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Sowing discord (Patreon)

Published:
2020-10-09 09:08:11
Edited:
2020-10-09 16:59:03
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Up front, let me say I am super new to all this. I have used discord, though 90% for voice chat for TTRPG gaming with friends, so I'm pretty in the dark about the kinds of things that are done there by others in my vocation. Tech-wise, I'm pretty trainable, but if it's not obvious from your months/years of observing me, I am no tech wiz. I'm reaching out to some other MC authors to see if they have any input or advice, but I figured you fine people are even better poised to guide me into this.
I'm eager to hear what you all think might be useful or interesting or engaging for an Ice Bear discord channel. What have other authors done that you've liked? (Alternately, what have they done/failed to do that annoyed you?) What, if any, barriers to entry ought to exist? Come one, come all; or something more exclusive as a perk? How can I make this something all you awesome people will appreciate?
Come at me, party people.

Comments

qxvw198

I am a member of some other author's discord channels. I mainly drop in every few days and read posts. I haven't felt that I have much to contribute, however, so I don't post much. If you had a discord, I would probably do the same, honestly.

InCompleteController

I'm in another author's discord as well. Honestly a fan discord just needs to run like a forum, voice chat is likely of no interest to the users. So I would say it just needs the basics: A channel for general chat, one for talking about your story and a channel for fan stuff. The discord should also have a few channels dedicated to perks and locked for anyone not in the given Patreon tier. So, looking at your Patreon, one channel dedicated to early access stories, one for commissioned works and one for ebooks. Maybe a general talk for the tiers as well. Whether to have the main channels open to the public is up to you. Personally I don’t see that much reason not to as it would allow for a broader audience to give a bit of feedback. Email might be good, but I personally didn’t like them as it felt like they were never received, so why bother? From a business perspective it’s good that the early access stuff is so far ahead from the general audience, although it will be a bit weird to try and remember that Tabitha is still unknown to them. It means that there’s still an incentive for them to donate to you and they get a good amount of stories to binge on. In short, keep it simple and if need be the discord can expand.

esclavage

InCompleteController largely got the basics of what the Discord should look like. I'm not part of a writing Discord (though fairly active with DMs and a few adult indie game servers - Female Agent being the most active one). Three things stand out to me as potential additions or suggestions... 1) It's the internet - the most rewarding thing for FA has been the silly shitposting that's occurred along with the "nerding out" when people find they've got interests unrelated & outside of the topic at end. I've had some hilarious meta in-house jokes with the other users of the server because of it. However, to keep that inclusive instead of exclusive & insular, it's best to have a dedicated channel for it (as well as a mod or two) that can assist/gently nudge people to the appropriate space. That way those who want to engage in such a fashion can, and others who don't can mute the channel so they don't get hit with irrelevant notification pings. 2) Perhaps a channel for "picture inspiration"? I think it'd be fairly broad but with your longer written works like TIOS and THAL, I think it's imagine to see how other users imagine Taylor or any of the other girls in their headspace. Or outfits. Or whatever - hypno and/or mind control pictures. 3) A channel for "self promotion" - like others out there, I assume a good number must also have the hobbies of writing or drawing. I think it could be both fun (and provide feedback) to allow others to advertise some of their stuff if they wish.

InCompleteController

Regarding rules. No politics and keep things positive should be standard. CGP's video "This Video WIll Make You Angry" is very good at explaining why. But simply put, anger makes people irrational and when there's no one around to argue with, they will just start making up strawmen to argue with instead. There's nothing more soul crushing than having to leave a group of like minded people, simply because they only want to talk about things they hate.

Ferrum1

Not sure what I think about the discord stuff. What's the upside for you as an author? What are the quantifiable benefits to having it - not just what you hope will happen? If it gives you more ability to network with fans, great, but that means less time to actually write, imo. I'd much rather see a few new chapters posted than chat with you for a few minutes. No insult intended. As a fan.... I don't know what the benefit is to me. Even if you post your stories over there, it wouldn't be very relevant since I'm getting them right here. Of course, having a fallback position in case things go tits up at Patreon wouldn't hurt.

