One Month In

So it’s been a month since I launched my Patreon campaign and I thought it would be a good idea to take stock and see how things are going so far.

In terms of the actual content I’ve been creating for patrons, I’ve had a blast. Altered Words, flash fiction and Inklings are all things I used to do all the time but somewhere along the way, I stopped.

In terms of patrons – well right now, I’m at a nice round number of 2 patrons, who both signed up in the 1st week of my launch.

I’m not going to lie…I was hoping more people would sign up from the start but I also know that I’m a relative unknown in the publishing world. Followers and friends on social media are well and good but if no one knows my writing or my style, it kind of doesn’t bode well for picking up patrons.

I’m hoping that by putting some of my content out there for free, and adding some flash fiction to the mix, people weill get a feel for my style and hopefully sign up if they enjoy what they read.

It’s difficult though. It would be the same if I were putting out a book and not just short fiction. No one knows me – so why should they take a chance? I can only hope that the few who do help spread the word.

I’m kind of surprised that people didn’t even take me up on my free offers of an eBook for a tweet/post/like though. Maybe what “they” say is true and the flooding of free eBooks on the market has made the novelty wear off.

Either way, it’s given me the push I needed to start self-publishing, something I wanted to do but always held myself back on. It was a bit daunting – I’m learning as I go, doing my own layout & cover design, trying to balance promotion and trying not to be annoying about it, still making time to get actual WRITING done – and making mistakes along the way (like putting the wrong settings for my Patreon account and not getting paid for the first month of content because of it :P)

But…I’m trying. It’s an adventure. All I can do is keep at it, keep putting out my work and hoping something catches on and reaches the people who will enjoy it. The key is finding those readers.