And I'm not even mad... I'm just honestly confused. So while the title is a bit of a rhetorical question, I do genuinely find myself wondering how it is the general public thinks creators make money if this is the way they act toward us?
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| Seriously... I am befuddled by this behavior. |
Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!
Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!
All Right, Let Me Break It Down One More Time
I cannot stress this enough, and even though I feel like I've gotten up on this stump before, apparently the people who need to hear this message haven't come across it yet. But the public, the audience, are what make creators money! You can write 100 novels, or make 1,000 YouTube videos, or put together 10 whole seasons of a podcast, but if you don't have an audience propping you up and helping you actually get consumed, seen, listened to, or read, then you may as well have been blowing raspberries and picking your nose for all that's going to actually get you paid.
I made a whole video about this a while back, in fact, over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel.
All right, let me back up a second to explain something that a lot of folks don't seem to understand. People who write books or blogs? People who create roleplaying games? People who make YouTube videos, or any other kind of art? We don't get paid for that! Unless the artist in-question is a staff member for a company who is paying them to create things (a rather rare position overall), or the person is working on a commission or as a ghostwriter, we do not get paid for making the things we make. We are making things, and then trying to sell them so we can turn a profit off the finished story, game, video, etc. we have made for people to enjoy.
When I wrote my novel Marked Territory about my hardboiled Maine Coon solving mysteries in New York City, I didn't get paid for writing that book. I did not receive an advance from my publisher (that's not really a thing anyone does except at the highest levels). If I expect that book to make me money, I need people to buy copies of it. When I wrote the 13 supplements in my 100 Kinfolk Bundle for Werewolf: The Apocalypse, I wasn't paid for that. I do, however, get 30% of the earnings on every sale those supplements make. I don't get paid for writing articles on Vocal, like my RPG character concept The Cult Born. I do, however, earn a certain amount of money based on how many reads all of those articles get from the audience.
And I feel like a lot of people out there just don't get this on a fundamental level.
When you see an author, or an illustrator, or a YouTuber talking about the stuff they've done, or asking folks who like their work to buy copies, or support them on a crowdfunding site, it's not that we aren't making enough money from our publishers and we need the audience to supplement our incomes. It's that our audience IS the source of our incomes! Whether you're buying copies of our books, or watching videos that have ads on them, or pledging to give us $5 a month so we can keep our bills paid, you out there, the people consuming our content, are where the money comes from.
You Aren't Supplementing Creators... You Are The Main Source
This is a point I feel people really need to internalize, because it's important for this to be understood. Creators can't just go to companies and apply for jobs, because we don't get hired to work for direct pay like that. And the few positions like that which do exist are highly competitive. A lot of us may pick up some freelance work, or we may get signed to short-term projects, but at the end of the day our success is directly laid at your feet... the audience.
You decide if we live or die in a very literal sense.
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| Which is why your cheers matter so damn much. |
Again, you are not required to spend your time or money supporting creators whose work you aren't interested in, or which you don't like. But if you see creators out there posting links to their work, telling people about their Patreon, asking for folks to like, follow, subscribe, etc., understand that this is the way creators get paid. We don't get paid when we finish a piece unless we've got a contract with someone for it, and for a lot of us we depend on our crowdfunding audience, and our royalties (whether that's from book sales, merch sales, or from people's eyes on our articles and videos).
If you don't want to support, you don't have to. The ball is in your court. But if you do like that artist, and you want to see more of their work, and you want them to succeed, then you need to understand there isn't some phantom boss our there signing our paychecks. There's just you, and what you choose to do to help support the creators you care about.
And if you want to know exactly how you can make everyone's lives easier, I have the full breakdown for you in Care And Feeding Of Your Creators (5 Steps All Fans Should Take) that provides a bulleted list for you!
Support The Literary Mercenary
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- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)
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Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!
Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!
That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
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