Okay; so last week I talked about maybe using a kickstarter to fund my book (on the topic of Can There Be a Black Superhero?”. The collective reaction was, meh.
So as an alternative, I thought that I might possibly shut down the blog for a few months as a way of getting time to work on the book.
Alternately! If people really don’t want the blog shut down, I could try to do a Patreon to fund the blog so I could work on it in good conscience, and then do the book as the hobby.
Any thoughts on that as an option? I guess I’m not confident that anyone would want to pledge to the blog, but it couldn’t hurt to find out. My one concern is that it would be crappy for me to take money for the blog when contributors aren’t paid…I don’t know. Thoughts?
John Jennings and Stacey Robinson, from the Black Kirby project.
Short answer: Work on your book.
Long answer: It isn’t wrong to get paid and fail to pay contributors if you yourself are making a pittance on the site through Patreon. It might introduce some drama for you, sure, and it will invite scrutiny of how much your take is, and when you should start paying, and blah blah blah
It’s not impossible to do a revenue share to stem this; provided that contributors earn less than 600 USD a year, you don’t need to issue a 1099. However, going down this path introduces all sorts of administrative overhead that WILL eat into your writing time. Consider you offer to pay writers one forty-fifth of your monthly take, or, two thirds of your daily take per piece, representing their contribution and taking a piece for your editorial contribution.
Assuming that you got a halfways decent but still growing monthly Patreon going at about 300 dollars (which is not nothing, I suppose), that means the going rate for a writer would be 6.50 per piece. Now, knowing a decent chunk of that will be eaten by payment servicers, you decide to keep a ledger of accounts payable, and you’ll pay out writers when their account hits fifty to a hundred or more dollars, introducing another layer of editorial labor.
So essentially, until you hit a monthly take of 1-2 grand, revenue sharing is a goddamn nightmare of organization, and that additional overhead might not become personally profitable for you until the Patreon is a borderline Walmart salary, and it will never be a humane freelance rate (though I suppose not nothing) until the Patreon itself is quite large.
Knowing this, then, go write a book. It’ll probably play better to your strengths, will create less unwarranted heartbreak and infighting, and might mean less work-that-isn’t-writing.
I think it isn’t a good idea to shutter HU even for a couple of months. You’ve invested years into making this a respected and even influential blog, but that sort of momentum vanishes pretty quickly on the web.
I’d suggest a compromise. Perhaps, for instance, reducing frequency — 3 times a week, for instance; putting up “reprint” articles from the first years; cutting out all new posts by yourself; delegating comment moderation to one or more trustworthy persons; sending out a vast email solicitation of articles to former and present contributors; asking the PencilPanelPage people to put up some of their old pre-HU posts; and I believe you’ve written a number of Comixology posts never reprinted, though I don’t know what the copyright situation is on that…
But whatever you do, don’t kill HU — and I think suspension will do that, which would be a great pity.
I think one of the milestones/benchmarks/goals (whatever you call them on Patreon) should be paying the contributors. If you have supporters who believe in the ethical obligation to pay writers if you are getting paid (like me) they will be all for it. I am not talking a lot, but offering maybe $25 for a post $50 for part of a roundtable or something is better than nothing, and may actually attract a greater range of would be contributors.
you may find that when you boot back up you wont be able to get some viewers back. shutting down for a few months might cost you more readers then you expect. But maybe thats not something you care much about ;)
My issue with a Patreon to fund a university press book is not that I’d be funding you. I’m happy to fund you, or any other creator doing a project I’d like to see happen.
My issue would be that I’d be underwriting a university press so that it didn’t have to pay one of its authors. Namely, Noah Berlatsky.
I can’t speak with any authority about the wisdom of putting the site on hold, but I suspect Ian and Alex are correct that you’d lose more than you’d gain, if only because the audience for a university press book will likely pale in comparison to the audience of this site. Given that you’re a freelancer, this seems like dangerous territory.
As to whether you pay contributors, if you did Patreon to fund the site while your wrote the book, I think you’d have to, otherwise you’d just be kicking the press’s unethical behavior down the line.
I’ve said this before, but I really don’t see the value of writing a book for free. The ethics are dubious even in academia, where presses struggle to stay solvent even as the growing collection of academic administrators draw six-figure salaries to attend meetings about whether to raise tuition, again. If you’re not in academia, I don’t know why you’d want to take part in all that. And I say this as someone who has had nothing but great experiences with editors at academic presses.
Nate, I wouldn’t exactly write a book for free; I’d get a (small) royalty. That’s more or less what I got for the Wonder Woman book. The advantage is, you get a chance to write at greater length and participate in a scholarly community that you might not otherwise reach; I’ve gotten to do various talks, gotten reviews, etc. It’s not a path to fame and fortune, obviously, but it was a way to talk about some things I wanted to talk about at greater length.
