An Inconvenient Truth or How I learned to stop complaining and love Whatsawhizzer's Rants (Patreon)

Some people expressed interest in knowing the results of the respondster survey and ultimately what I’m going to do moving forward. I won’t go through it specifically, but I've decided to address the worst of the comments and hopefully fix some people's misconceptions on here. Hopefully, this won't result in a mass exodus of Patreons... but I've always believed in transparency, so I'm going to be 100% upfront. 

This post is here to basically give you an idea of my plans. This is 7/23/2019. That means you got about 1 week to decide if you’re going to pay in for another month. I very much appreciate your support. You guys, in general, have been wonderful, and you’ve given me opportunities I never would have imagined. I can’t tell you enough how grateful I am for everything you’ve done. 

If you trigger easily, stop here, and just continue about your day. 

Now, I’d like to address some of the main concerns:

Concern 1: Why so many books, bro? 

There are only 4 books I am actively working on. WoW, EPASH, My Dungeon Life, and NTR Crush. I do extra stuff, like A Hero’s Vengeance and Getting Lucky, but if we’re talking regularly, those are the 4. Why don’t I offer to stop the other novels? Because I’m not writing the other novels. Time and Place, Pushing Up Gravestones, and Hawtness are ALL already written. I’m posting them on my blog, but other than Time and Place, they’re all already up in entirety somewhere else. Just like how I’m posting WoW and MDL on scribblehub, I’m posting these works of mine done somewhere else on my blog. It takes a few minutes of my day, and in the case of Pushing Up Gravestones… is almost done. Dropping any of them would not free up more than ten minutes a week of my time. That is not what is consuming my time next to the 10 hours a week I write WOW. 

I do four works actively right now. Is four still too many? Yup. But if you look at my last Patreon post, I hope I demonstrated to you that no one can agree on what is worth dropping and what isn’t. You guys love, and hate each of these four novels equally. And frankly… I barely make enough now to support my family. My wife wasn’t able to get a job in the last 4 months, and if I lost 1/4th of my support right now, I’d be SOL. So, for the 3/4th of you who want to vote the other guy off the island, it just isn’t happening. Deal with it. 

Concern 2: Ur Spelling/Grammar sucks!

I’ve only been hearing this as a problem since I started attracting scribblehub people. I don’t get it, because I’ve glanced at the top ten books on scribble hub, and they are all grammatical and spelling nightmares, and I know my work to be pretty damn good quality relatively speaking. That said, additional editing and even editors are hired when I edit and organize my work for the eBooks available in my store. You want better grammar and spelling? Buy and read those. Expecting perfect grammar at early-access while I’m producing 20,000 words a week is obscene. For the twenty of you who have a problem with this, get over it. 

Concern 3: Missed Releases. 

To my knowledge, I have not missed a single release, yet I still have people giving exit surveys saying I’m not releasing how I agreed I would. I’ve been very clear and transparent about releases. If you feel like a chapter you were supposed to get didn’t come, comment and ask. I ONLY ask you wait 24 hours before nagging me. I’ve said it a dozen times, but I don’t usually put out chapters until night time, so when you hear that there is a Tuesday release, Think 8pm-3am, not 8 am to 3 pm. Also, if it’s not done before I go to sleep, I always leave an update in #release-schedule on discord. So… you know… LOOK before you nag. On the other hand, if the chapter HAS come out, but the $1/public/fullfrontal didn’t unlock within a reasonable time frame (an hour), let me know immediately. Every time I release a chapter, I have to update at least 7 different posts. Mistakes happen, more commonly than I’d like. 

Concern 4: You make too much money! I deserve more!

No. You don’t. You pay me $1, maybe $5. A handful of you give me more. You pay me, so I keep writing. None of it, the images, the book covers, the books, the websites, would exist without support. Of those four novels I’m writing right now, if my Patreon dropped to zero, I’d maybe keep writing MDL. Maybe… 

First things first, those worried that Full Frontal is being ignored when it comes to Patreon goals. They aren’t. I have a supporter who has been sending me $500 a month. I factored that in when I set my Patreon goals. However, every month, he’ll be lowering the amount he gives. Since Full Frontal goes up by the amount he’s going down, I’ll be treating it as about equal exchange. 

