Becoming a patron of the arts

[pegkerr]

There was an interesting discussion on Steve Brust's blog recently, prompted by a letter he sent to Miss Manners which Miss Manners actually printed and answered (Steve was asking about the etiquette of putting a donation button on his website). As a number of Steve's readers pointed out, Miss Manners in her response didn't perhaps entirely

Comments

[comrade_cat]

I always wanted to do that too if I won the lotto. I still remember Harlan Ellison's painfully vivid obituary for Avram Davidson, my favourite writer. Davidson's writing was rich and chewy and like eating a chocolate brownie of the mind. His prose style always cheered me up when I was depressed.

Most of my monetary spending is imaginary though, as I don't have a lot of money. I buy books & review books on lj & amazon. & I've sent 5 bucks or so to various authors in trouble like Vera Nazarian.

Barbara Hambly is writing short stories set in her most popular universes (she did a poll on her lj) and putting them up on her website for $5/pdf download. She's going to use this as leverage to try to sell her sequels to publishers, & I hope she succeeds.

I like this chipping in for various things, to help out authors or even fans (there was a chip in scholarship for sending fen of colour to conventions). It's community. It's a means of equalizing wealth, and allowing poorer people to help out other people even though they're not rich. The monetary equivalent of a barn-raising.

Anyway, most free websites like wikipedia or fetlife have donation buttons so you can support them if you want.