Fundraising Update

The Patreon hit $600 this morning. Which means that I’m posting this after informing my boss that I’ll be stepping down at the end of the semester and not, as previously discussed, applying for a promotion. I’ve got four weeks to serve out because obviously I’m not going to be a complete asshole about this, but in less than a month I am going to be a full-time writer again.

Which… holy shit guys. When I set up that $200 a week goal, I thought it was a longshot. Not something we were going to blow through in thirty-six hours. I’m stunned and, uncharacteristically, at a loss for words. There are a lot of things I love about this job, but the feeling of support that you all give me is by far the thing that most often stuns me into a humbled and grateful silence.

That said, I noted in comments on my last post that I was not in any sort of immediate financial insecurity. This fact just changed. The Patreon is currently at $601, just a dollar a week above the threshold at which this adventure is affordable. Patreons go down over time. So while we’ve made an absolutely massive accomplishment that I’m so, so thankful for, we also need to keep going. I’ve set up two more Patreon goals. One at $650 a week, which marks the point where I can breathe a sigh of relief. If I’d had any idea that $200 was a 36 hour goal and not, as I assumed, a really hard slog that I optimistically might make before a job offer came through, this is where I actually would have set the “quit my job” line. It means that I can lose a big patron and not immediately be plunged into a crisis. It means that I can go decent chunks of time without raising alarms about the Patreon level. Above $600 is “not a crisis.” Above $650 is comfortable.

There’s also a $700 goal, which marks the point where the Patreon is 100% replacing the day job income and I’m not relying on Kickstarter money to make the math work. This means that I can avoid situations like what happened with the Eruditorum 7 Kickstarter where to fulfill it I’m going to have to run the Volume 8 Kickstarter, and that I can use any profit that’s remaining after a Kickstarter goes through for long-term savings projects like a house or a vacation or a vagina.

These are both really important thresholds too, even if they aren’t as flashy as quitting my job. And so to help us get to them, I’ve created two new Patreon tiers. For $10 a post, you can join in on quarterly voice chat hangouts. Who knows what these will be? I’ll do Q&As, I’m sure, but I might also drag in special guests, or look at all playing a game together, or maybe live-watching something. We’ll see, but it’ll be fun.

And then, at $25 a post, comes the really fun one: custom books. At this Patreon tier, I will make you a custom edition of one of my books. Some of these will be nice, hand-bound art pieces. Others will be absolutely ridiculous. I might send you a 3.5” floppy disk formatted for Mac OS 7 with the book in ClarisWorks format. I might set up a private Twitter account and tweet the book 240 characters at a time over the course of a year. Whatever it is, though, it’ll be one of a kind and all yours. Those tiers are available over at the Patreon.

But while I’ll be banging the drum on this for a while yet, I don’t want to end on that note. I want to end by saying thank you. I said in my Monday post that this has been the most incredible ride of my life. I’m so amazingly happy that it’s nowhere near over, and I can’t wait to find out where it goes. Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

Now to go finish up The Pilot so I can send it to my patrons.

All my love,

El