How You Can Help Me Keep My Content Free (Paywalls and Paychecks)

Most of us who create art, whether it's writing novels, making videos, drawing comics, or any of a thousand other creative pursuits, do so because we want people to be able to enjoy the fruits of our creative labors. We want people to see what we make, and to be able to enjoy it, because that's what completes the cycle for a lot of us.

Unfortunately, we live under capitalism. As such, we can't just give things away for free. Creators have bills to pay just like everybody else.

With that said, though, you can do your part to help the creators you love get paid without spending any of your own money. It will take a bit of time and effort on your part, but if you want to make sure creators you love can afford to keep making stuff you want to consume then this is the best way to do it.

And trust me, it all adds up!

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!

Spinning Straw Into Gold

A majority of content you find online exists to generate a profit. From the ads on social media and streaming video, to podcast sponsors and native content featured on blogs, it's all out there to make money for somebody. That somebody is rarely the creator, of course, because it takes a rather absurd amount of traffic in order for "free" content to turn enough of a profit that a creator could pay rent or cover their bills with it.

How absurd, you ask?

Let me shine some perspective for you.

Well, consider a platform like Vocal. My archive there currently has about 253 articles in it, including TTRPG content, short fiction like 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, explorations of weird history, and more. As one of the Vocal+ creators, I earn about $6 for every 1,000 reads on my articles. I say reads and not views, because just opening an article and closing it after a while doesn't count; someone needs to actually scroll through and read the damn thing.

For me to cover my rent and bills, I would need to get about 4,000 reads per day, give or take. Is that possible? Sure, it could happen if something went viral, or got mysteriously popular, like when my article It's Okay To Admit There Are Problems in Your Hobby first hit social media and the flame wars didn't die down for weeks on end.

Realistically, though? I get about 100-400 reads in a day. Sometimes there are outliers and unexpected booms of traffic, but that's what my average looks like.

Alternatively, consider video content like the piece above. Now, my Daily Motion channel isn't huge in following or library (yet), but it is monetized. And much like on YouTube someone can expect to earn a couple of dollars for every 3-5k views on their content... provided, of course, the person viewing it doesn't have Ad Block on their device. Ad Block means the ads don't get seen, so you don't end up earning anything. Those views are counted as far as your traffic goes, but they aren't counted for your earnings.

Realistically, you're lucky if 1 in 10 viewers doesn't have Ad Block, and even that is being pretty generous. That's how I can have over 5k views on my content in a month, and basically earn a nickel for my trouble. A nickel that I don't even get to keep, as much like YouTube, Daily Motion doesn't cash you out until you reach $100 of earned money.

This is Where You Come In

This is going to sound like I'm beating a broken drum, but creators do not have the power to get ourselves paid. We can create the content, we can stay active on social media, and we can try to get people to look at it, but 9 times out of 10 we get ignored, downplayed, blocked, or kicked out. It's a Catch-22; everyone will tell you to get out there and sell yourself, but when you do all anyone will say is how sick they are of everyone promoting their work.

You can't have it both ways, guys.

To reiterate what I said in Why Your Likes, Shares, Reviews, and Follows Matter to Creators, we are the gladiators. We are down in the arena putting on the show... but we have zero power outside of that. It's you, the members of the mob, who decide our fates. We need you to cheer for us. We need you to show up and be present when we have a match, and to talk about us so that other people find out about who we are and what we do.

Without you all doing your part to build us up, we'll be unseen, unknown, and forgotten.

What does that look like, though? Well it means that you:

- Regularly consume our content (we need views, reads, etc.)

- Follow us on social media (the more people we have, the more the algorithm promotes us)

- Like and share our content (we need help boosting the signal)

- Leave comments (big help on YouTube, most forums, etc.)

