JASON ARNOPP: AUTHOR + SCRIPTWRITER
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13 Reasons To Support Me At Patreon

3/12/2022

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​First of all, let's get one thing straight: there are countless ways to support me without spending money. These include borrowing my books from your local library (yes, we authors do get paid for that - no need to feel guilty!), sharing my social media posts or watching my YouTube videos.

If you're willing and able to go further, though, there's always Patreon, which allows you to support me with a monthly pledge! Here are some reasons why you might well enjoy doing that...

1) I'll give you the most time-sensitive reason first! I'm running a special offer, which sees eligible new patrons receive a specially-designed, glossy, full-colour Christmas card dedicated and signed by me - or by Jack Sparks, or indeed by any of my other fictional characters. All you have to do is pledge to support me at Patreon, at the Oh Dear God, What's That At The Window? tier or above, before 6pm GMT on Friday 9 December. Naturally, my existing eligible patrons are each getting a card too - here's how I broke the news to them the other day, in this rare example of a post that I've made public. 

2) Patreon has allowed me to foster a fun, fenced-off community, where you can get involved as little or as much as you like. I love that I can write and chat directly to my patrons, soliciting their opinions on things like YouTube video thumbnails, or posting exclusive diary entries or vlogs for them to read among lots of other exclusive content. I even tell them the odd thing that I wouldn't post on a public forum.

3) My Patreon backers who pledge at the Terrifying tier or above get an onscreen credit at the end of all my videos on the aforementioned Jason Arnopp's Terrifying House Of Obsession channel on YouTube!

4) Last summer, I got together with writer James Moran (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Spooks, Severance, lots more) to shoot a Zoom video about writing, specifically for our respective patrons. The theme we decided to cover was the difference between writing prose and scripts. The result was really interesting and often quite funny into the bargain. The video ran for 50 minutes, and remains for patrons' eyes only! You can see the video thumbnail at the top of this article, although you'd probably figured that out already. 

5) When you back me at Patreon, you achieve two truly astonishing things. You help me to support my family and to feel more secure in a bizarre and unpredictable career like writing, which if I'm honest, can often feel like feast or famine. And that means the world to me. I do my best to treat my backers like royalty!

6) Also! When you back me at Patreon, the system pings an email into my inbox AND makes a notification pop up from the Patreon app on my phone. Whichever of these I happen to see first, it gives me a real buzz of happiness and indeed surprise! It's an amazing feeling that someone wants to back you, regardless of whether they pledge £2 or £10 or £25 or even more per month.

7) When backers support me at the Terrifying tier or above (this one is £5, in case you were wondering - you can see all the tiers here), I record a personalised welcome video for them, usually while sitting at my desk, just as I do in my YouTube videos. I then upload this video to YouTube, keeping it unlisted (private), and personally send my brand new patron the link via Patreon DM. The end result looks like a YouTube video that talks to them, which tends to be a pretty fun effect!

8) My backers get to see my YouTube videos early, before the rest of the world. Sometimes, for one scheduling reason or another, this may not be possible, but I do my damndest to make sure that happens. I also often tell backers about YouTube videos I'm thinking about making. 

9) Doctor Who fans: I created a combined PDF of both parts of my Doctor Who Magazine interview with Tom Baker, which I conducted at his home in 2009. I then wrote a new foreword for the epic piece and made this available to patrons only.

10) I make a monthly vlog exclusively for my supporters, titled Walking With Patrons. At the time of writing, this series has been running for one year. 

11) I know, from my own experience of supporting people at Patreon (YouTubers like Steve Benway and Atari Archive, for instance) that it really makes me happy to back people who bring value to my life. Perhaps if I've somehow managed to bring value to yours, you might feel similarly good cheer if you support me via the Patreon route.

12) I'll often make exclusive videos for patrons only, generally off the cuff. Last summer, for instance, I attended a car boot sale for the first time since the pandemic began, and immortalised this visit with a video for patrons only. On another Sunday, I shot a video while walking from my home to Brighton train station, as an intro for the diary entries I then wrote for them on the train.

13) Every year, I send patrons at the Terrifying level or above a seaside Brighton postcard, to wherever they are in the world, to say thanks! At the next tier up, I can get my friend Jack Sparks to write the postcard for me...

You can find my Patreon page, and check out the various tiers, right here at this link. Thanks for reading!
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Get a unique Jack Sparks proof page!

3/5/2022

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Last month in my newsletter The Necronoppicon, I broke the news of my exciting special offer for new (and many existing) Patreon supporters - the chance to receive one unique paper proof page from the edit cycle of my novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks - complete with my original red-pen edits!

