Patreon was founded to help creators of all stripes earn direct, predictable funds for their work from their biggest fans. With the platform’s 250,000-plus active creators and 8 million active patrons, Patreon has accounted for more than $3.5 billion in funds to creators since its launch in 2013, according to a 2022 Patreon Creator Census.
It’s easy to see why Patreon appeals particularly to authors. In the traditional market, a short story might earn a couple hundred dollars for dozens of hours of labor, while traditional publishers pay royalties on novels just a handful of times a year. This is what prompted author Kameron Hurley to try Patreon in 2015. While she enjoys writing short fiction, publishing it traditionally did not make economic sense for her. But with Patreon? “We’re at three grand a month or something now, and it’s perfectly worth my time, and so I’m able to create a lot more work as an artist, which is what Patreon is for.”
Author C.E. Murphy started her Patreon in 2013 to see if she could justify the time and effort necessary to write her next novel. “I’d done a variety of crowdfunding projects before it, and I’m not even sure it seemed like something that could provide a sustainable income at that point, but I had multiple projects that were potentially suited.” Murphy’s patrons currently support her with over $1,100 a month.
Patreon’s Creator Census indicates that, on average, creators using the platform are making over 40 percent of their income through their communities of patrons. This rang true for Hurley, who estimated that, seven years in, Patreon makes up about half her writing income.
To be successful, the author must bring their own patrons. Unlike some other platforms, like Kickstarter, Patreon offers no promotional service to its creators. Success on the platform relies heavily on the following the author has established for themselves—or an author must first invest in building their online community elsewhere.
Hurley said that when she got started on Patreon, she’d already built her audience as a traditionally published author. “That’s important for people to remember. The people who are doing well are people like Seanan McGuire and N.K. Jemisin, who have traditionally published books [and] they have a wider reach.” Hurley herself had a subscriber list of 2,000 before launching her Patreon, and even so, she was unsure if that would be a large enough following to reach her modest goal for launch.
Patreon allows many tiers of pricing and rewards so that fans can support creators at the level they’re able to—or so creators can tempt them with high-level exclusives. Many of the top-performing authors start with a support level of just $1 a month (including the aforementioned high performers), while others start at $3, $4, or $5. But authors don’t necessarily have to offer lots of extra things to gain support. Murphy said one of the things she learned is that her fans aren’t necessarily interested in having “things” but in supporting the artist.
Hurley’s options currently go as high as $500 per story, but she intends to reduce the number of Patreon tiers and bring down the price range. For authors new to Patreon, she advised, “I would do three to five levels. I would not do more than that.” She added, “People will get overwhelmed. Make it really easy for them to stay focused.”
It pays to have a little fun, though. The Patreon Creator Census indicated that creators with custom names for their patrons (for example, “Hurley’s Heroes”) experience 4–8 percent higher monthly retention, which helps build a stronger and larger community over time.
Whatever the pricing structure, the most important draw is the incentive offered. Patrons are typically an author’s biggest fans, and fans want access to exclusives. Short stories are popular because they offer fans a slice of what they love most about an author—their writing—while also standing alone—fans don’t have to catch up on a backlog of chapters to follow along. Building on that base offering for higher patronage tiers can streamline an author’s efforts. For example, Hurley’s $1 patrons get a short story in print, while the $3 patrons get a real-time video of how the story was written, and $7 patrons get an audio narration of the story.
But for patrons, it’s not about length. Hurley said she used to try to create stories as long as 20 to 50 pages for her patrons but found they didn’t get many downloads at release. When she released a shorter story featuring drunk tweets from a character in one of her novels, her patrons’ response was enthusiastic.
“I was like, I’m trying too hard,” Hurley said. Now, she tries to keep stories to five or 10 pages. “Don’t kill yourself on this. It doesn’t need to be a 10,000-word story every time. It just needs to be quintessentially you.”
For authors not suited to short stories, other approaches include early looks at works in progress or an exclusive Discord. Tobias Buckell writes articles and book reviews, offering his perspective to patrons. If you don’t know what your fans will get excited about, just ask them. Successful accounts involve two-way communication between author and reader.
Sustaining a Patreon is a significant time investment. Hurley puts in 15 to 20 hours a month to maintain her Patreon and fulfill the incentives. She tracks the time she puts into it and uses her freelance rate as a metric for what’s a reasonable workload. As of this writing, Hurley earns about $2,900 per short story through Patreon support, which amounts to $146 an hour at 20 hours a month. For authors getting started, she warns that guarding your time will be crucial to sustaining your efforts long-term. “It’s dangerous sometimes for creators to go, ‘What do my fans want?’ and to give them all of it. That’s when people burn out,” Hurley said.
While consistency and quality work are crucial to keeping patrons, that all-important two-way relationship can pay dividends if an author has a month when everything goes sideways. “I had some qualms about ‘What if I don’t get a story out every month?’” said Murphy. But, “Transparency goes a long way. ‘This is an experiment, I don’t know how it’ll go,’ is valuable. ‘I’m sorry, my life exploded and I will not be posting anything coherent for the next several weeks,’ is valuable.”
Authors can share their excitement, their doubts, the months where everything goes wrong and they just can’t make it happen. This helps to foster a connection to patrons, so they understand if one month the author fails on their incentive promise. Ultimately, most patrons are there because they are excited to support the author, and they understand authors aren’t content machines. That said, such trust is built over time; it’s not wise to break patron commitments right out of the gate.
Once a Patreon is launched, it must be promoted. Creators who promote their Patreon daily earn as much as 75 percent more from the platform compared to those who promote just once a month; those who promote at least once a week earn 31 percent more, according to the Patreon Creator Census.
“Twitter’s my biggest platform, so regularly scheduled stuff that goes on Twitter says, ‘Hey, the Patreon exists,’” she said. “Then, every month when that short story comes out, it’s, ‘Hey, here’s a new short story from the Hurleyverse! And you get it now! Amazing! For a dollar!’ And that goes across all of them. That’s [posted on] Facebook and Instagram, and it goes on my newsletter. It’s one thing that every month goes in my newsletter: Here’s the short story, here’s what it’s about, here’s the cool cover, check it out!”
Bottom line: Despite the commitment Patreon demands, many authors find the reward well worth the investment. The funds raised through the platform can mean a quality-of-life difference for many creators. For Hurley, funds from patrons have enabled what she called “boring adult things” that may not be glamorous but are meaningful to everyday life, such as buying a new furnace for her house, paying back taxes, and even supporting assisted living for a relative. But she warns against turning to Patreon to replace your day job. “It was extremely important to me that I considered this extra income. This was ‘This is nice if this happens, but if this goes away, I can still eat.’”
That’s not to say authors don’t do it. Author N.K. Jemisin famously launched her Patreon specifically to replace her day job salary so she could write more—and has been successful in doing so (with the significant added support of a MacArthur Genius Grant and the elevated profile of a few Hugo Awards).
Emily Wenstrom is a freelance writer and platforming expert and writes award-winning speculative fiction for teens and adults as E. J. Wenstrom.
E. J. Wenstrom believes in complicated heroes, horrifying monsters, purple hair dye and standing to the right on escalators so the left side can walk. She writes dark speculative fiction for adults and teens, including her new release, a young adult dystopian novel titled Departures (August 10, 2021). When she isn’t writing fiction, E. J. Wenstrom is a regular contributor to DIY MFA and BookRiot, and co-hosts the Fantasy+Girl Podcast. Learn more at her website.