In short, creators can only afford to make things for free if their fans actively hype them up and grow their base to other people. Because I can guarantee you that if the 100 or so people who read one of my Vocal articles today also shared that article on their social media groups and pages, I would probably have several hundred to several thousand reads just for today. If a hundred people watched a video and shared it then it would climb to thousands of views, and likely several new subscribers.

But I cannot make that happen. No creator can make that happen. Only you, our audience, can do it. And you do it by raising your voice, and showing your favor, so that the Caesar declares us victors when it's time to render the decision.

If You'd Like To Start With Me...

For folks who've stumbled across this post, and would like to help me haul myself up a rung or two, here's a handy list of the places you can go where your efforts would be much appreciated!

- My Twitter

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Daily Motion Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Does Your Story Have Too Many Characters?

People love stories because of the characters in them. However, just as folks will often lambaste Tolkien for going on and on about the leave on his trees, I'd suggest there's a lesson we could learn from another big name in the fantasy genre. Because for all the good things one can say of A Song of Ice and Fire, perhaps one of the biggest issues that Martin puts on display is that when you expand your cast on every other page, you really dilute the interest of your readers.

In short, every story needs character. However, too many characters will make it impossible for your reader to see the forest for all the trees in their way.

Because it's really easy to confuse your audience if you aren't careful.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

How Big Does Your Cast List Really Need To Be?

Let's return to Martin's less-than-complete opus for a moment. There were a lot of changes made when adapting the books to the screen, but one of the more notable ones was eliminating minor characters from the story entirely, and combining different characters together as a way to boil down the number of names and faces the audience was expected to keep track of. It made for a smoother flow, and it was easier to digest the narrative that way.

If you can prune your character list by dozens of names and events, though, that really should leave you asking why you had so many characters in your book to begin with.

Though if they're going to be dying every other chapter, you may need them.

Generally speaking, characters need to serve a purpose in your story. Sometimes that purpose is a linchpin role (like the main antagonist, your protagonist or protagonists, etc.), and sometimes it's a supporting role (the witness who drops a clue in the detective's lap, the spunky sidekick who helps out, the oracle who provides the prophecy, etc.), but everyone has a role to play.

If a character doesn't really have a role to play, it's best to think of them as an extra.

For those not familiar with how movies are made, extras are all the fill-in folks in the background in film and TV. Those are the people filling up a café where the spy meets with the hacker to discuss stolen information, or all the people walking down the street before our hero comes pelting around the corner being chased by a tank. They're necessary to the scenes in question, but they aren't a part of the cast in a story sense. They are, if anything, like a living part of the set design. While you might find an occasional extra with a speaking line (like the waitstaff who take one's order in a restaurant scene, or nameless reporters firing questions around a murder investigation) they are still more a part of the background than the story.

When we're discussing whether your story has too many characters, these aren't usually the characters we're talking about... except when they are.

We Don't Need The Backstory on Every Tree Branch

When we introduce important members of the cast we usually give the reader a bunch of details about them, along with more information than they get about other characters. We get a full description, a name, maybe see things from their perspective a little, stuff like that. And while academically we know that every person is the main character of their own story, if you treat too many members of the cast like they're main characters in this story you're going to overload your audience.

Wait... why is Gerald Finn, the Gate Captain with the iron hand, important again?

Look over your story with a critical eye, and ask how many characters actually serve a narrative purpose. Great or small, you should be able to tell us what part of the story pocket watch they represent, and what their job is in the narrative. Even if it's something as small as, "Humanize the main character by showing their relationships outside of tracking down serial killers," that's still an important purpose.

But if the character doesn't have an important role, ask what happens if you scale back their involvement in a scene. Does it change anything? For example, do we need to know that Suzy Delgado is working a double at the diner, she's very stressed, but she's trying to keep a brave face? Or is that information just being dumped on us while Sly Goodman and assassin Alicia Carmine have a meeting, only involving Suzy when they want to order black coffee and some scrambled eggs before getting down to the nitty gritty on their current job?

