general I don't see the harm in it.

Harlequin said:

I see so many authors who get the bulk of their income from Patreon subscriptions. Like, 60% or more, and these are people who are quite well established (presumably, the less well established you are, the less you get from patreon.) Some, like Kameron Hurley, rely on Patreon subscriptions to earn a living wage from writing.

Do you think this is good that it is becoming the new normal, and;

*Should* authors be on Patreon for their own sake, if possible? Or is it encouraging a system that isn't working?

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I had to look up what Patreon is. Interesting...

My very quick, very un-researched response is why not? If an author can get others to pay their utility bills, go for it. It's a good way to stay motivated to keep producing, I suppose. I hesitate to say "should" about anything, especially social media platforms, but that's just me (I recently joined that Twitter thing and kind of hate it). The only thing a writer should do is write. I also wonder if there's a sort of "cut-off" point where a more successful author wouldn't want a Patreon page -- does it have a stigma to it?

Here's a list of top-earning writers: https://www.patreon.com/explore/writing

Huh. I had never heard of patreon. I guess I am not aware if any of my favorite authors use it. Tried googling a few and they didn't. Not that it would particularly bother me either way. So people pay money to subscribe to you as an author and you put out short stories every month? Is that basically it?

Harlequin said:

Some thoughts of mine on short stories: a lot of zines are struggling these days, and although part of that is the shrunken market for short stories, I can't help but think that Patreon might contribute in some ways. If an author writes regular short stories and delivers them via patreon, that's good for the author but less good for the short story magazines.

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I don't sub to short story markets myself, but I know people who do (at least in the SFF space). From what I hear, zines are buried in submissions, some to the point that it takes them an insane amount of time to reply. This may be due to lack of staffing, of course, but even so. And frankly I think the blanket policy of not taking simultaneous subs discourages a lot of writers from subbing in the first place. Why would you tie up a perfectly good piece for weeks, months, or longer if you have another avenue for it?

So no, while I'm sure Patreon doesn't help them out, neither do I think it's their main issue. (When it comes right down to it, I suspect a big part of the problem is the fact that everybody thinks everything on the internet should be free.)

Harlequin said:

As a broader concern, if publishers can get away with paying authors less because it becomes the norm for authors to crowdsource their own income, I guess I worry that this is moving in a direction of even less stable finances for writers.

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I promise you, no publisher is handing you an advance expecting that to be your only income. They're not thinking about your finances at all. They're thinking about what they can give you that'll keep you from publishing with someone else, and/or what they need to give you to maintain their reputation as a place authors want to publish with.

Oh wow, that's . . . intense.

I think the big weak link/Plus Factor for something like Patreon is that it requires a strong sense of salesmanship if you're going to pull it off successfully. I think the best Patreon success stories have that common thread of the creators being engaged with the community, happy to interact with them, establishing a relationship, in addition to just cranking out content. People who contribute to Patreon are expecting the creator to be answerable to them in some way, now that they're paying directly out of pocket.

For some people, especially the ones with really good PR skills, this is an amazing, low effort way to get funding directly from fans. If you've got the charisma, online or otherwise to get people excited about supporting you, and actively maintain and nurture those financial relationships, this is a fantastic idea. For other people (like me) the idea of having to engage with and establish all those relationships, keep them excited and enthusiastic, play up to their questions and expectations... I'd rather undergo a root canal. I know not everyone would look at it this way, but the one thing that makes me really leery of things like Patreon is just how quickly it can degenerate into toxic fandom, where the people paying the bills can now, legally, say "Hey, you owe us!" because you do. They're paying for you now, this is an actual business transaction.

I think it's amazing when creators have the kind of people skills required to keep Patreon subscribers happy and more than willing to keep donating every single month. But that's totally not me. As an introvert, the idea of being directly answerable to so many total strangers, now due to financial obligations, is terrifying. I much prefer freelance jobs where someone just says, "Hey, I need this by this deadline," and I do the work, submit it, and get paid. There's no need to entertain, engage, or make sure the person came away pleased with the interaction, or suffer the wrath of complaints on social media of being an "ingrate to the fans."

