Stealing/sharing Patreon content (Patreon)

I've been made aware of several incidents over the past week of users who are stealing and sharing Heartstopper pages from Patreon and posting them on social media and online.

I am genuinely devastated. I knew there might be a couple of people posting a page here or there on social media, but I didn't expect whole accounts dedicated to stealing and leaking my comic.

I know most people don't really realise, but I am literally just one person, sitting at home at my computer, trying to get a page drawn each day. I'm not a huge company. I'm not a business. I'm just one person. To have someone gleefully steal and share those pages that I've worked so hard on makes me feel sick. It's violating and distressing. When I found out about the account leaking my pages yesterday, I was just eating dinner with my mum and dad, and I just cried.

This Patreon is a safe space for me to share my work in progress, and I'm not ready for those pages to be shown publicly. Why should I even bother working on the comic if it's just going to be stolen and shared before I feel ready to share it publicly?

They are stealing copyrighted content, which is illegal. I've shared their accounts with the legal team at my publisher, who will be taking action against them. If you are one of those people, I recommend you take down the accounts now.

Thank you to everyone reporting these incidents, I really appreciate your help. For everyone asking how you can help when you spot things like this:

- Let me know by sending me a link. You can message me privately on Patreon. I'm already aware of the ones mentioned in the Patreon comments over the past week.

- Report the post if you can.

- Don't engage with the post, particularly on sites like TikTok, as it just boosts their engagement and shows it to more people.

- Try not to post too much about the incident on social media, because it just encourages other people to look for the stolen content.

I am now going to have to think carefully about whether it's safe to continue posting on Patreon. Most people here are so respectful and kind, and your comments are so motivating and encouraging, which is so, so valuable for me, because spending hours every day drawing comic pages for 6+ years is very tiring. I really don't want to lose the good stuff here.

Edit: originally in this post I said I had to think about whether it was worth keeping the webcomic going, or if I should just share the comic through the books. On reflection I don't think I will ever want to remove the webcomic altogether. It's a deeply precious part of my life. I'm sorry to anyone who was upset by the thought of that! I was pretty upset when I wrote this post so wasn't thinking clearly.