What happens if you eliminate a character from the story entirely? Does that have any effect on the narrative at all? Because if their presence makes no impact on the story, shows us nothing about the rest of the characters, and serves no function, then you may be able to kill that particular darling without worrying about getting too much blood on your typewriter.

As the author, think of yourself as the head of stage lighting, or camera direction. You are the one who tells the audience where to look, what to pay attention to, and what is important. If you try to show the audience everything, though, you're going to end up with them paying attention to the wrong things, or getting bogged down in details that may confuse your story rather than clarifying it.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft 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 sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Marketing, Sales, and Insanity (A Glimpse Behind The Curtain)

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result."

- Rita Mae Brown

This quote, often attributed to Albert Einstein, actually came from mystery author Rita Mae Brown according to Quotes Explained. Whoever said it first, though, the idea is pretty sound. After all, if you go through the same motions, and do the exact, same thing you can usually expect to get the same results time and time again, for good or for ill.

Unless we're talking about marketing, of course. Because when it comes to marketing (or just creating content in general), you've gone fully through the Looking Glass into a world where what seems like madness is now the order of the day.

It doesn't make sense... none of it makes any sense...

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!

How Many Factors Can You Control?

The above sentiment regarding madness makes some assumptions, and they're assumptions that we don't always keep in mind when we start concocting our plans. The biggest is that, "doing the same thing," assumes that all the factors involved are the same every, single time. Because the same action, taken within the same parameters, should yield the same results... but a lot of the time we just feel like we're doing the same thing when, in fact, the only thing that's the same is our input as creators. Other factors (often factors we may not even think about, or which are drastically outside our control) play a part in this.

As an example, consider my Pathfinder Character Conversion For Batman.

Just stick with me, I promise I'm going somewhere with this.

Now, when I first wrote this piece it was published on Yahoo! Voices (a site that no longer exists), and it received something to the tune of 30k views the first week or so it was up. That put about $60 in my pocket, which wasn't bad for an article I'd put together in a few hours. However, Yahoo! Voices closed, and the article eventually migrated over to Vocal along with a lot of my other work. And even though the article was updated to reflect changes in the game, it barely received 800 reads, which was worth maybe $2 to me at the time of republishing.

On the surface this seems like the exact same action yielding wildly different results. After all I published the content under the original title and with many of the appropriate SEO tags, I shared it in the same social media groups who had proven receptive to my content, and I did all the same things on my end that I had the first time around. Yet the results were extremely different. Why?

Well, because other factors had changed, which created different results.

Firstly, say what you want about Yahoo! Voices, but it came with a built-in platform that provided high visibility and a lot more traffic than Vocal does. So right off the bat (pun very much intended) there was a huge difference caused just by the platform being used. Another factor was that at the time the original article went up, character conversions in RPGs were just starting as a trend in a lot of places, and as such they were quite popular. By the time this guide was re-posted, conversions had become sort of passe, and there were a lot fewer folks interested in them. It could even be argued that the colossal failure of Batman V. Superman coming out in between the original post and repost had made the public less interested in the character on the whole, and as such Batman himself was no longer a subject of as much interest to readers out there.

This is the sort of thing we often overlook as creators. Everything from which hash tags are currently the best to attach to your posts, to which platforms have the best visibility, to what kinds of content are most popular at a given time, all affect your marketing, your message, and whether your work gets shared by everyone who sees it, or drifts off into the void.

How Many Times Can You Hear The Same Joke?

There's an old story told about a wise man who tells a great joke. Everyone laughs. He tells it again, and some people laugh, but they're mostly confused. He tells it a third time, and nobody laughs. The moral is about how we often take less pleasure in good things, but allow bad things to keep being as powerful as the first time they hit us... but there's a lesson here for marketers, as well.

Just because something hits hard the first time, doesn't mean a follow-up is going to have the same results.

Trust me, I wish that wasn't the case.

