“A Glorified Tip Jar:” Fan Fiction Authors on Patreon

If you go to a Patreon creator’s homepage you will see several things: large text informs you what they are creating, why they are on Patreon, their next goals, their rewards, and several buttons invite you to become a patron, to follow, and to share. The Patreon homepage is the base and the contact point between creator and fans. It’s where you tell your story and put out who you are. Maximizing design and creating a video to introduce yourself can be important points of contact for fans. Being open and honest with people shows your authenticity. Fan fiction author Seriousfic explains her purpose in using Patreon:

Think of this as a glorified tip jar. If it works/there’s interest, I’ll be trying something a bit more intensive later down the road. For now, I want to keep things simple. It’s not easy making a living as a writer. If you get published, sure, but until then, there’s rent, food, clothes, physical therapy, cat food, gas, turtle wax for the solid gold toilet I bought with my trust fund — the bills just pile up. So if you enjoy my writing, here’s a way to show some appreciation while also getting more writing. (Seriousfic)

Calling her Patreon page a “glorified tip jar,” Seriousfic is able to exchange her fan fiction works as gifts. In this paper I would like to propose the Patreon website and subscription model of payment as a possible avenue for fan fiction authors to be paid for their fan labor while maintaining the fannish community. I’ll explain what Patreon is and how it works in conjunction with fan communities. The fan gift economy is ultimately maintained and enmeshed within a commodity economy.

It can seem counter-intuitive to think of fandom and labor together. But this contradiction comes from our conception of labor in opposition to pleasure and hobby. In their editorial “Fandom and/as Labor” Mel Stanfill and Megan Condis write, “Fans freely engage in [fannish] activities — or they are at least not coerced by the intractable need to earn a living. People enjoy doing them. Thus, it seems as if it isn’t really labor and fans don’t require payment because enjoyment is enough, or because fandom rejects capitalist logics” (3.2). But fans are inarguably engaged in labor — pleasurable though it may be. Some fans do desire remuneration for their labors and I believe this is possible without sacrificing fandom identity or the gift economy.

In her 2009 article “Should fan fiction be free?” Abigail De Kosnik claimed that fan fiction authors were in danger if they didn’t seize their “Sugarhill Moment,” “waiting too long to decide to profit from their innovative art form, and allowing an interloper to package the genre in its first commercially viable format” (120). She claimed that to fandom’s detriment “no group that publishes or archives fan fiction has (so far) demonstrated a willingness to experiment with payment structures” (124). In their 2014 article “Legitimacy, Validity, and Writing for Free” Monica Flegel and Jenny Roth echo De Kosnik’s call for a new future

…in which fan producers and copyright holders alike fight together for a creative commons that embraces “original,” archontic, derivative, and transformative work as equally legitimate, creatively and economically, we fight for the unquestioned right of all creative producers to support themselves by their creative labor, whatever form it takes. (1105)

These women are arguing for a hybrid economy, a gift economy intertwined with a commodity economy (Jones 2014). In order to maintain the gift economy, which Karen Hellekson says requires giving, receiving, and reciprocating, fans exchange “‘effort gifts’” such as “artworks…vids…podcasts, fan fiction…narrative analysis” or “‘object gifts’ which can be physical objects or money” (115). One argument against remuneration or commodification of fan fiction is the potential loss of the fan community and identity and the devaluation of the gift economy.

Monetarily speaking, fan art and fan fiction are not valued the same. It is perfectly acceptable and encouraged to sell fan art, and web sites like Redbubble and Society6 guarantee a profit, where the “cost of producing the item falls on Redbubble itself rather than on the fan producer” (Jones 4.2). Why isn’t the amount of time put into writing fan fiction valued in the same way? Selling fan art on Redbubble, Society6, or Etsy commodifies the fan work but still preserves the exchanging of gifts and rewards, direct communication and chat, and is usually an extension of social media fandom on a web site like tumblr where the art is posted first, shared, and commented upon. Often times the positive feedback to the fan art leads to selling on a website like Society6 where a print, for example, can be bought on t-shirts, sweatshirts, tote bags, pillows, mugs, and stickers, among other items. Fans’ positive feedback has turned into demand for object commodification.

In very much the same way Patreon can (and does already) function in the same role for fan fiction authors. Musician and music video producer Jack Conte created Patreon in 2013 with his friend Sam Yam out of a desire to break away from the Kickstarter mold of crowdfunding. Patreon is “unlike Kickstarter, where people chip in for a one-time project…” instead it’s model is “ongoing support for continued work. It’s essentially patronage, only crowdfunded” (Rubenstein). Their goal is to “help every creator in the world achieve sustainable income” (Patreon). A lofty ambition, but one that is nevertheless seeing real impact and fruition. Patrons can sign up to give a set amount for each new piece of content a creator releases or give a set amount every month. Seriousfic employs a pledge per story model. She currently has 29 patrons and an estimated $52 per story after fees and declined patrons. Patreon takes a 5% fee every month. This is a small price to pay compared to the costs of using Kindle Worlds where “The standard digital royalty rates are broken down between works of over 10,000 words (35% of net revenue) and short works of between 5,000–10,000 words (20% of net revenue)” (Choe). Not to mention Amazon owns an “exclusive license to your work for the term of the copyright” and you are constrained to operate within the worlds that are offered among other strict stipulations (Choe). Seriousfic explains the way paying per story works on Patreon:

The way it works is that you simply pledge a small amount — one dollar, three dollars, whatever — per story…Okay, maybe you’re worried that I’ll write a bunch of hundred word ‘stories’ can bang, you’re out fifteen bucks for no more content then you’d get paging through Gone Girl for free at Barnes & Noble while you drink a hot cocoa. Well, that won’t happen — for one thing, you can trust me. I’m on the internet.

