Coming Updates to Patreon and My Posting Schedule

Hey Everybody!

Now that things have settled down somewhat, after a very hectic fall and winter–including starting a new job, moving twice, the death of tumblr, and a whole slew of other things going on both online and offline–I feel like I both now have a chance to take a bit of a breath. It’s also a good time to take a look at revamping some of the broader aspects of how I post and publish my stories in general, and look at whether I’m providing the sorts of content that a) you all want to see on a more regular basis, and b) managing my time and energy to make sure I avoid a burnout which, to be honest, is looming over the horizon to some extent–but then, when isn’t it?

The largest piece of this whole puzzle is the death of tumblr back in December, which was, while a blow, a bit of a blessing in disguise. There were more things that I hated about tumblr than things that I liked, and while I had adjusted my stuff to succeed on the platform as best I could, I was never really happy with how my stories looked or were organized on the platform. In particular, the thing that was an unfortunate necessity on the platform, was that I felt I had to break my stories into smaller parts that I would post in long series, mostly because long form text posts were really aggravating to find on your feed, and because the general attention span of tumblr seemed to be…rather short. When I started this Patreon, it felt natural to just keep posting stories in this manner, and so I tailored a lot of my goals to focus more on quantity of posts–but now that tumblr isn’t relevant, I have an opportunity to go back and look at whether the choices I made to accommodate that platform make sense or not now that I’m primarily posting elsewhere. I don’t think they do, and so I want to make some changes to the kind of content I’m posting, and also the form I’m posting it in.

The biggest change I will be making going forward is that I will no longer be posting stories in short chunks, as I have up to now. Having asked some Patrons and other readers over the last few weeks, the general consensus that I have been receiving is that the short chunks make the stories difficult to read, hard to search for, and the trickling out of content breaks up the flow of the story in a way that isn’t really conducive to enjoying them. After this current story wraps up, I’ll instead post stories in their entirety–or for very long stories where it makes sense to have soe breaks, I’ll post them in episode/chapter long chunks all at once.

However, I do still want to provide you all with regular content of some sort, both here on Patreon, and over on my new blog on WordPress. I most certainly want to continue doing the interactive stories I have been doing, and hope to post two chunks a week on a regular basis of whatever interactive is currently ongoing. To supplement that, I will be posting a variety of shorter content on a regular basis as well–captions, short sketches, more general musings and blog posts about my process, reviews of other stories I find interesting, and probably archival posts, as I go back through my archive in order to collect older stories into more readable chunks, and just to revise and revisit some of the stories I wrote in the past that I could improve upon now. I’m not planning on a rigid schedule, but I would like to continue posting five days a week or so, though depending on my other commitments, it could fluctuate from week to week.

Since I’m revamping all of this, I decided to take another look at my Patron rewards, and will, starting in March, be making a few changes to the tiers I currently have. Some of the major changes will be:

1. The archive at the $1 level is going to be easier to access–instead of adding people manually to access it, I will simply be providing you with an open link to the folder. I will also, in the near future, start adding some other work to it, because the pile of unfinished stories and things on hiatus is, sadly, always growing.
2. As some new Patron exclusive content, at the $1 level, I will be posting a weekly roundup of stories, sites, art and various other stuff that I have found throughout the week that I found interesting. A number of people have mentioned missing the roundups I used to do, and now that tumblr is gone, finding new stuff is always more of a challenge. I tend to have decent luck though, so I’ll help as best I can!
3. The suggested stories, both the ability to submit suggestions and access to the finished stories themselves, will be moving from the $1 tier, up to the $5 dollar tier instead.
4. Folks at the $5 tier will have access to exclusive sketches, sneak peeks of stories in progress, early access to finished stories, and access to other exclusive content!
5. Starting at the $5 tier, you’ll have access to my discord channel for Patrons! I’ve been testing the server out for a while, and I’ve found it a decent place to chat, run RP sessions with patrons, and post captions stories. Folks at the $5 dollar level will get access to all the captions I write (and they’ll always be posted on the discord server first) and also have the ability to suggest ideas and photos of captions they want to see!
6. Folks at the $10 tier will continue to have access to my current drafts and work in progress. I know stuff has been hectic lately, and I’ve tried to keep up with permissions, but if you’re a ten dollar patron, and you don’t have access to my drafts folder on google drive, let me know, and I can get you added!

All of these changes, aside from the shifting of the suggested stories to the $5 dollar tier, will be phased in over the next week or so. The current batch of suggestions is already in the works, and I’ll continue giving $1 tier patrons access until the beginning of March. There may be more changes and new kinds of content coming in the rest of the year–I’m working out the possibility of RP sessions for patrons, some sort of reworked commission system, and various other ideas, but I want to test my workload before adding any new commitments! Sometime this summer, I’m also looking at readjusting the prices of my tiers as well, which I haven’t really looked at since I started this several years ago–but that’s all in the future for the moment.

Thanks as always for your support, and if you have any questions, leave a comment below, or send me a message!