Each of these pages is a one-of-a-kind item and will be a really cool thing to fold in half and tuck inside your copy of the novel.

This week, as you can see from the above pic, the window of opportunity has narrowed.

The deadline is midday BST on Thursday May 5! Less than 48 hours away, as I write.

Here's how it works.

Everyone who is supporting me at Patreon at the Oh Dear God, What's That At The Window? tier or above, at 12pm BST on May 5, will then receive their proof page through the mail.

I'll even get 'Jack Sparks' to sign the back of the page too.

Fancy it? Check out the Oh Dear God, Who's That At The Window tier on Patreon via this link.

Once you sign up, obviously I'm hoping you'll love the community and the archive of exclusive material so much that you'll want to hang around.

Equally, however, you will be absolutely free to edit your pledge down or cancel altogether.

Patreon only runs from month to month. There is no contract!

Here are some of the other perks you'll receive when you sign up. These include:

♥ A personal thank you video from me and sent to you as an unlisted YouTube video, for your eyes only (unless you want to show it to friends)

♥ A thank you postcard, 12 months after you sign up

♥ Getting an onscreen thanks in future videos on my YouTube channels Jason Arnopp's Terrifying House Of Obsession and Possessed By Metal

♥ Access to the patrons-only archive, with exclusive video content, exclusive PDFs and my rare short story The Nothing Men

♥ Instant access to the community feed, full of lovely people!

♥ All my patrons get listed by name on my website! Some of these also get thanked by name in my newsletter.

See you soon maybe? Check out my Patreon page here.

Who do you support on Patreon - and why? Tell me in comments. Also feel free to ask any questions you might have about my Patreon special offer. Want to ask privately? Send me a private message via this site.
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Auto Rewind: Ready To Go

29/11/2015

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My new free short story Auto Rewind has turned out to be a novelette, clocking in at 12,000 words.  It's hopefully a surprising and emotionally-charged thriller which involves Christmas, VHS, Doctor Who and a nail-gun.

On the afternoon of Monday, November 30, it will go out to my early-adopter supporters at Patreon, the site which lets people back creators with a recurring pledge.  Supporters there get Kindle, epub and PDF files direct from me, along with various perks, such as getting to see earlier red-pen-edit pages of the story or receiving scribbled postcards sent by me.  Then everyone else gets free access to the story a week later on December 7.

If you'd like to join those Patreon supporters, by pledging as little as $1 for each of the new stories I'll be publishing (at a planned rate of one every two months), why not check out my Patreon page? 

Here's the blurb for Auto Rewind:

Stephen Skipp loves his mum, even though she's “really old” at the age of 27.  They have a great time in their Camden Town home, renting films on video from mobile salesman Mick and decorating the Christmas tree, even if Stephen can hardly ever get her to watch Doctor Who on Saturday nights.

If their life is so very ordinary, though, why is a dead body slumped in the corner of their living room – and another in the downstairs toilet? 
* * *

@JasonArnopp on Twitter

Check out my:

New Novel |  Free Books |  Script Notes 
  Past Books |  Mailing List

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Writers Should Never Be Ashamed To Ask

19/11/2015

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Amanda Palmer’s great 2014 book The Art Of Asking is an autobiography of sorts, using its central theme as a lens through which to view scenes from her remarkable life. 

As the title suggests, it’s about asking for help (not just financially), giving help, mutual trust and the varied splendour of human relationships.  When I read it a month ago, devouring it in a couple of days (downright speedy for me), it gave me the final shove of encouragement I needed to set up that Patreon page I'd been thinking about.

​Patreon is somewhat like Kickstarter, but without the all-or-nothing end goals which drive so many stressed creators to badger their Twitter followers for 30 days straight.  Instead, Patreon simply allows people to make a recurring pledge for every new thing a creator makes – books, comics, 3D-printed giraffes, whatever it happens to be.

My main goal right now is to reach out and find new readers, in the run-up to the release of my 2016 novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks (read extract here).  That’s why I’m going to publish free short stories, one every two months, starting with Auto Rewind.  But The Art Of Asking made me think, “Why not also let people give you something if they want to?  Why not ask?”

