Greetings, folks!
It has been a hot minute since I’ve taken the time to go over some Patreon stuff, which is where I do a lot of my general direct interactions with readers. (It’s a nice little community!)
As a reminder, there are THREE different patreons, and this can be confusing to people, so I am going to explain them (with some pictures) so you know how it works.
The primary patreon looks like this:
The Tip Jar is for those who just want to support, and they gain access to the short stories, general updates, and the patron primary read along. (We just started reading Shadowed Flame together on Friday, and a chapter (with fancy author notes) will be posted once a week.
Pixie Patrons ($5) and higher are also getting to read Storm Without End on every Tuesday (with fancy author notes), along with short stories and everything else.
Otters ($10+), Cindercorns, and Spicy Ponies with Bite gain access to a copy of all new releases a few days ahead of retail release.
How the books work: there will be a post with the copy of the book available for a few weeks for Patreon users. After the time limit is up, the books are removed from Patreon.
The Patreon edition has some additional from-the-author content in the back of the book.
The $25 and $100 tiers have some extra stuff, including advance peeks at other works in progress/additional read alongs (at an erratic rate, as the read alongs are done as material is made available in this cases.)
The next Patreon is for those who only want access to the short stories. This is also my “play money” Patreon. (AKA, Imma take all this money and go have fun with it.) These users get the same exact short stories as the primary patreon, but they don’t get any other content beyond an occasional vote on what short story I should work on next.
The short story Patreon looks like this:
This one is cut and dry. Pick your poison, you will get the poison you pick. Everybody gets the same short story, but higher tiers also get my cat screwing around with you in “short story” format.
But mostly, it’s just Zazzle or Princess screwing with you. Your bonus “story” is being screwed with by one of my cats.
And people seem to enjoy this for some reason…
Unlike the novels, the short story archive remains active in both the short story and primary patreons.
Last but not least is the novel only Patreon. You get just that: a copy of full novels (the kind priced at $6.99 at retail.) The rules are the same; you will have access to the novel for a few weeks, after which the new material will be removed.
There are bonus books of old backlist material that will also expire out / be removed after a few weeks. You will be given a reminder to back your books up / how to load them into Amazon’s cloud when you receive your copy.
If you want to join the novel only patreon, the charged post for the next book will be going live near the end of the month. The page was finally updated to be for days instead of months, as the first run of the patreon proved people will pirate if given an opportunity. (Because the first patreon test was confirmed to be pirated, I will no longer be releasing books any earlier than 3ish days before the retail release. While I’m sorry it did end up coming to this, I can’t afford to lose all my earnings due to someone pirating.)
Unfortunately, while I caught the piracy in action, I was not able to identify which specific account had done the piracy, although the person was ejected permanently from my discord server.
Pirates ruined the party for everybody, to say the least.
Phew. Now I am back to the trenches. I need to get all of the read alongs queued in, put groceries away, and get to work on a Somewhat Sekrit Projekt the primary patreons know about because they voted on what I’d be working on.
Happy Reading!
~R.J. Blain
I may have to also join the short story patreon for the kitties…
Thank you for the explanation of the levels.
I was a bit confused between the $25 level Cindercorns and the $5 book only Cindercorns when you spoke about Cindercorns in some of your posts. This explains it quite nicely.
Pirates are not like Jack Sparrow. They are more like Edward Teach. That is a bad break but you do what you need to do and I appreciate that you are giving us a early read with pateron.