How Patreon Works, Post #1

I recently sent out a newsletter with a survey in it and part of the survey asked a question about Patreon and in particular my Patreon.com/DouglasClegg page.

Among the possible multiple choice answers was a line for the newsletter subscriber to comment. Most of the comments were about not knowing what Patreon was or how it worked.

Which makes sense. Even I had to figure out what Patreon was or was not for a full year before I decided to try it.

So I’ll explain in 6 brief points how how Patreon works with my readers and me:

1. 1. On Patreon, creators (artists, writers, musicians, etc.) set up an area where their fans and readers can get early access to their work or some aspect of their creative process.
   2. I write short fiction via Patreon (although I’m adding a serialization aspect for longer work.)
   3. While many creators on Patreon charge an automatic monthly amount, I don’t.
   4. On my Patreon account, you only pay when I’ve sent a story out.
   5.  If I only send out three stories in a year, you’re only charged those three times and only for the amount you decided on.
   6. However, my ambition is to reach a point of sending out one story per month.

There’s actually more I’m planning with Patreon to benefit you and maybe have some fun in doing so, on my side of things.  Despite writing horror and suspense, I want to bring you some joy. And some for myself, as well.

But first, I’ll post a note tomorrow about the various current tiers of membership I have up at Patreon. The cheapest is $1, a kind of tip jar, but the main two to look at for getting fiction in digital form are the $3 and $5 tiers, and then there’s audio and even paperback in further tiers.

Each time you pick a tier, you get everything that the tiers before you also get. But I’ll explain that in this post:

Click here to go read Post #2

Or you could just check out my Patreon page and scroll around to see what’s what:

Patreon.com/DouglasClegg