I can give you another example for this one. When I wrote 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories over on Vocal, it shot up to over 5k reads. A pretty solid showing, and far-and-away the best piece of fiction I'd ever put on the site, performance-wise. The format was one of the things that readers said drew them in the hardest, so when I put together a sequel I narrowed the scope slightly and wrote 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, Warhammer 40K Edition. While it didn't perform as well, it still netted just under 3k reads which was more than worth the effort to put the piece together. I decided recently to put out a third installment, and to keep the change-up going it was 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, SCP Edition. Following the trend I figured it might eke out about 2k reads at best, maybe 1,500.

The actual result? About 53 reads. Heck, the audio drama version got more attention than that (though not much more... but if you like it, consider subscribing to me on Daily Motion!).

Why did this happen? Too many factors to count, ranging from the popularity of the niches I explored, to the timing of the posts, to where I shared them, and what the algorithm supported or blocked. However, one thing that was clear to me was that the initial installment was something of a fluke. It happened to hit at the right time, in the right place, under the right circumstances. And while there was a positive reaction to the second piece, the format itself was not enough to support the series all on its own. The novelty has worn off, and attempts to recapture it by branching out into other arenas had... mixed results.

This can be extremely frustrating when it comes to our work, because (to put it bluntly) the public is fickle, and unpredictable.

As another example, when I first started this arc of my career, steampunk was huge as a genre trend. New Avalon: Love and Loss in The City of Steam took me a year to write, and another several years to finally get published. Steampunk was dead as a trend by then, but it hadn't been dead long enough that people were looking for nostalgia reads in the genre. I've released RPG supplements full of random encounters that folks said they loved and wanted more of, but then when I put out a second installment no one gets a copy because it's just "more of the same." Sometimes I pour time and energy into crafting a tale that I think will strike a chord with the audience, like Beyond The Black: The Emperor's Hand (a tale of the ogryn Gav Smythe as he fights the enemies of the Imperium), and it goes nowhere. Other times I'll just throw together something silly to fill space, like my article Let People Dislike Things, and it explodes for no reason other than it happened to strike a chord at that very moment.

It's Our Audience That Stacks The Deck

I say this time and time again, but at the end of the day it's you, the readers, who are the one factor that we have to count on. Because if there is support from the audience, it can force all the other factors surrounding our work and our careers into the proper, celestial alignment for success.

If you have a following of tens of thousands of fans on any social media platform, things you share are boosted by the algorithm purely because the audience made it known that you are a person of interest. If there's people buying your books in numbers large enough to hit the bestseller list (which really isn't as many sales as you think), that's going to make you newsworthy, and you'll get coverage from various outlets which will boost your sales even further. If you even have a couple dozen people who share your content around in a dedicated way, you'll start to see outsized numbers of new readers come your way because those readers are making a fuss over you. And even if your content is free to consume, if you regularly pull down a few million watches per video, or a million reads on an article, everything else falls into place.

But it takes numbers... and those are numbers we cannot do all that much about on our own. All we can do is produce the best stuff we're capable of, and put it out there. Which is why if you have a creator whose work you enjoy, help them out. Subscribe to their channels, share their posts, consume the free stuff, and buy their books when you can afford to. While it might not feel like you're doing a lot as an individual, remember that a blizzard is made up of a bunch of snowflakes that all fall at once.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

The Problem With Flashbacks in Prose

A flashback is a storytelling device where we pause the current narrative, and we cut back to an earlier time in a character's life to show the audience their earlier experience. Whether it's Max Rockatansky having visions of his dead family in Fury Road, or Tallahassee remembering his life before the walking dead in Zombieland, it's a quick-and-dirty way to feed the audience additional context, or to remind them of something important to the narrative in a pivotal moment.

Movies, TV shows, comic books, we see flashbacks everywhere... even in prose. However, it is often a far less useful device in text than it is in a visual medium. Which is why I'd recommend that most writers really consider just not using it whenever possible.

It was six years ago to the day...

