We Did It, Patreon!
Patreon has announced that it will not roll out the fee changes that they dropped on us last week.
I'm sure everyone on Patreon is joining me in the current sigh of relief. I really hope this means that Patreon can stay a healthy, positive home for artists.
It seems that fee-fees have, for once, been valued over fees. Thank the mighty Fee Gods.
I'm also pretty impressed with the way they phrased their apology, which included some of the terminology I used in my post--it seems, right now, that they do actually understand that the problem is inserting their business concerns into the relationship between creators and patrons. They are a middle man, and the successful middle man makes himself as unobtrusive as possible.
I know some of you may still be looking for alternatives to this platform, because there is an amount of trust that was broken, and may not ever be fully regained (see Livejournal--turns out that first break was the beginning of the end). I certainly will be watching Kickstarter's Drip with interest (although I suspect that dreadful name will be a serious stumbling block. Imagine saying "I have a Drip" out loud in public and expecting people to know that you're not talking about an embarrassing medical problem. Branding matters, son).
But for now, I am happy with this result and happy to stay and happy at least that Patreon has shown itself to be responsive to its user base and willing to own up to mistakes. The turnaround seemed long to us, but in Corporate Time, it was lightning-fast.
Thank you to all of you who wrote and Tweeted and otherwise contacted Patreon to protest this change. I know it often feels like it's difficult to make your voice heard right now, but this one time, for this one issue, we did, and it mattered. That is enough for me to plow forward.
The sad part is, I had SUCH A COOL HOLIDAY PROJECT for you guys! But I put it on hold in order to see whether I was even going to be on Patreon much longer. I'm deciding whether to go ahead with it at this later date over the course of this week--in which the Laboratory will be graced with the presence of Heath's mum, who is ever so much better than the Lab deserves.
Either way, look for live-tweeting and live-stream QA over the next many days, once I finish up my Great Space Vidya Book.
I could stand a few more days waking up to Alabama Democrats and companies rolling back bad decisions. Happy holidays, every one.
Keelah Se'lai, my friends.
Comments (12)
"I have a Drip." Oh, god. Would fans then be drippings? Drops? Droplets? Terrible.
Thanks for putting it so well (but then, that's what you do :). I'm glad they reconsidered too. Though Patreon apparently has to do *something*, this definitely wasn't that thing. And yeah, I wasn't looking forward to having a Drip either. About the only slightly positive connotation I can come up with for "Drip" is "coffee", and then it's the cheap kind. And congrats! Again!
Happy Heath's Mum Visit!
Yay. I'm back!
Huzzah! This is most welcome news.
Oh, the Fall of LJ. You’d think it would be a legend of warning fit to harrow enterprising souls. So glad Patreon thought better on this one!
It seems like everyone has forgotten the lessons of LJ. Up to and including that the Russian government is garbage and wants to destroy most things that are good and free. The Russian people were using LJ to build their own resistance so the government killed its popularity with DDOS attacks and constant unpopular policy changes. It was very effective. Most don't even really understand what happened. It was a harbinger of what was to come. And we just thought it was about Harry Potter.
Will they rebrand Drip? I hope so. It really is a terrible name, though evocative of the small-amount-repeatedly image but there has to be a better moniker. Have fun with soon to be MIL visit! Family, when good, really excel at making holidays worthwhile.
I don't know but they really, really should. Branding matters and it matters doubly for crowdfunding. Part of the success of both Patreon and Kickstarter is the brillance of the names. Patreon evokes an old method of funding the arts. Patronage is a word with a positive connotation, one people feel good about both in terms of asking for patronage and being a patron. Kickstarter evokes fun nights getting an old car working again. Neither imply begging or freeloading or scamming, all charges leveled frequently at crowdfunders. And most importantly, it's easy to say out loud in public or on Twitter "I have a Patreon/I have a Kickstarter" and have people be interested without pre-existing bias or already know what you're talking about. That's why Patreon sort of had us in a pickle, because all the other services either have huge drawbacks (bandcamp ain't for writers) or absolutely no recognition, and there isn't another word with the meaning, history, and warm feelings of Patron. It's even a tequila. ;) So the problem with Drip (and hey, Patreon, you want to let me have paragraph breaks in a desktop-posted comment, while you're "fixing" things?) is that it sounds TERRIBLE and evokes NOTHING. I have no idea what you're talking about. It could be a faucet. It could be the flu. It could be an STI. Yes, abstractly, many "drips" make up "a lot of water" but that just doesn't mean anything, and certainly bears no semantic relationship to "crowdfunding artists". It's not instantly understandable what you're doing, and it sounds weird and embarrassing to say out loud. It also has no relationship to the word "Kickstarter". You think they'd at least go for another car metaphor. But then, I guess a drip could be a cracked oil pan. DRIP ALMOST ALWAYS IMPLIES THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG NOTHING DRIPS ON PURPOSE YOU GOTTA HANDLE A DRIP. I have a lot of feelings about this branding because until yesterday I thought maybe I'd have to use it and I was not looking forward to having this conversation over and over CAN I GET THOSE PARAGRAPH BREAKS THO
Yay! Let's all enjoy a delicious helping of win pie! --filkferengi
Huge congratulations to you! I'm glad this turned out for the best for you, and I hope this is the beginning of only good things for you as we head into 2018.
SO SAY WE ALL.