Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

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I am considering doing a thing.

So here's the thing:

I am writing a lot of stories set in the history of the Price-Healy family, slowly pushing my way toward the modern day. There are also stories set in the present day, such as the Antimony-centric novella, "Bad Dream Girl," which is going to appear in the anthology Glitter and Mayhem. A lot of these get given away for free on my website, in a variety of formats, with covers and everything. I like keeping the canon centralized.

That said, unless an anthology is commissioning something, it can be hard to carve out the time for what is essentially unpaid work. I need to prioritize my time according to what I'm getting paid for (which is why, for example, the rate of "Velveteen vs." stories went up so sharply when I got a print contract). So...

How would people feel if I opened a "tip jar," with the understanding that for every X amount of dollars, I would add a story in one of my universes to the master list of Paid For Things? Those stories would still have to fit around everything else, but it would make them easier to schedule, and would also make my lights easier to keep on. The stories themselves would remain free on my website, so if you didn't want to donate, you could just stand back and wait for nature to take its course.

Thoughts?
Tags: contemplation, requesting things
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  • 279 comments
Personally I think this is super exciting. I get a chance to support you, and get more great reading.

You're probably already on top of this, but I know you mentioned at the book release that your publisher or agent didn't want to be putting out more books than you are, is an additional set of stories going to be a similar concern for them?

I know with our dance group in the past we've had to work on the balance of getting ourselves seen and undercutting getting paid for paying gigs.
Short stories actually don't stress my publisher; people who are in a position to find them are people who would buy six books from me a year. It's the shelf space and casual readers that can become an issue.
Sweet!
Then I change my comment to:

Hail! The Prolific Writer!
There will be Donations!
Man, I would totally buy six books a year. Now I'm kinda sad I don't live in that universe.

...I'm going to go back to my Toby Daye reread now.