Let's talk about Taxes, Tier Benefits, and Changes (Patreon)

Hello friends, readers, and Patrons! I'm revamping my tier benefits a little bit, and want to be as upfront about that as possible. But first off, let's get some other important stuff out of the way.

First off, thank you all once again for your very generous support. It really does mean the world to me. It's also helped me get to see friends and loved ones a little more often, before the pandemic. Now, I'm putting it towards some story art for us all to enjoy, and to promote the stories we all love. It's also going to be helpful, should my family need a little extra help getting groceries, supplies, etc, while the pandemic continues. Now, we are NOT current in that kind of financial straits, so don't worry. But it's nice to know I can provide a little extra, if it ever comes to that.

Moving on! A while back I posted about an upcoming change in how Patreon charges sales tax. First off, I have *nothing* to do with this, and neither does Patreon. The additional sale tax charges incoming are due entire to changes in local and national laws, in some areas. Those of you folks in Europe, for example, already know all about VAT. You won't be seeing any new charges, to the best of my knowledge. But folks in some states in the USA now, for example, may start seeing some small, additional sales tax charge. One thing that can be done to help reduce those charges are manually adjusting benefits offered, to change the way tax is calculated. Now, I don't know if any changes I've made will help, but I'm certainly trying. 

So about those benefits. As a writer who focuses almost exclusively on my own original work, with my own characters, worlds, stories, etc, it's tough for me to come up with benefits to offer beyond early draft chapters, and so on. So that's what I've been doing. But the way I've been uploading those benefits hasn't always matched what I've offered you.

So for that, I'm genuinely sorry. 

Now, I've asked numerous times in the Patron discord, and several times here via posts, about additional suggestions for benefits I can offer. I've gotten a few suggested ideas, which I'm considering.

But overall the vast majority of you who've joined us in the Discord, have made it clear you're not signing up for benefits, you're just signing up because you love my writing, and want to support me. Many of you have been trying to do just that for a long time!

That, is very humbling...and really makes me happy. Thank you, ever so much.

With that in mind, in order to help keep additional sales tax charges as low as possible, I've altered my tier benefits to my accurately reflect the way I've been posting rewards. 

$1 - This has always been just a "tip jar," and so I've listed it as a donation only tier. As a result, it shouldn't be taxed. Hopefully. It still gets you discord access however!

Now, for the last while, I've been posting Princess of Beasts chapters at this level. That began entirely as a "bonus", when I started Princess of Beasts as a NaNoWriMo story. Once the month was up, I didn't want to leave people hanging, so I kept posting it. With that in mind, I will continue to post this story for ALL patreons, until "book 1" is completed.

However, after that, if I write a sequel, or a prequel, or turn it into a series, etc...Those chapters will be for the $5 tier patrons, like the rest.

$5 - This is my "base" reward tier. This is where you'll get at least 2 chapters a month, from whatever story I'm working on. I will try for updates on weekends, something like, every other friday, but we'll see how that goes. Some months you may well get additional chapters added. You may also sometimes get lore and worldbuilding notes. Originally I offered that to all tiers, but to make $5 even more of an upgrade, and for tax purposes, I've moved that to this tier.

$10 - This is where I made some bigger changes. Originally, I promised 3-4 chapters a month, but I've realized, even when I'm able to write that much, I cannot fairly meet that quota without screwing over the $5 tier. My original plan was to post 4 chapters a month for $10 tier, and 2 a month for $5 tier. But I realized if I did that...the $5 folks would either be, hopelessly behind, or worse, they would only be able to read every other chapter, and the story wouldn't make sense anymore. So I realized, that plan wasn't going to work.

This is probably the biggest thing we talked about in the Discord, and this is where many people told me they didn't mind only getting a few chapters. Or that they didn't even read the chapters of X story, and only wanted to support.

As a result, I've decided that the $10 tier is more for people who are just looking to offer an additional donation to help support me, and keep me writing the stories we doing this.

However! I still want to offer you lovely, generous people something, so! I may start posting some chapters to the $10+ tiers first, and then open them up to the $5 tier a few days to a week later. So you may get to read the chapters first!

I'm also going to try and start posting the "revised" versions of chapters, when I'm revising, to the $10 tier.

$25 - Finally, the big one. I only ever added this tier as a "just in case" option, if someone really wanted to throw some extra money my way. I honestly never expected anyone to sign up for it, let alone to stick with it if they did. 

To my very generous friends, THANK YOU!

I honestly wish I had something extra I could give you, but I really don't have much. It was suggested I could write quick stories based on suggestions from this tier, but I don't think I have the extra writing time to manage that.  Or sneaking in a character cameo roughly based on your characters, but...I don't know how I could swing that, very easily.

So I've considered things like...letting you vote on fan art to commission, or voting on a fun outtake I could write, or something like that.  I may also occasionally try and post something rare or unusual, or very old, for people to enjoy.

I've also considered doing a monthly shout out to everyone in this tier, be it on Patreon or Twitter or what have you.

So please, if you have thoughts about that, absolutely let me know what you think!

That goes for all of you. If ANY of you have thoughts, suggestions, complaints about the benefit changes, or any other feedback, by all means, please share.

Otherwise, thank you ever so much for all your very generous support!

See you lovely folks on the Discord.