With my project, I will try Patreon if I cannot land an agent and get a book deal (my first time out). I have a huge series planned, and I would, likely, release on a chapter by chapter basis per book. I'd first analyze successful Patreon users (both in writing and YouTube).

A caveat with Patreon.... If you have a YouTube channel, and you want to do Patreon, adding the Patreon links to YouTube will prevent you from joining the YouTube partner program (and you won't get a YouTube sponsor/member link that works similar to Patreon).

If you do YouTube, and you want to do Patreon, add the Patreon links to your blog (or some other site).

I do not know of Facebook or Twitter policies regarding Patreon and linking Patreon on their platforms.

As a reader, I can't say that I'd ever look to Patreon for reading material. But, for authors who can promote their stuff, or have a bit of a following to start things off, it sounds like it would provide more financing than self-publishing, with much more control than vanity publishing would provide.
For authors who plan to self-publish, or think they would be good at it, it might be a good choice.
They'd still have control, but it's little more structured, (rewards, etc) and Patreon, I imagine doesn't care if you're selling books or widgets, as long as you provide what you promise.

If you're looking for another author example using Patreon, Mary Robinette Kowal has a fairly detailed tier system and seems to be making a fair amount to supplement her other jobs. I follow her on Twitter, and I believe she's been engaged with Patreon for quite some time (there was recently some hoopla about changes to the Patreon system, but I didn't get all of the intricacies given I don't use Patreon at this time).

AW's Aggie Carpenter uses Patreon (for more than just short stories - I believe she serializes some novellas?). I don't think she's online much to weigh in at the moment given life issues, but just another data point.

Holly Lisle is another novelist supplementing via Patreon. She is the first one I learned of, last year, doing this. I did not look into it at that time though.

Patreon has been a thing in the games and art communities for a lot longer--it's been, IMO, quite slow to catch on for fiction, which I've always put down to the length and general slow-ness of the whole process, for both reader and writer. A lot of critics use it, too, and I think it's really good for doing alternative kinds of work where you can attract a small+loyal audience that appreciate it.

It doesn't have to be a salesman thing, and I'd almost go so far as to say it works better when it's not. There are how many people on Twitter blasting opinions with a Patreon link in their bio or at the end of every tweet? I don't have a lot of experience with Patreon as either reader or creator, but that kind of thing rubs me the wrong way and the folks I do follow don't tend to blast it out all the time. It's more like putting a link after a video or on a website. People who like the content enough to be regular consumers of it will generally click and see what extra they might get.

My main concern with it is concentration. It becomes very, very easy for one tech company to dominate the competition by being the go-to service, and the only one where people expect to find creators, etc. Then, when that company changes policies, as Patreon did not that long ago with regards to their credit card processing, both creator and reader can end up losing out with very little recourse. It's really more of a market problem with monopolies than anything particular to writing or fiction specifically, but it is a problem if/when the trend keeps growing.

The biggest boon, though? If this kind of thing really takes off, it has the potential to undercut the stranglehold advertisers and ad-tech companies have on the market for writing. That is, again, not quite as relevant to fiction. But any time you open HuffPost or The Verge or whatever you are effectively paying for that content with your privacy. Patreon is a much, much, much more above-board process and the small idealistic part still cowering away inside of me wants to believe it may be successful long-term in part because of that.

Shoeless said:

I think the big weak link/Plus Factor for something like Patreon is that it requires a strong sense of salesmanship if you're going to pull it off successfully. I think the best Patreon success stories have that common thread of the creators being engaged with the community, happy to interact with them, establishing a relationship, in addition to just cranking out content. People who contribute to Patreon are expecting the creator to be answerable to them in some way, now that they're paying directly out of pocket.

For some people, especially the ones with really good PR skills, this is an amazing, low effort way to get funding directly from fans. If you've got the charisma, online or otherwise to get people excited about supporting you, and actively maintain and nurture those financial relationships, this is a fantastic idea. For other people (like me) the idea of having to engage with and establish all those relationships, keep them excited and enthusiastic, play up to their questions and expectations... I'd rather undergo a root canal. I know not everyone would look at it this way, but the one thing that makes me really leery of things like Patreon is just how quickly it can degenerate into toxic fandom, where the people paying the bills can now, legally, say "Hey, you owe us!" because you do. They're paying for you now, this is an actual business transaction.