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

The Right Tool For The Right Job

When we see a flashback in a visual medium, there are signs that show us as the audience that what we're seeing happened previously in the character's life. There may be a musical sting, echoing words, and a change in camera angle or shooting style in film, for example. Not only that, but when we see our characters there are often distinct changes in their appearance (hairstyle, costume, lack of scars, obviously younger/played by a different actor entirely, etc.) that clue us in as to what we're seeing. Comic books use the same visual identifiers, but they'll often have a label indicating when and where the flashback is taking place so that the reader has full context for what they're looking at. Even stage plays use this device by changing costumes, set, character relationships, etc.

Prose... doesn't really do that. More importantly, though, flashbacks can often be the worst solution to an issue of getting information to your readers.

All right... let's crack open the archive!

If you want to have a flashback in prose, you often have to put in a messy scene break of some kind so the reader knows what's happening. You need to re-contextualize everything, and provide some kind of bearing for your audience to understand what's happening, and what they're seeing. Even if you manage to execute it smoothly, it can often feel jarring because you stopped telling the story in mid-flow to deliver what is, in essence, an aside to the audience.

Can you do this? Of course you can, it's your story. But is a flashback the best way to clue your reader in to what happened in the past?

As an example, let's say you have a violent vigilante in custody after killing dozens of members of the gang responsible for shooting his brother. The audience has seen the character's hollow-eyed, dead stare, the scars along their hands, and felt the rage radiating off of them. We see them as they are now. Could you have a flashback where we see what they were like before all of this? Sure, we could, and if this was a movie or a TV show, we probably would. But the audience will still get the idea if we show the reaction of people who knew this character before. We could bring across how they used to be in dialogue, perhaps by having a separate scene where we talk with people who knew the vigilante back in the day. Soldiers who served alongside him if he has a military history, friends and neighbors if he was close with anyone, parents, an ex... anyone else who can paint that picture.

The biggest sin a flashback commits in prose is that it often doesn't feel organic. That isn't to say that you can't make them work, but that you should ask what other methods you have on-hand that might function just as well. Often the best reason to use a flashback is because you have a tight word count you need to maintain, and it's the most expeditious option for you. Perhaps most importantly, though, the flashback is used to reveal information you have no other way to bring up, and you have a character whose mind you can delve into in order to show the audience what they're remembering.

As an example, check out my short story Dead Man's Bluff, from my collection The Rejects.

CW for those sensitive to flashing images (due to the projector effect).

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Stock footage provided by Vedeevo, downloaded from www.vedeevo.net

Thank you to Tabletop Audio for the following tracks:
- Lonesome West
- Antiquarian Study
- Nightmare
- Dark City" />

Were there other ways to bring that information about the card sharp's past up? Absolutely. I could have had the two men swapping stories over cards. I could have steered the conversation to talking about mothers when Jim alluded to his own. I could have had him ask about Fawkes's voice, and have him launch into the tale. I could have outright had Fawkes accuse Ruby to his face, shocking him and the audience both. However, that brief trip down memory lane seemed to fit best with the slow burn of the scene, but also with the mystery of what's happening, and the slow reveal of the history of these two men.

Again, just to reiterate, flashbacks can work in prose. But too often we reach for them as our go-to solution for bringing up information about a character's past when there are alternatives that would feel more organic, and which wouldn't break the flow of the story we're telling. So before you hit the reverb and let us drift back to an earlier time, ask if there's a better way to convey the information you want the audience to have. Sometimes the hammer is the right tool for the job... but if it isn't, don't try to use it anyway because you're more familiar with it.

Lastly, if you enjoyed that story, follow my Daily Motion channel! I'm hoping to keep converting more of my stories into audio dramas, but I need all the listeners and views I can manage if I want to make that a viable project going forward.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft 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 sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Addressing The "Do You Expect To Make A Living Doing This?" Crowd

"Why aren't you just giving this away for free? Do you expect to make a living doing this?"

