Patreon has marked its tenth anniversary by updating its platform and app in several cool ways. There's a new Community Chat section, for instance, which now allows me to chat to participating patrons like we're on WhatsApp.

Another cool feature is the provision for creators to have a shop integrated with Patreon itself.

So far, I only have two rather random items in my shop:

Item 1: A streamable audio interview of mine with Type O Negative frontman Peter Steele.

Item 2: A questionnaire for your fictional characters to fill out, so that you may gain a deeper understanding of them. 101 questions in a printable PDF, with handy spaces between Qs for you to fill in your characters' answers.

Most of my patrons get the Type O stream for free, while all of them get the 101 Qs PDF for free. Gotta love them perks!

More random shop news when I have it.

​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!

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? 

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