I think it's amazing when creators have the kind of people skills required to keep Patreon subscribers happy and more than willing to keep donating every single month. But that's totally not me. As an introvert, the idea of being directly answerable to so many total strangers, now due to financial obligations, is terrifying. I much prefer freelance jobs where someone just says, "Hey, I need this by this deadline," and I do the work, submit it, and get paid. There's no need to entertain, engage, or make sure the person came away pleased with the interaction, or suffer the wrath of complaints on social media of being an "ingrate to the fans."

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Yeah, to hell with this. I've never used Patreon to support an artist, but I've seen more than one I watch stressed beyond belief because they can't keep to a publishing schedule, due to depression, illness, or life in general. Unless you're good enough at the game you KNOW you'll be able to keep to that schedule and keep the swarm of angry fans happy no matter what catastrophes life throws up, I wouldn't recommend Patreon.

I have seen Patreon prevailing more and more in English-speaking countries, and more artists and writers appealing to it. In my country, it isn't a thing and I can't see it working.

Here some writers know business owners and get sponsors. (I had sponsors too, back in 1999, for my professional handbook in project management). The key for having the books publishing sponsorised is that they have already connection with the Romanian businessmen who had funded them, a thing I don’t have, so I have to think innovatively and to apply my thinking at the subject of my novels and at the sphere of acquaintances I might get. (I tried getting sponsors for novels too, but I didn't succeed).

In my opinion,instead of public subscription (which is Patreon or crowfunding, with a fancier name), which gives also more opportunities of misappropriating the received funds, I think seeking sponsors with a company who would pay directly to the publishing house, receiving advertising in exchange, is more honourable, even if it is sad that the literary world now has returned to the Medieval system when the singer or the writer had to be under the patronage of a nobleman or king…

I don't have answers for the questions in the OP but can share what I learned in the Patreon Creator program to answer a few other questions here.

Creators are expected to attract their patrons from offsite. Successful creators already have an audience asking to contribute funds before launching a Patreon account. This is especially important for fiction, which isn't as eye-catching as visual art.

Creators who post content not meant for children are supposed to flag their own accounts as Adult Only, lock the adult-only content so only patrons can view it, and link anything that doesn't meet Patreon's content policies in a link within the locked post so the content isn't viewable on Patreon at all.

My problems with this are how Patreon excludes accounts flagged as Adult Only from its searches and unevenly enforces its policies. The most profitable accounts are exceptions to the site's policies--until they aren't.

Bringing in a large audience isn't enough to prevent the site from restricting patrons. One of the most recent problems is yet another issue with processing. Patreon seems to change its payment process every year or so, and is slow to address concerns each time due to changes in Patreon's process. This year, not all payments from patrons outside the US were going through. The bigger creators advocate for themselves and their patrons while creators whose income cuts off from payment processing errors quickly go away.

I closed my account because my sole patron, who had encouraged me to find a way to accept payments, pulled her support for personal reasons. Namely, she was a friend being rude in response to non-writing issues. I called her out on it, she continued to be rude, and I told her I wouldn't talk to her about those issues anymore. The next month, I saw in the Patreon dashboard that she had withdrawn her pledge.

The only interest I had from anyone else was in one-time payments, which Patreon isn't designed to handle well.

I hope this helps.

I've been considering Patreon, not as a supplement but as an alternative to traditional publishing, the possibility of posting my stories online to read for free while offering the option to people who like my work to chip in.

But I know rewards are a common aspect of Patreon, and I don't really know what I'd offer folks who do contribute. I'm inclined against content that's exclusive to people who pay, because that goes against having what I write online for free anyway. And...

Shoeless said:

I know not everyone would look at it this way, but the one thing that makes me really leery of things like Patreon is just how quickly it can degenerate into toxic fandom, where the people paying the bills can now, legally, say "Hey, you owe us!" because you do. They're paying for you now, this is an actual business transaction.

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...I hadn't considered this aspect of it either. I definitely don't want to feel pressured towards those who do contribute, versus other fans and myself.

It's really another thing I shouldn't think about until I actually do have work done (but I think about it anyway).