We writers, and creatives in general, are often way too apologetic about our work.  It's not like we should start ramming our creations all up in people's faces, God no... but would it kill us to be a little less apologetic?  A little less, "Oh God, listen, I'm really sorry, but I've made up all this stuff and it's probably rubbish but maybe you might want to read it, but no worries if you'd rather just use my face to mop your floor instead"?  We should value ourselves and our work more highly – yes, even when that value involves a £ or $ sign.  Never be ashamed to ask.  I would probably only ever feel shame if readers were somehow being forced to hand over cash, but I think we can all agree that's an unlikely scenario.  And in terms of ‘trad’ and ‘indie’ publishing, I love the idea of having an amazingly energetic and powerful publisher like Orbit Books backing me, as well as being able to interact directly with readers via something like Patreon.  God bless the interwebz.

So, my Patreon page now exists.  A shiny-new online tip jar.  James Moran donned his director hat (which I can sensationally reveal is a ceiling-scraping top hat with a leprechaun buckle, utterly ridiculous) for a day trip to Brighton and he directed my two-minute Patreon pledge video which you can watch below.  I can honestly say that, even if no-one ever watches this thing, it will still have been worthwhile, because we had such a laugh filming it.  Maybe there’ll be a blooper reel one day and you’ll see how hard I found it to keep a straight face.

The pledge video probably flies in the face of one of Amanda Palmer’s Rules Of Asking – be sincere and honest – because it’s more concerned with entertaining you and making you laugh.  I also like the way that, as part of a campaign about short stories, it’s kind of a short story in itself.  But hopefully the text on the Patreon page does the whole 'sincere' and 'honest' thing a lot better than the video.  And so does this blogpost, I suppose.

So.  The tip jar exists.  Doesn't matter whether cash is flung into it now, next month, next year or never, but there's no shame in asking.  I'm going to release free stuff anyway and I'm already having a great time writing it.  

Here's the big ask: do you trust me to deliver scary, funny, gripping stories you'll enjoy?  If so, consider pledging to me at Patreon, and in return for that trust I'll give you additional content and exclusive perks.  If you're unfamiliar with my fiction writing, you can check out the previously-released stories Beast In The Basement (£1.99) or A Sincere Warning About The Entity In Your Home (99p).

The first new free book, Auto Rewind, a tale of Christmas, Doctor Who and nail-guns, will be available from December 7 – or a week early on November 30, if you back me at Patreon.  If you’d like a reminder of the release and/or general updates, join my mailing list.

Good day to you!

The Art Of Asking by Amanda Palmer: UK | US
 
Amanda Palmer on Patreon

* * *

@JasonArnopp on Twitter

Check out my:

New Novel |  Free Books |  Script Notes |  Past Books |  Mailing List

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    Hello!

    I'm a writer of stuff for the worlds of Doctor Who, Black Mirror and Friday The 13th.

    My latest novel is Ghoster. Before that was The Last Days Of Jack Sparks and the novella Beast In The Basement.

    My latest book is Taken Over By Something Evil From The TV Set: A History Of Britain's Video Nasties Controversy & Other Scary Journalism. Yeah, that's one long title. 


    Get my book American Hoarder free when you subscribe to my monthly newsletter!
    FIND ME AT...
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    I started using Publisher Rocket this summer and it's one of the coolest pieces of software for authors I've seen! Amazing for finding the best Amazon keywords, categories and ads for your books! Click the above banner for more info (affiliate).

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    If you're a fellow YouTube creator, I recommend you join me in using the very handy app TubeBuddy. Check it out for free, then use my coupon code ARNOPPBUDDY to get 20% off a subscription! (affiliate)

    MORE SOFTWARE IDEAS

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    Handy plug-in
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Copyright Jason Arnopp © 2015-2022
  • Home
  • About
  • Books
    • Ghoster
    • The Last Days Of Jack Sparks
    • Taken Over By Something Evil...
    • Beast In The Basement
    • A Sincere Warning About The Entity In Your Home
    • American Hoarder
    • Auto Rewind
    • How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else
    • From The Front Lines Of Rock
    • Slipknot
    • Friday The 13th
    • Doctor Who
    • Brandy In The Basement
  • Blog
  • Newsletter
  • Patreon
  • Free Stuff
  • Writing Help
    • My Etsy store for writers
    • Notes for writers. I'll assess your first three chapters.
    • Skype Coaching Sessions
    • Story Planner sheets for writers A4 printables
  • YouTube
    • My YouTube Gear
  • Classic Doctor Who
  • Films
    • Stormhouse
    • The Man Inside
    • Ghost Writer
  • Audio
    • Doctor Who
    • The Sarah Jane Adventures
    • BBC Radio 4
  • Journalism
    • Kerrang!
    • Heat
    • Doctor Who Magazine
  • Scary Letter
  • Interviews With Me
  • Wanted: VHS
  • Wanted: Mad Hatter Magic
  • Contact