Patreon works two different ways. The first way, the way used on the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon campaign, is that patron are charged once a month, and they get rewards once a month. The other way Patreon can work is to only charge patrons when the content-creator actually has new content. This seems to be used a lot for web-comic creators… when they produce a new comic, the patrons get charged and get the comic. Whether that happens once a week, once a month or with a gap of three months, the patrons only get charged when there’s new stuff.
I’ve been contemplating using that second model as a way to help get Pax Orionis going. Use Patronage to write the book a bit at a time. But there are a few questions:
- The book will be composed of many different bits of wildly different lengths. A one-page memo here, a thirty-page narrative there. Charge the same for the release of a self-contained section, regardless of page count? Or charge for the release of sections of particular page counts (which might mean that it’ll take several releases to get a complete section out)?
- And then, how much to charge? Obviously not very much… fifty cents, seventy five, a buck at most. Given fees and such, i don’t think it can go below fifty cents.
- What to do for “premium” patrons? One the APR Patreon, patrons who pledge more per month get higher-rez versions of the rewards and additional CAD diagrams and other bits and pieces. For the Pax Orionis Patreon, I’m thinking that higher-level patrons would get a bonus technical illustration… anything from a CAD diagram of an Orion vehicle, to a weapons system, launch vehicle, spacecraft, aircraft, a map, etc. I don’t think I’d do more than two, maybe three levels of patronage.
So… what do y’all think? Suggestions? Worth doing? Anyone know of a similar sort of thing with someone successfully creating a novel a bit at a time via Patreon?
A good case can be made that I’d be better off simply making P.O. available for free bits at a time, available to all. So perhaps… the P.O. Patrons get these releases, say, three months before the world as a whole? Get to see ’em in the first draft, and get to critique and perhaps see their suggestions incorporated?