Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: thoughtful
  • Music: Glee, "Express Yourself."

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

skelody

March 11 2013, 23:53:56 UTC 4 years ago

That sounds like... ooh, I forget which author did something like that. Anyway, I suppose the trick is figuring out an X that is sustainable and worthwhile for you...

archangelbeth

March 12 2013, 00:13:59 UTC 4 years ago

haikujaguar is a self-publishing (and small-press published) author who has done this (IIRC, Spots the Space Marine was roughly on this model), and still does it with other serialized works -- posts 1 update a week and if the tip-jar goes up to... $15? Then we get another update or two for that week. The episodes eventually go up on her webpage, too, and at the end, she bundles it up and makes an ebook out of it. (And often a physbook and audiobook.)

There may be other authors who've done similar, of course, but that's the one I'm familiar with.

elialshadowpine

March 12 2013, 03:07:50 UTC 4 years ago

There are several other authors who have, actually :)

My exes did this for awhile, too, although I think they've stopped because the pressure for them was too much, with my ex-gf having massive health issues. But at the height, they were pretty successful with it, at least enough to pay for her health care while her husband was in-between jobs, and that was in 06 or so. Back when someone asking for donations to help pay their medical normally got flamed for daring to ask for help -- nowadays, those sort of things are pretty common, never mind crowdfunding via sites like Kickstarter or Indie Go Go.

(That's mostly a tangent, but it really is amazing to me in how less than 5yrs, donation drives for individuals and tip jars for artists of all types and crowdfunded projects are completely normalized, sans the odd asshole.)