I mean…the blog is just as pointless, in terms of fame/money. I guess some people on the thread seem to think I get some benefit from it in terms of reputation or freelance work…but I don’t think that’s the case at this point. It’s just a labor of love, really. I can have one labor of love going at a time, but I’m not sure I can manage two at the moment—thus the option of shutting down or getting some money for one or the other.
We might lose some audience if we shut down for a bit I guess…but we don’t have that big an audience to begin with is the truth. I presume people would come back when we started up again…or possibly not. Again, it’s mostly a labor of love at this point; I’d like to keep readers, but I’d like to write this book too. Sometimes you just can’t do everything.
Oh, and Osvaldo, there’s no way we’re going to get enough from Patreon to pay $25 a post, I wouldn’t think. That’s $175 a week; I was hoping to get maybe $200 altogether to keep the blog going, and I bet even that’s a stretch. Plus, if I start paying people, that starts to be more of a time sink keeping records, sending out checks, and so forth.
I guess shutting down is looking like the way to go. Or I supposed if someone else wanted to take over editing for a few months that’d be possible. Doubt there’s anyone who would want to do that though…I know Suat’s too busy this year…
Ah, I see… If they’re giving you a royalty then I’d feel way better about Patreon for the blog. Also, if you’re seeing returns (not just monetary, but intellectually, etc.) on the WW book and want to keep on that road, I understand. I think I take some of that stuff for granted, which I really shouldn’t do.
I agree with Alex. What is it (apart from writing your own pieces) that’s the biggest time suck about HU? I wonder if just shutting down the comments would help.
Hiya – I have a data point that may be actual data. A couple of months ago, I began my Patreon/blog combination. It’s a little different from what you’re saying, as I’m funding an artist’s work for a game, but one of the rewards is getting extra posts at the blog beyond its basic schedule. Spitballing: what if you reversed that, so any pledge keeps you posting, and one or two higher-level pledges bags something else, I dunno, a hangout with you, or an artist friend dashes off a cool sketch or something – anything you can do or organize that’s comics-y and you like to do. Going by my structure, my $10 is too high, and I plan to scale it back a little soon (offering this point as more data; apparently patrons prefer $5 and less). I know I’d sling you a $1 once a month if it helped keep you blogging and maybe boosted your ego a bit during the writing process, and I imagine I’m not alone in that.
https://www.patreon.com/doctorxaos
Huh…maybe…. I thought I could ask people to tell me what to write about for a certain dollar amount…
Noah, you’re right. That model works better for weekly or monthly publication style blog.
Can you blog about the subject matter of your book or the writing process of your book in order to keep both going or would your publisher have an issue with that? There are some books which are just a collection of blog posts, sometimes even with little to no content actually added. One example is “What Makes This Book So Great” by Jo Walton.
Is there really no one else on this forum thats qualified and trustworthy enough except Suat to take over as administrator/editor for even a few months?
It’s not a matter of being qualified and trustworthy! There are plenty of people who could do it…but it’s kind of a time sink, and everybody’s busy with their own projects and lives.
Count me among those who would pay to keep the lights on at a scaled back HU – because it seems to me, and perhaps I’m wrong, this is a money loser right now and getting enough donations to break even is itself a big ask. My understand is for Patreon rewards are suggested but not required – the artist continuing to produce is reward itself.
As others suggest above, I would imagine – and I may be wrong – that comments are the biggest resource hog. It may also be the biggest obstacle to sharing the responsibility for the blog while you work.
So with or without funding perhaps:
1. Turn off comments.
2. Have a fixed number of posts per week/month scheduled and have others assist on getting those before or during the time you write the book.
3. Have someone – perhaps yourself – as a designated “Hot take” person for events you feel HU must note.
We are a money loser…or at least, I pay for the web hosting, and we don’t make any money, so that’s a net loss.
Why not advertising? Ad-free is nice, but you should have at least some compensation.
Ads are ugly, and we don’t get enough traffic to make the income worth it, alas.
When time permits (a rare commodity these days), HU is one of the few places where I can get comix criticism somewhat like the old TCJ. Once you throttle it back, it will start to wither, and that would be a shame … perhaps you can pitch the entire HU concept to an academic institution as a partnership for print and/or on-line work? Just thinking out loud.
Sometimes you have to think really big just to get to a minimally functional endpoint.
I’d much rather chip in some money to a kickstarter for your book then have the site go down for however many months.
Maybe a rotating editorship and comment-moderation role? Maybe nobody wants to take on the whole thing for a few months, but there should be enough people willing to do it for, say, a week.
Hmmm…I suppose that might be possible, Jones. I’ll think about it
Yeah. Why not a summer of guest editors? I am an academic and have the summer “off” – will be doing lots of non-blog (and blog) writing – but I’d be willing to do a week sometime in early July or late June – and I am sure others would too
I too would volunteer for a summer week. There would unfortunatley be a learning curve involving some chaos with each guest editor, initially not saving Noah all that much time probably. But if each editor volunteered for two separate weeks, it could eventually help out I think.