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

digitaleopard

March 12 2013, 02:55:05 UTC 4 years ago Edited:  March 12 2013, 02:55:44 UTC

YES.

How much to pay for another book of Vel stories?

(I know, you just finished. But it can't hurt to ask, right?)

seanan_mcguire

March 12 2013, 03:09:11 UTC 4 years ago

This would only be to move the InCryptid stories up in the queue. Velveteen, when it happens, will happen after I've had time to properly absorb and prepare the new status quo. That's something I'll have to be really clear about: I'm not saying "give me money and tell me what to write," I'm saying "toss into a general pool and periodically level up to a finished work."

digitaleopard

March 12 2013, 03:32:47 UTC 4 years ago

*laughs* I know, the stories come when they come. I should have been more clear - I meant "Let us know when it's okay to start tossing money for project 'X'." I love the InCryptid stuff, The Vel stories just resonate for me in a special way.

If my comment was a source of cranky, please tell Jen, she can throw stuff at me. Probably not cats, but I can hope.

seanan_mcguire

March 12 2013, 03:33:22 UTC 4 years ago

Nope, no cranky, I just really don't want to set incorrect expectations.

mneme

March 12 2013, 16:04:06 UTC 4 years ago

*nodnod* It might be worthwhile, once you're comfortable with a general sponsorship jar, to have differentiated jars for things you've got in the queue already (i.e. not "tell me what to write" but "I could write, X, Y, or Z and you can contribute to any or all of them; you cannot contribute to R or A' because I don't have anything in the queue for them")--at the very least, it could be useful market research on the relative demand for more work of yours on the subject in question. Then again, might not be worthwhile for you.

seanan_mcguire

March 12 2013, 16:33:20 UTC 4 years ago

Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope.

If I do this—and comments like this are moving it more and more into the "maybe not" column—there can't be any steerage. You're not buying a cameo, you're not directing what I write or what universe I write it in, you're buying time on the schedule to move things I was already writing forward. Most universes will not have this many shorts. All universes are closed to people pushing me toward them.

mneme

March 12 2013, 16:37:12 UTC 4 years ago

Ok. I was trying to explicitly frame this as pocket kickstarter, not as -any- form of steerage (that is, you choosing to random a specific project rather than sponsored work in general).

seanan_mcguire

March 12 2013, 16:58:31 UTC 4 years ago

And I explicitly don't want to be a pocket Kickstarter, I want to be a tip jar. People expect "extras" from Kickstarters, and I have neither the funding nor the bandwidth.

mneme

March 12 2013, 17:09:38 UTC 4 years ago

Not what I meant to imply (clearly, I'm still mired in last decade's "ransom model" rather than the new cost+ thing), but best to let it lie here.

Is there a way to frame a tip jar such that there isn't a risk of an over-promise? The models that immediately come to mind are the vague-but-effective "as long as people contribute enough to the tip jar to make it worthwhile for me, I'll keep putting free stuff up occasionally" and the slightly less vague, but still very much under your control "every once in a while, when I've got bandwith, I'll empty the tip jar; after it fills to a minimum level I'll put something up" concept.