No automagic download, I fear! Paypal acknowledged the payment but I got no mail about a download link. Or should I have clicked that button that said "return to merchant"? I didn't, and might have missed a file that way?
Re: Sustainable Funding ModelsmizkitFebruary 2 2010, 14:02:38 UTC
Oh, hm. Those are older buttons. I'll replace them! In the meantime, er, my Paypal email address is open AT mizkit DOT com, which information seems sort of crass to tell you. :)
Re: Sustainable Funding ModelseldestmuseFebruary 2 2010, 14:17:39 UTC
Pft. You deserve to be compensated for your time! Payment for service isn't crass--any more than a plumber telling me where I can make his check out to :D
I'm not sure I can figure out how to work paypal with an e-mail address, but I will try!
Thanks for the link to Five Card Draw. I'm sorry I missed seeing that before.
I'm interested in this novella, but I'm curious about what you mean by "patron" and "minimum buy-in." Exactly what would I be a patron of, and what would I be buying into?
Also, if you don't mind my asking... How'd you come to the price? $10 is what I'd pay at Amazon for a full-length novel. It's what they're charging for paperback or Kindle editions of the Negotiator Trilogy books. And you only get a fraction of that. I'm not disputing your right to charge what you deem appropriate. Nor am I suggesting at this point that you lower the price when others have already bought in at that level. I'm just trying to understand what's behind the number.
I guess what I'm really asking in both cases is this: You say it's an experiment designed to test a new sustainable model, which is admirable and something I feel I could get behind. But... could you actually explain the model?
Well, last summer I did this thing where I basically said, "Want to be a short story patron?" and asked people to buy in to Hot Time. If I reached my minimum fundraising goal, which was a little over $800, I'd write the short story (except it turned out to be a novella, when I did write it, so frankly they got a bargain--I'd have been paid about $4K by my Old Races publisher for the novella) and make it available to the people who were my patrons for the piece. It's essentially a modern day way of becoming a patron of the arts, I suppose you'd say; you buy in and commission a story, to which you then get exclusive access. I made it clear at the time that it was not a permanent exclusivity; I was pretty much always going to offer a second opportunity to buy in, and then, as it says above, the story goes off the market until I find a traditional publisher for it. So the exclusivity remains pretty high, if not *as* high as it was with only a single buy-in opportunity
( ... )
I'll put together a blog post on the topic sometime this week, since it's probably worth reiterating and I'm sure there were others not around while I was running the initial commission structure.
Largely, I have no issue at *all* with a publisher doing all the heavy lifting for publication and promotion--I do the creative work, it's true, but they do everything else--and I would not be able to successfully run a crowdfunding project without the name recognition I've been granted by my publisher*, so while I would love, over the long term, to do several patron-based projects, I'll never step away from my traditional publishers. I love 'em too much. :)
The first wave had people join up at anywhere from $10 to $100, really--some very generous souls out there! I'd have probably set a minimum buy-in of $5, myself, but since it wasn't a choice at the time, for this story, at least, the buy-in is and remains $10. Maybe next time I'll be able to do a $5 patronage.
*not, at least, without declaring financial emergencies, which does seem to
( ... )
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I'm not sure I can figure out how to work paypal with an e-mail address, but I will try!
Reply
I'm interested in this novella, but I'm curious about what you mean by "patron" and "minimum buy-in." Exactly what would I be a patron of, and what would I be buying into?
Also, if you don't mind my asking... How'd you come to the price? $10 is what I'd pay at Amazon for a full-length novel. It's what they're charging for paperback or Kindle editions of the Negotiator Trilogy books. And you only get a fraction of that. I'm not disputing your right to charge what you deem appropriate. Nor am I suggesting at this point that you lower the price when others have already bought in at that level. I'm just trying to understand what's behind the number.
I guess what I'm really asking in both cases is this: You say it's an experiment designed to test a new sustainable model, which is admirable and something I feel I could get behind. But... could you actually explain the model?
Reply
Reply
Reply
Largely, I have no issue at *all* with a publisher doing all the heavy lifting for publication and promotion--I do the creative work, it's true, but they do everything else--and I would not be able to successfully run a crowdfunding project without the name recognition I've been granted by my publisher*, so while I would love, over the long term, to do several patron-based projects, I'll never step away from my traditional publishers. I love 'em too much. :)
The first wave had people join up at anywhere from $10 to $100, really--some very generous souls out there! I'd have probably set a minimum buy-in of $5, myself, but since it wasn't a choice at the time, for this story, at least, the buy-in is and remains $10. Maybe next time I'll be able to do a $5 patronage.
*not, at least, without declaring financial emergencies, which does seem to ( ... )
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