Secondly… I believe in transparency, which is why I report my numbers. I live in the Midwest USA. Here, the amount I bring in is just enough not to be considered destitute. I actually still qualify for government help. Considering I have a BS and am still working on my PhD where I could make 80,000 a year… I’ve been taking a major paycut following the path of a content creator. Money’s relative. Saying that because some guy in India only makes $500 on Patreon and pumps out 10 chapters a day is irrelevant. If you liked my content to give $1 or $5, stop acting like you somehow own a piece of me. I should also point out that as we just demonstrated, my fans are divided in ¼. That means so is the money. So, no, I’m not making 3k to pump out only 2 chapters of WoW a week and am thus somehow wronging you. I make 3k to pump out 7 chapters of MDL, 2 chapters of WoW, 3 chapters of NTR, and 2 chapters of EPASH. If you did the math… that’s a bare minimum of 25k words… a week. 100k words a month. 

Let that sink in. I’m writing the equivalent of a Goosebump book weekly, and you’re complaining I write too slow for your tastes. Imagine GRR Martin or Brandon Sanderson writing that speed. They both make more money than I do by leagues. 

In short, you’re donating, and in exchange I make promises… and for the most part I think I’ve met most of my promises. I’ve heard people say I don’t make my promises… but I can’t find anyone actually pointing to any real examples. Once again, if you feel I’m not meeting promises I made, then let’s discuss it. I have the distinct feeling in 90% of the cases, it was you who misunderstood what was promised. 

Concern 5: But what about the future!

EPASH is about 1-2 chapters from being done with the first volume. At that point, I plan to stop EPASH for a while. I will then work on WoW, NTR Crush, and My Dungeon Life. When WoW finishes Volume 3… I will then put that on hold, and release EPASH V2. Then back and forth. Both stories release twice a week and are roughly the same length. This will allow me time between each to think and ultimately come up with a new and better volume that isn't horribly rushed. 

OMG – Does that mean you’re going to write 6000-8000 words less a month and give us nothing in return? Actually, I’d like to bring back and finish TOAE. It’s always been my plan to finish it. But that’s it. You don’t like it? How dare I only write 20k words a week? I don’t care. I’ve been producing like crazy, and if people don’t want to acknowledge or appreciate my hard work because it wasn’t done on the one story that they care about the most… well, there is nothing I can do about it. You saw the posts yourself, the book you personally care about is not the same book everyone on here cares about. 

Concern 6: Comments

Not really a concern, but I want to say something about comments and how negative comments demotivate me from writing while positive comments motivate me, and how it's pretty silly that all I get are negative comments these days on most of my works. I just decided to block the WoW comments section permanently because things have gotten too negative and I grew tired of it. 

Meanwhile, a story like TOAE... would probably have been finished by now if even half the people claiming they wanted it actually made positive comments on every chapter when it was out. This has nothing to with agreements we make or anything, this is just human nature. When I want to do something and you motivate me to do it, I do it. When all I get is a constant stream of vitriol, it makes me want to burn the story to the ground. By leaving it to the negative nannies, you're only screwing over yourselves. This is why WoW does not have any early access chapters. This is why TOAE was put on hiatus. This was why MDL was reduced to 5 chapters a week. 

I'm not trying to say people should follow me around complementing me or something. I can take criticism fine. I'm just speaking from common sense PoV here. You guys do you. 

And, I just want to say, I'm well aware everything above I just said probably only applies to like 40 people here. However, I just wanted to be very clear and open. I could just say nothing... and then suddenly stop posting for a week, and then leave a message a month later saying I quit, or one of the hundreds of other things content creators do when they don't have an open forum with their fans, get stressed out, and then rage quit, but as most of you on discord know, I like being open and honest. If that means some people think I'm rude or unfriendly, meh, it's the only way I know how to interact with people. 

You guys are my supporters, and the least I can do is be upfront with you, just as some of you have been a bit too upfront with me *cough*. Thank you so much for all of your support. I appreciate you guys, and I want to continue to work hard to always produce new content.