Patreon for Authors

 Patreon I heard of in prison. I have touched on its webpage and gone no further. I had no idea where to go with it and then with the laptop broken there was nothing for me to put onto Patreon. On Thanksgiving I found Creating a Successful Author Patreon.

Now I have some ideas.

The entry level of Patreon is free to join and creators keep complete ownership of their work. (Patreon does get its income through a platform fee, and there is a payment processing fee as well once you start receiving revenue.) You create the membership levels you want to offer to readers on your author account, and each tier you offer correlates with a set of benefits that you will provide for those patrons. Many authors have their lowest tier set to $1 to $3 a month as a “general support” option that could unlock basic author updates, newsletter access to base level digital content.

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 With mid- to lower-level patrons, its common to offer behind the scenes extras such as character studies, deleted scenes or access to personal projects. Writers who use Patreon to publish a serial novel will often offer access at a lower level to cast a larger net of readers. This content is usually available digitally, sometimes with the option for readers to download. Some long-form writers will even upload early drafts or first access to drafts as a way to entice readers into the story before the editing developments.

For upper-level patrons, these benefits can increase to providing an annual, physical edition of the content you’ve been producing through Patreon, discount codes for books or merch, or even short stories. At their highest membership level, indie authors have even offered a signed, physical copy of their next book release.

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 Sites like Patreon give authors more revenue flexibility, but it can also be used as a marketing strategy. For some writers, Patreon is the only platform they use to publish their work and they have a dedicated patron fanbase for it.  For other writers, it may make more sense to use this platform to supplement book sales by selling added content that relates to your book. At the end of the day, these sites are designed to help creators make a living off their work and give fans a direct tool to support them.

Now I need a computer to get material for the site.

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