For another thing, you can set a maximum on your pledging. Let’s say your pledge is one dollar and your max is five. I write five stories, I get five dollars, *that’s it*. This is also very handy if your thoughts are my writing are “I like this, I want to see more of this — but just, like, five more. Not six.” The Steven Moffat Reaction, as it’s called.

Now, you won’t be charged for every single story I write. I wouldn’t dream of actually demanding money for, say, me writing two hundred words about how soft [subtexty female character A] thinks [subtexty female character B’s] lips are. So it’ll go like this. I’ll only be counting a story upwards of a thousand words as a pledge… that seems a pretty good line between well-sized story and disappointing story. (Seriousfic)

Coeur al’Aran uses the pledge by month model. They’re one of the most successful fan fiction writers on Patreon with 62 Patrons pledging $1034 a month. They write:

I’ve come up with a community goal system that I think offers some really tangible rewards for you all, and beyond that, the ultimate goal I’m sure you can agree is not a lazy one. I won’t sit there taking your money for nothing. With 4 chapters a week, each averaging 6–10k words… That is 32–40,000 words a week… and well over 100,000 words a month!

I hope you’ll believe that worth of your support.

Why monthly!? — I believe this system offers the least risk to you all. The other option is “per chapter” and if the end goal was reached that would be maybe 16–20 chapters a month, a charging system based on that would be incredibly harsh on people. And offer a lot of uncertainty in terms of how much you’d end up paying. This is safer, you know exactly what you’re getting, and how much you’re paying for it. (Coeur)

The different payment methods offer flexibility for creators and Patrons alike and really depend on the creator’s personality, goals, writing style, and intentions regarding output. Coeur’s sensitivity concerning their patron’s money illustrates the system’s desire to be one of community.

Patreon’s tag — “Support the creators you love” — speaks to the heart of the company’s mission (Patreon). This is intrinsic to fandom, and Patreon offers a space where fans can meet to support one another, a space that heretofore hasn’t existed. Although you can go to Patreon and discover new creators and search for “fan fiction,” initial contact is usually made through fandom community where a relationship is already established. Seriousfic links to her Patreon page on her tumblr sidebar along with her AO3 and FF.net profiles. There is an immediate convergence between these platforms for her as a fan fiction author. Conversation is occurring simultaneously on tumblr, AO3, FF.net, and Patreon about her fan fiction. Patreon profiles allow direct communication between creators and patrons. Patrons can ask questions, ask for updates, make requests, leave feedback, send messages, and make comments. And the creators can reply. The fan community isn’t merely preserved, it is extended. The introduction of a payment system appears to have in no way diminished the fannish exchange of ideas, beta-ing, comments, and gifts that occur in the fan fiction community.

Patreon functions and operates on a gift giving system. Gifts are offered to patrons. Some examples include previews of chapters or personal fics, but the list is endless. Coeur al’Aran offers a great example of how the fan gift economy is sustained through a commodity economy. Coeur writes fan fiction for the RWBY fandom as well as original fiction. They offer five levels of rewards ranging from $5-$100. For $5 or more per month, Coeur offers their patrons the opportunity to “be able to cast votes on which fic I do next, any pairings, major decisions in plot pieces and more…access to chapters of any Original fiction pieces I update on this site” (Coeur). For $10 or more they say:

Beyond having some serious love and affection from me, I will provide a one-shot. These would typically be 1,000–3,000 words. What the one-shot is on, is decided by the next level of Patreon. Everyone on this level would get the same one-shot just to be clear. But it won’t be published anywhere else. It’s just for you guys. Patreons of this level will also have access to my writing advice articles, which will be posted on Patreon. (Ibid.)

These gifts require a level of involvement from Coeur and the patrons, creating a reciprocal exchange of ideas. At the $25 level Coeur offers “the ability to decide on the one-shots among themselves” (Ibid.). This creates an environment of direct communication between other patrons. At the $50 and $100 levels Coeur offers to beta read and to give one-on-one writing lessons. This may seem problematic given the nature of a “gift” economy, where fan fiction writers have traditionally engaged in these activities as a community for free. However, offering these gifts in exchange for money does not negate their value nor does it implicitly mean they are no longer done for “free.” Even in a gift economy nothing is free. Things and ideas are exchanged for other things or ideas. Further, in this model fan fiction remains entirely free.

