Thinking (response to a point raised elsewhere)
I had food poisoning last night, so I was reading things but not with-it enough to respond to things. A post about patterns made me have some thinky thoughts.
I feel like as a society we may have created a two-headed monster, where one head goes “pay me for my things!” and the other head goes “give me things for free!”.
Personally, I am a huge fan of paying designers for their work - I appreciate free patterns but that is not my only criteria. If someone has put time & effort into making something and then putting together a coherent, well written, well edited, and tested pattern, I will give them money. By the same token though, I do not appreciate when I pay for a pattern and get some poorly thought out idea that was slapped into text with a photo. Not cool, designer, not cool.
But the designer has put a lot of time into making their finished object, and, hopefully, has put together a careful and complete plan for getting you to that SAME finished object. I can see why they would want some compensation. On a $/hour of my enjoyment basis, it works out to pennies, never mind the hours I could actually use said finished object.
Also, designers who publish patterns get feedback. If it’s a free pattern or a paid pattern, they will get emails of varying degrees of “help me” “hold my hand” “re-write your entire pattern to accommodate my particular method of crafting”. If it’s a free pattern, how much help would you want to provide? And if you don’t respond, people will leave snarky feedback about it and complain about the pattern (just look at the comments on many patterns). This is a corollary of “don’t read internet comments” - people are just MEAN. I would want to have got a couple of bucks to cushion the misery.
In a similar vein, I pay for books. I buy things from web comics I enjoy or hit their donate button occasionally, I buy PDF collections of comics or short stories, I support kickstarters to try to “fund creativity”… I want people who make things to continue to make them - and I am comfortable enough that I can do this at a low level throughout the year without a financial pinch to me. (I am not BIG supporting, but a $20 here and there). I think that if I support designers, writers, artists, creators whose work I enjoy, they will maybe keep creating, and I will keep enjoying.
I feel like as a society we may have created a two-headed monster, where one head goes “pay me for my things!” and the other head goes “give me things for free!”.
Personally, I am a huge fan of paying designers for their work - I appreciate free patterns but that is not my only criteria. If someone has put time & effort into making something and then putting together a coherent, well written, well edited, and tested pattern, I will give them money. By the same token though, I do not appreciate when I pay for a pattern and get some poorly thought out idea that was slapped into text with a photo. Not cool, designer, not cool.
But the designer has put a lot of time into making their finished object, and, hopefully, has put together a careful and complete plan for getting you to that SAME finished object. I can see why they would want some compensation. On a $/hour of my enjoyment basis, it works out to pennies, never mind the hours I could actually use said finished object.
Also, designers who publish patterns get feedback. If it’s a free pattern or a paid pattern, they will get emails of varying degrees of “help me” “hold my hand” “re-write your entire pattern to accommodate my particular method of crafting”. If it’s a free pattern, how much help would you want to provide? And if you don’t respond, people will leave snarky feedback about it and complain about the pattern (just look at the comments on many patterns). This is a corollary of “don’t read internet comments” - people are just MEAN. I would want to have got a couple of bucks to cushion the misery.
In a similar vein, I pay for books. I buy things from web comics I enjoy or hit their donate button occasionally, I buy PDF collections of comics or short stories, I support kickstarters to try to “fund creativity”… I want people who make things to continue to make them - and I am comfortable enough that I can do this at a low level throughout the year without a financial pinch to me. (I am not BIG supporting, but a $20 here and there). I think that if I support designers, writers, artists, creators whose work I enjoy, they will maybe keep creating, and I will keep enjoying.