State of the Erudition

Hello everyone! I know, I should probably have another thrilling installment of Last War in Albion up today—people are no doubt dying to learn more about fractals. But it’s been a while since I’ve just done a general update, and there’s a fair amount of stuff. So Last War in Albion will have to wait two weeks. (Wait, two weeks? What’s happening next week? Well… read on.)

So, first of all, I’ve got a proof of TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 8 on its way to me. I still have some ebook formatting to do, and I’m obviously going to get Kickstarter orders fulfilled before I put it on general sale, but I figured I should announce the fact that this is happening imminently.

Second of all, and excitingly for UK folks, Penn and I will be tabling at Thought Bubble next month in Harrogate. We’ll mostly be pushing Britain a Prophecy because it’s a comics convention, but I’ll have any Eruditorum Press stuff at the table as well. We would love to see you.

Third, I wanted to talk a bit about the Patreon. It took a pretty sizable hit earlier this year when I had to nuke and restart it—it went from paying our rent every month with some to spare to falling well short of our rent. That’s been rough. And so I figured now would be a good time to announce two things. First is that… well, you remember that time I accidentally wrote a book? This time I accidentally wrote a novella-sized essay on Joan Baez. Seriously, there’s a 26,500 word essay called “Queen Shit: A Defense of Joan Baez” up on the Patreon. It’ll be here next week, because I realized while I was writing it that there’s a big Joan Baez documentary out and given that I’m not going to embargo it for long.

Which brings us to number two. Because honestly, I don’t like embargoing stuff. Especially not with the collapse of Twitter and the lack of social media. I’d much rather be putting stuff out here for public consumption. Which brings us to Doctor Who.

There’s one school of thought that says that the obvious solution to my low Patreon is to just put my reviews of the 60th Anniversary specials and of Series 14 on the Patreon and make people go there. But like I said, I don’t like embargoing stuff. Especially not things like reviews. I mean, come on—don’t you want a proper Eruditorum Press comment section for The Star Beast? Don’t you want podcasts? I do.

So I’m going to do this the perverse way. Right now my plan is to paywall all my Doctor Who reviews. But if enough people back the Patreon between now and November 23rd, I’ll switch gears and do them publicly. In fact, if enough people do it I’ll do podcasts too, and make those public. That’s right—the more people who back the Patreon the less exclusive it gets. It’s like capitalist fundraising as understood by weirdo anarchists who hate capitalism!

OK. So right now the Patreon is at about $2300 a month. So let’s set some tiers up. I’ll do a more thorough and sustained push for this when we’re a little closer to transmission on The Star Beast, but I figure if I’m announcing stuff I’ll announce stuff.

At $2800 a month, all Doctor Who reviews will be posted publicly to the site within 24 hours of completion. (I’ll still give ‘em to Patrons the moment they’re done, and then put them on the site the next morning.)

At $3300 a month, I’ll do podcasts on the 60th Anniversary Specials and Series 14. I already have guests lined up for the specials. They’re fantastic. I’ll announce them… well, when we’re a bit closer to that goal.

And at $3800 a month—which is notably around where the old Patreon was at its peak—I’ll make those podcasts public as well.

And in addition to pushing us towards those goals you can get

• That Joan Baez essay
• The Whittaker era of TARDIS Eruditorum (currently working on The Haunting of Villa Diodati there, which means The Timeless Children is next month, for those who like me screaming.
• Digital copies of all of my books.
• All five issues of Britain a Prophecy
• Literally tons of other stuff I’ve posted there. I finished off An Increasingly Inaccurately Named Trilogy! I even made an ebook out of it! I have a fragment of an essay/book/thing about Alan Turing! I’ve got a Barbenheimer essay that’s probably also the first post of the Gatwa Eruditorum!
• The knowledge that you’re helping a queer creator who continues to remain stubbornly independent in a world that’s increasingly hostile to the idea of queer people creating art on our own terms.

So that’s the pitch. I’m really excited for Doctor Who to be back—actual, proper “this is a television show that is about things and is interesting to talk about” Doctor Who. I’d love to share that excitement and that conversation with you. And I hope that you can help be a part of making that happen.

Here’s the Patreon link again, And I’ll be back next week with, erm, nearly twenty-seven thousand words about Joan Baez. Because I have absolutely zero commercial instincts and live at the continual mercy of ADHD hyperfocus.