#(they're not on the PBS - cheap meds in australia are only cheap if they're covered by the PBS)

[not-poignant]

Hello! Wanted to ask about Ream. You said that you set your tiers a long time ago, and with current horrors of Patreon and such will you add some tiers to Ream so that once-a-month payers on Patreon could find a tier with same price on Ream and would be comfortable moving? Thanks!

Hi anon!

So this is something I've been thinking over for months actually.

At first I was like 'yes of course' and then a very good friend sat me down and I realised that...actually maybe not.

Here's the reason (tl;dr I haven't increased my income in 10 years and actually cost of living has gone up in that period of time and I need to eat too):

Those prices haven't changed in a decade. I haven't had a 'wage increase' on that front in a decade. You can't change tier prices once they're made, they're locked in place forever (until you delete or retire the tier).

Not only that, but I offer about...3-4 times as much as I used to.

In the end, I increased my prices on Ream (a semi-midway point between charging once and charging twice) because of inflation and cost of living.

I know that everyone reading this is impacted by that too, and that might mean some people can't subscribe to Ream (or can't subscribe on the same tier) for a few dollars more because it's just too much, but I am now drastically undercharging compared to so many other authors on the market who do subscription.

Where I charge $5 USD for base early access, most charge between $10-20. I settled on $9 USD on Ream. Some authors have tiers of like... $100-200 per month, and I couldn't ever dream of doing that. But this is my career, and it's the money I use to pay for food, bills, etc. I don't make a minimum wage with the hours I work, and the idea of just hitting the country's average yearly income feels like a distant dream.

Granted, some of that could be down to my marketing options (like maybe I'd make more if I took all my writing offline and made people pay for all of it, but I don't want to do that, I like the model I do now, but it's dependent on those who can comfortably afford to support it... supporting it - if they want!!)

When I set up Ream, and set up the new tiers, I set them up with how much the cost of living has changed in a decade and how much other authors are charging on the whole. And I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I have 10 years behind me, I'm offering 3-4 times as much as I used to and am only charging about 50-80% more, cost of living has changed, and since I don't rely on book royalties (I love Perth Shifters but royalties work out to about $30 every 3 months), subscription is where the changes need to happen.

I'm not super happy about that, like, obviously I don't want people to feel hard done by, but all I can do is remind myself - and remind you and others anon - that unlike 99% of other authors in subscription, almost all of my writing becomes freely available if folks just have patience. That's something I know for a fact some other authors think I'm stupid for doing, lol, but I prefer doing it this way because it feels fandom and community friendly in a different way.

So even if folks can't afford a few dollars more to subscribe on Ream (you can become a follower though and still get email notifications - no one needs to pay to follow me on Ream, that's completely free), you just need to be patient. Like I get it, that few dollars is the difference sometimes between a bill getting paid and not getting paid - I feel and live that myself. I'm so angry at the Patreon situation, because honestly, if my account goes tomorrow and I get banned there, I may have to quit writing if Ream can't pick up fast. I cannot work for like... 50c an hour.

And I need to make some posts about this on Patreon obviously, but the stress of it is so overwhelming, because it's like staring down the barrel of a potentially career-ending policy decision.

Anyway, re: tier prices, the one exception to not changing / offering half-priced or lower-priced tiers is the merch tier, where I have thought about approaching Ream with getting an ongoing discount code, since I calculated sending merch on the merch tier at the $25 USD rate with the awareness that some people would be paying twice as much, and the leap there is the most significant one. That's a place where I'm willing to compromise if I can work that out, and Ream is typically very accommodating.

Folks who can't afford it still get access to nearly everything eventually - and not in a year, but like...in a few months, or even just a handful of weeks.

Folks who don't think my writing is worth a modest increase can choose to bow out whenever they want (or sign up to a lower tier and still get access to nearly everything eventually)!

I am grateful to any and all folks who choose to support my writing whether it's financially or not, and I do get that like, sometimes the budget just does not allow for an increase of any kind. Or maybe you only signed up this year and don't believe in paying more than what you do already, and so it doesn't matter that my prices have been the same for a decade. Most artists / creators / writers have put up their book prices / art prices / etc. Ream is the first time I've ever done it.

Anyway on the matter of the merch tier, I'll talk to Ream about organising some kind of perma-discount and offering it specifically in that tier. For the rest, I'll keep thinking about it, and maybe talk to Ream to see what they suggest too.

fdsalkfkdjsa

Anyway, I'm just... I am sorry anon, in a perfect world, I would have been able to incrementally increase my tier prices all along with a lot of warning in advance. And I'm also like, extremely and intensely hoping that I can just stay on Patreon, but that seems less and less likely with their new policy changes. I'm not uprooting, I will keep posting on Patreon until the lights metaphorically go out. It's just, they could kick me in an hour and I'd have no recourse and there'd be no point in appealing. Or they could kick me in 5 years, or 10.

In some ways this isn't a problem until Patreon makes it a problem for all of us, but yeah, that's where I'm at. A friend basically reminded me that it's okay for me to value my writing and my 10 years of experience and my track record and my stories a bit more, and I took their advice to heart, and then have felt terribly guilty ever since, lol. I'll keep thinking about my options here, and what I can do, because I obviously don't want to leave a lot of people behind, either.