WDB

I think it's more for us as fans. Having the sorts of discussions that are going on in the chapter posts, but with better tools, I think that's the whole thing? The benefit that Ice Bear would likely see is greater engagement from fans (which would probably feel good as an author?) and a more consistent and reliable fanbase. If folks just read a random chapter that gets linked off of an email, that doesn't exactly keep them as hooked as if they're checking up every few days to chat with other fans. That *stickiness* is great for keeping fans engaged between chapters, which is probably great for his income. Active fans are reliable fans!

Ice Bear

Man, you've thought about this more than I have WDB; I just wanted to shut up the haters.

Ice Bear

But I kid. :D And I definitely wouldn't worry about it slowing down productivity. My process (and boy does it feel pretentious to start a sentence like that) involves a lot of short bursts. I'll write a few paragraphs, and if I'm not feeling it, I walk away, give it time to process and come back to it when I have a better sense of perspective or the right energy for it. It leaves lots of time for playing around on discord.

InCompleteController

WDB is correct, the discord would be mostly for the fans. The author whose discord I'm in is really only active when there are updates and announcements, which is more than enough for me. I do like to theorize about the stories I read, but there's no expectation that any of it gets added to the story. Frankly I prefer things being a surprise. That said, I do hope that my comments help the authors be aware of any potential pitfalls or inconsistencies in their stories. However, I'm just a fan, so I don't have all the information about what's going on behind the scenes. I just wish the comments section for Patreon had better tools, but in it's current state I have to click on far too many things just to notice any new replies. To me it feels like it's heavily tailored to simple feedback, with no consideration for the fact that fans might want to interact with each other.

Darryl Erentzen

I love Sidia’s work. She’s a great writer and a fun person to interact with, but when she enabled the discord connection to patreon and started using it as the main channel of communication with subscribers I unsubscribed after a few months.

Darryl Erentzen

Oops! I accidentally posted that before I was done. The main problem with using discord to communicate was that she also used it to post links to her stories, which she placed on Google Drive after an abortive experiment with dropbox. If you think Patreon has useless search tools we haven’t experienced the horror of trying to find things on discord.Even if you do find what you’re looking for, the multi step process of getting a document to show up in your browser or Kindle reader is a nightmare. Discord may be a great place for discussion, but please don’t try to use it as a tool to get out from under Patreon. I don’t want to go through that again. I’m a very technical user. I’m a computer programmer by trade. If this was a pain for me I can only imagine how much it hurt the average subscriber’s level of engagement.

Darryl Erentzen

I posted this via my phone using voice to text so please excuse any grammatical flaws or weird word choices. It’s next to impossible to go back and edit here on an iPhone.

ukyo_rulz

Patreon is a terrible platform for discussion and discord is not, so I am all for a discord. If you want it to be lively you will want a place for general chat amd maybe memes. If you want it relatively quiet just don't have those.

InCompleteController

[I love Sidia’s work. She’s a great writer and a fun person to interact with, but when she enabled the discord connection to patreon and started using it as the main channel of communication with subscribers I unsubscribed after a few months.] Yeah, that’s a bad way to run things. Patreon should be for making announcements and discord should be for discussing what has been announced. It should be treated as the official fan club, nothing more. Although having a discord channel will kill some of the engagement here on Patreon. [If you think Patreon has useless search tools we haven’t experienced the horror of trying to find things on discord.] I agree, discord is horrible when trying to find previous stuff and you don’t remember the exact wording. That said it can be somewhat mitigated. The author’s discord I’m in has a channel where only the admins can post, which means that you can easily find the important information. Also due to the nature of discord, discussions will be mixed together unless separate channels are created for it. That said, with how horrible Pateron is, I didn’t feel like scrolling down and adding my thoughts to the previous parts of THAL. So there’s not really any changes there.

Ice Bear

Thanks so much for all of your feedback, gang. (And feel free to add more.) I'm finishing up a relatively brief part 26, then will get to implementing the discord. And I absolutely will not be ceasing to upload here on patreon. No worries there.

Schmoopie

re: finding things on discord, iirc, some servers have intro channels with pinned posts to link to important things.

Darryl Erentzen

Yes, but that’s really only manageable if it’s not updated regularly and only contains a few posts. If it’s something that gets posted to regularly, older content quickly becomes difficult to find.

Darryl Erentzen

The only thing I found discord really useful for is games, and I haven’t used it in a while. I know they’ve added some new functionality.