As the sparkly reaper mentioned up-thread, I have a Patreon account. I have a tiny handful of subscribers and make a token amount each month. I'm posting the chapters from one of my early novels in a serial format (four chapters a month), plus various writing tip articles, deleted scenes, etc for folks who subscribe at $5/month and up. (Base level to read the novel is a $1/month.)

Patreon isn't a model that will work for everyone. If you produce work regularly, you might explore it as an option though. Several folks I know post the rough drafts of their novels as a base level (also in a semi-serial format), provide ebook copies before they hit Amazon, Tuckerize subscribers in higher tiers, or write unique work in short format once a month.

The folks who seem to do well at it are the ones who are already producing a lot of steady content, not folks who are trying to maintain a channel for content they were not already working on. It does help to have a readership already, or to have a strong platform to reach potential readers. Like any other social media/display/subscription site it isn't for everyone, but it has some positive aspects for certain creators and can help build multiple streams of income for folks who are establishing themselves.

Harlequin said:

Will it not develop bastions of its own, vbb? Ie the people who get started earlier become unassailable fortresses of money while those who get started later end up competing for smaller and smaller pools. Or is that not a thing that will happen?

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I don't think so. It's not money from Patreon, it's effectively money from an audience, so as long as you have the audience and you can direct them to your Patreon page, you can, as aspirit says, bring in all your money from offsite.

I suppose there's a finite amount any one person is going to spend supporting artists/writers/whatever, but that's true of people buying books, too. We still compete with the biggest names in bookstores--maybe even more so.

And even if that bastioning does occur, it's a lot better than the bastioning that occurs (albeit more subtly) with advertising, because the advertisers will generally reward certain ideological interests over others.

As for the burn-out, that's definitely a real thing. There was a good article on it recently, with some quotes from a guy I really like following (Matt Lees, who co-creates a show called Cool Ghosts). YouTube is even worse for this than Patreon, because it's so algorithmic and it's still basically ad-driven, so if you lose viewers you very quickly lose not just all your income but a lot of potential for future income because of the vagaries of virality and YT's obscenely terrible recommendation system. Patreon depends on consistency, too, but I've been a lot more encouraged by what I've seen from writing people using it, because people sign up with the expectation, as long as you're up front about it, that the drip of content is going to be X frequent. So it's more about setting and keeping to goals, which is still mighty difficult and a very real pressure, but it's not that different from the pressures of any kind of writing.

In fact, I've seen a lot of cases where someone does get sick or has to take a break for a while and they feel worse that people didn't cancel their Patreon donations. Once you've pledged, it's easy to more or less leave it as long as it's not a huge amount of money, and most Patreon pledges are very small. So a show like Cool Ghosts, which hasn't published in ~4 months because Lees is way too busy, still has a Patreon following of people who liked the first two episodes and want to help support another one. Which is it's own form of pressure, but that's any fanbase.

Harlequin said:

I see so many authors who get the bulk of their income from Patreon subscriptions.

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Never heard of Patreon before now. Tried their website, but there doesn't seem to be an explanation of what they are/do unless you watch a video, which wasn't convenient.

I gather it's some sort of a crowd-funding thing?

~Beth, out of the loop

Patrons of the arts have existed since there were arts. This is no different. It gives you a chance to pay your favourite author an amount of money, so that your favourite author is able to write instead of worrying about the daily bread. It has been a normal thing for centuries. People ask strangers for money so they can to do various things all the time. People having different ways to make money is normal, too. I don't see anything exceptional in Patreon. It's convenient and it can be useful, if you already have an audience . I don't see it becoming a trend for everybody. After all, are you going to pay several hundred dollars each month to all your favourite authors on top of the price of books?

Harlequin said:

Patreon is definitely out of my league in terms of running one myself. I do not expect to acquire the kind of fanbase necessary to support it, nor could I cope with it if I did

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Even if I had that level of fanbase, I just don't produce consistently enough. This year I've written two short stories and resurrected one deleted scene from a novel, and for me that's a huge amount of non-novel stuff. (And I've no desire to post early drafts of anything. Oh, hell, no. )

For the naturally prolific, though, I can see the sense in it.