Partly due to reasons of copyright, but mostly because fans ultimately desire so, using Patreon, or a model like Patreon, does not totally commodify fan fiction. Ultimately fan fiction remains free. Coeur al’Aran addresses this up front on their Patreon profile:

Please rest assured that whether you support me or not, I will not stop doing what I love. Nor will I deprive those who aren’t able/willing to support me of reading my work. It will always remain free! It’s worth noting that I am not selling fanfiction here in any way, the only commercial offering here from myself is writing lessons for Patrons of the $100 value or above. Realistically what you are all doing is donating to me, to enable me to write more.

My Fanfiction will always be free, and can be read all across the internet by everyone — and their dog! Ultimately you are supporting me, to allow me to write more often — be that my original work, or my fanfiction. To note, on this site, only my original work will be released. You can find my fanfiction elsewhere! (Coeur)

Similarly, Seriousfic signifies her Patreon as a “glorified tip jar” connoting a space not of corporate demand but of donation to a person for quality service. Further, creators on Patreon can support each other. Coeur al’Aran’s profile shows that they support the fan fiction writer Axelle whose sole patron is Coeur. The fan community is preserved and the exchange of gifts is not lost with the introduction of money.

Introducing money is not new, but the fear of a “capitalist takeover” is real. Outside corporations exploiting fan enterprise would be disastrous, and several examples have proven this. FanLib is an oft-cited example. Suzanne Scott notes, “FanLib’s efforts to supplant fandom’s gift economy with a commercialized model of fan production… was vocally denounced by fans and ultimately led to the site’s closure in 2008” (1.4). Similarly fans on Wattpad denounced the launch of Fan Funding in 2013. Wattpad described Fan Funding as “a pilot project where readers had an opportunity to support their favourite Wattpad writers in exchange for a range of rewards, like having a character in the story named after them” (Elliott). Six Wattpad writers with large fanbases were selected and each met or exceeded their goals raising a total of $20,000 from the community. The stories published were original works of fiction, not fan fiction. One user commented, “It sickens me that Wattpad is so blatantly opening the door to people using this feature ro[sic] take advantage of it. The only I’d ever pay for something that came from Wattpad is if the story was being published. And even then, there’s only a select few of the stories I’m reading that I’d pay for” (Smidorii). I think part of the disdain for the Fan Funding experiment arose because Wattpad used a Kickstarter model. They sent an email to every user despite most users not knowing the six chosen authors or being supporters already. Fans are more likely to support the stories they are already reading and enjoying. Further the Fan Funding was to publish original fiction on a website that “has become one of the largest communities of writers and readers on the web” “with 20 million monthly unique visitors and over 29 million stories” (Elliott). I think the same feelings arise when authors pull-to-publish as in the case of E.L. James and Fifty Shades of Grey. Fans have contempt within the fan fiction community for capital gain, monetarily and socially. Whether founded or not, it is there and I believe will continue to exist in the very core of a community that subsists on the periphery of culture.

Wattpad’s fan funding endeavor begs the question, will a web site that is supposed to host free works of fiction ever be able to introduce a method of funding or payment structure? Perhaps a large scale structure will be doomed to fail. Maybe a micro-economy in which gifts are exchanged but a Patreon-like model is introduced would be a viable alternative. I do believe fan fiction should always be free, but fans who desire to be paid can, and should be able to, seek alternative methods, such as Patreon. I recognize this is very problematic and contentious for fandom. I do. But I think it’s an avenue worth exploring as we move forward as a community.

Works Cited

Choe, Irene. “Fine Print to Plain English: Things to Look out for as a Kindle World Author.” New Media Rights. 10 July 2014. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

Coeur al’Aran. Patreon Profile. Patreon. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

De Kosnik, Abigail. “Should fan fiction be free?” Cinema Journal 48.4 (2009): 118–24. Academic OneFile. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

Elliott, Amy-Mae. “People-Powered Publishing Is Changing All the Rules.” Mashable. 9 Feb. 2014. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

Flegel, Monica, and Jenny Roth. “Legitimacy, Validity, and Writing for Free: Fan Fiction, Gender, and the Limits of (Unpaid) Creative Labor.” The Journal of Popular Culture 47.6 (2014): 1092–108. Web.

Hellekson, Karen. “A Fannish field of value: online fan gift culture.” Cinema Journal 48.4 (2009): 113–18. Academic OneFile. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

Jones, Bethan. 2014. “Fifty Shades of Exploitation: Fan Labor and Fifty Shades of Grey.” In “Fandom and/as Labor,” edited by Mel Stanfill and Megan Condis, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 15. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0501.

“Patreon: About.” Patreon. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

Rubenstein, Grace. “Crowdfunding Site Brings New Patrons to the Arts.” KQED Arts. 12 July 2014. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

Scott, Suzanne. 2009. “Repackaging fan culture: The regifting economy of ancillary content models.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0150.

Seriousfic. Patreon Profile. Patreon. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

Smidorii. “What Really Grinds My Gears On Wattpad.” Wattpad. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

Stanfill, Mel, and Megan Condis. 2014. “Fandom and/as Labor” [editorial]. In “Fandom and/as Labor,” edited by Mel Stanfill and Megan Condis, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 15.http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0593.