Patrons of Smut
Yesterday I created a profile over on Patreon to see if I can garner some financial support for my writing. Most everyone I’ve talked to (including my agent) has at one time or another told me that you can’t make a living as a writer. It’s a job that always needs to be subsidized by someone else.
So I want to prove them wrong. Desperately.
I want to work harder, write more books, and come up with new ways to let people help. This is only the latest in a long list of attempts to find enough streams of income from my writing to pay my bills.
But there’s another reason I want to be on Patreon and it’s the same reason I prefer to sell my books directly to readers.
Once commerce enters into the equation art because incredibly difficult. And typically it becomes bloodless. It gets watered down, beaten up, and sanitized for the sake of corporate safety. And when it comes to art that involves sexuality it’s doubly so.
The masters over at Amazon continuously shift their position on erotica. One day a book is there and the next it’s gone and since their content policy is so incredibly vague there are no repercussions. Regardless of what is currently for sale on Amazon, every book is suspect.
I’ve had three or four books removed overnight after having been available for years and with Apple and Google it’s just as bad. Apple especially is only willing to let me publish two thirds of my catalog. The rest falls into some “inappropriate” category that is impossible to understand.
But what would it look like if I didn’t have sell through Amazon? What would it look like if I could sell books directly to readers with the only limiting factor being my imagination?
Dirty books are not meant to be safe. And since fiction is afterall fiction, that’s perfectly okay. The things people want to read about are often the ones we are most afraid of: incest, rape, innocence, violence and torture. And while I only enjoy writing about a few of those subjects, I firmly believe it should all be on the table.
It’s not clear what Patreon will let me give away or share with my patrons. Will they check a PDF or an EPUB I let my patrons download as part of their reward for supporting me? Will they decide an image is too explicit or a story somehow too unsavory to be shared?
The reality is I don’t know. But there is a difference between selling content and being sponsored as an artist. And that difference in this day and age is part of what lets artists do the things they want to do.
At least that’s my hope. For me and for all the other delightfully filthy minds out there.
