I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last couple of weeks considering how to re-activate my Patreon campaign. It’s looking more and more like that will be a thing in the new year.

My objectives here are, in no particular order:

• Offer patrons a steady and predictable stream of creative products that they will find entertaining, and (in some cases) useful at the game table.
• Raise some money for my creative work, specifically to help offset the cost of professional assistance in editing, cover art, or other aspects of book production.
• Build up the potential audience for my books and RPG products when those are released.
• Possibly gather some feedback for my creative projects while they’re still under development.

That first bullet used to be a serious problem, as when I kept an active Patreon through 2015-2016. Back then, I tended to flit from one project to another as time and inspiration moved me, so I had a hard time producing work on a steady and predictable basis. I really couldn’t justify charging anyone money for that!

Now, however, I seem to be in a position to plan my creative work more decisively and effectively, sticking to a small set of projects and producing regular output for months at a time. So that obstacle may no longer be relevant.

So, here’s the rough draft of a plan for how to structure my creative output in such a way as to sustain a Patreon campaign.

I foresee three “product lines” from my workshop:

• Original fantasy and science fiction: This will be centered around a series of full-length novels, each of which will be published (possibly with some hired professional assistance) via Amazon. I can foresee producing and publishing at least one novel per year. There may be occasional shorter pieces as well, from short-story up through novella length.
• Tabletop-ready fantasy and science fiction world-building material: This will most likely shake out as a series of short books, in the area of 25,000 to 40,000 words each, published in PDF form by way of DriveThruRPG.com or a similar outlet. Naturally, these are going to be closely tied to whatever novel I’m currently working on. I can foresee producing two or three of these per year.
• This blog will continue as an outlet for status reports, scraps of material that will eventually go into products for sale, one-off articles, maybe some short fiction, discussion of potential future projects, and so on. Pretty much the same content I produce here now. At most, I might commit to making sure I produce at least one substantive blog post per week. I’ll continue to post to this WordPress site, but cross-link posts to Patreon so my patrons can read there if they want.

Along with this structure, I think I’ll maintain a loose plan for future projects, so patrons will know what to expect. So, for example, when people come to my Patreon front page they’ll see something like:

• The current novel in progress, with a plot synopsis, links to an excerpt or two, and a tentative release date, similar information for the next novel in the queue, and mention of two or three novels I might work on a year or more out.
• Similarly, the current RPG product in progress, its status and tentative release date, the next one in the queue, and maybe a list of what might be forthcoming after that.
• The “back burner” – a list of possible novels, settings, and other major projects that are in the stage where they’re just percolating in the back of my mind during spare cycles. May turn into releasable products at some point, but it won’t be soon.

With a dashboard like that in place – possibly as a sticky post that’s visible on Patreon? – potential patrons will be able to tell if I’m actively working on something they’ll be interested in, and make their level-of-support decisions on that basis.

Meanwhile, I need to think about how to structure the actual release of material to patrons. I’m thinking there will be a low-cost tier that’s basically the “thanks for your support” level and only gets access to this blog, a medium-cost tier that gets access to monthly partial drafts of both fiction and RPG material, and a high-cost tier that also gets free copies of finished e-books and PDFs. Still considering how to set that up, especially that middle tier – I want to be sure I can define a sustainable flow of output that will justify the cost to patrons.

Watch this space!