The Patreon I Didn’t

Wed 1 Feb 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Posted by: Gavin

Recently I’ve been finding that after sending some emails, instead of them being sent, they mysteriously end up back in Drafts. I’m using a gmail account (why did webhosts give up offering email?) and Apple’s Mail app on my 2020 Mac laptop if anyone has any clue. I am guessing the years and years of email have added up and the system is just slow so that when I hit send, it is not live-saved so goes to Drafts. Which sounds as if I know what I might be talking about. But I don’t.

Anyway, back in 2014 I was thinking about starting a Patreon — I liked the way Clarkesworld and some other people were using it and thought it could be a good additional support for the press, as well as being fun. I made a video (somewhere) and apparently wrote this up as an email. I’m always wondering whether we should do this or that thing, buy AOL, sell our New York skyscraper HQ, drive across the country hand-delivering our books, etc., etc. I do like the line below about every dollar being a 92 cents we don’t have to pay on rent. (There is a fabulous anonymous reader out there who sends us a month’s rent ever year: what an amazing surprise, what a gift that’s been!)

Turns out we published 5 originals, 2 Peter Dickinson reprints, a chapbook by Greer Gilmans, plus 2 ebooks of Howard Waldrop’s Old Earth Books collections that year (12 ebooks). We didn’t, suffice to say, ever launch a Patreon and now since I’m thinking about what else I can do to slow everything down here to my new slow levels, we won’t be any time soon. But this amused me, so maybe it will amuse here:

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We publish weird and awesome books. We’re the publisher of first resort for half a dozen or so of the best books every year and we’d like to send them—either in print or ebook form—to you!

Some of our books sell by the truckload, some don’t! But: they’re all hands down page turners each in their own unique way. Note: none of them is the most unique, because as you know uniqueness can’t be quantified.

Why Patreon? Well, we never did set up a subscription option for our books—the LCRW sub gets in the way—and we never managed a Kickstarter (there was that lunch I was going to do and then the crosscountry tour—but that’s a different post) but we do manage to put books out on a semi-consistent manor, so, hey, why not? Sign up, get books!
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​FAQ
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​Q. You sell books, right?
A. Yes! And this way you will get them slightly before anyone else!
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​Q. How often do you publish books?
A. For 2014 we are on track to publish 7 books, 1 chapbook, 2 issues of our zine, LCRW, and ebooks of each (10 ebooks).
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​Q. Is it worth backing this at the one dollar a month level?
​A. Yes! Support us at $1 a month and suddenly our office rent has just dropped by $0.92! (After Patreon’s cut) Less rent: more $$ and time for ads/publicity = more books sold = happy authors = universe collapses into itself at the sight of a happy author.
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