This is a paraphrased version of a comment I received earlier this week, ironically while I was sharing a link to an RPG supplement that a colleague of mine wrote rather than a piece of my own work. An RPG supplement which, I would note, cost less than $2 for anyone who wanted to buy a copy (100 Problems To Encounter at a Starport by Adrian Kennelly, for those who are curious). While this isn't the first time I've had this comment lobbed at me (and it isn't even the first time it's been lobbed at me while I was trying to signal boost someone else's project), it is something I wanted to address this week.

Because I keep hearing this, and I keep wondering why people are still saying it in the capitalist hellscape that is 2022.

Yeah, there's going to be some theory in this week's update.

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!

Labors of Love Are Still Labors

Think of something you enjoy doing. Maybe it's painting, or making audio dramas, or being a Game Master for a tabletop session. Perhaps you love writing stories, or you enjoy training people to help reach their fitness goals. Maybe you really like sex. Even when you're just doing it for yourself, it still takes effort. You're putting in your time, your resources, your thoughts, your energy, and your expertise to make something, or to do something.

This is what folks in the economic sector refer to as labor, as it's the actions taken to produce a good or service. Yes, labor is more complicated than that, but I'm boiling things down here, so this is the definition I'm using.

Yeah, yeah, don't get ahead of me.

Now, imagine someone has seen your work, and they think it's really good. They want you to either perform similar work for them (likely to their specifications), or they want you to just give them the result of all your hard work. Not someone you know like a friend or a family member, but some random person off the street who just happened to be walking by. Would you do this job for them, or give them the thing you made, just because they asked you to?

Probably not, right?

Yet that seems to be exactly what people are asking every day. Not only that, but if you as a creator announce you are selling something you made, there will be a steady line of folks all too happy to berate you just because you aren't giving it away for free. No matter how many hours you took to make something, regardless of the skill of its execution, and no matter how affordable the price, they seem affronted that you're charging for your work.

"Do you expect to make a living doing this?" they ask.

A better question I would ask, though, is, "Do you barge into shops and demand free stuff off the shelf? Then why the hell are you doing that here?"

Why Are You Mad About It?

There is a unique thing that I feel a lot of creative people deal with, and it's that a lot of people want what we do or make, but a majority of them are affronted that we expect to be paid for it. You want $10 a head to run a 6-hour RPG module? "Ugh, what the hell, I do this for my friends for free!" You charge $12 for a copy of your novel? "Psh, I could read thousands of books online for free, why should I pay you for this one?" You quote your price for the particular fetish they want satisfied? "What do you mean you want me to pay you to satisfy my kink for the next few hours? Other people would do this just for the fun of it!"

It all blends together, after a while.

Why does this happen? Well, the main issue from my trench seems to be entitlement.

If you've been an author, or know an author, you've got stories about this. People who demand free copies of your book because, "You should be glad that somebody like me even wants to read this." If you have digital publications you can also throw in a side of, "It's just a digital copy, it's not like it costs you anything!" A lot of people out there do not put themselves in the creator's shoes. They're thinking only about themselves, and what they can get. And given that a lot of art is faceless, has been stolen, or is genuinely available for free online, there is often a rather vitriolic reaction to being told, "No, you can't just walk out with that. You need to pay for it."

The best way to combat this, from what I've seen, is to try to garner a sense of empathy in people, and to explain to them what's going on behind the curtain. Telling them that it took you nearly a year to write this novel, and that even if you only make a few dollars from every sale, you still have bills to pay. You might break down the numbers that it takes for creators to actually make anything resembling a notable wage (like I did in Talking About Numbers Again) to show them precisely what you need to hit in order to keep making things just to drive the point home.

This isn't a guarantee, of course. Some people are just going to rant and rave because you aren't giving them free stuff. Some people are going to realize just how much effort you put into your work, though, and they may choose to compensate you accordingly. Sometimes they may even give you a tip, just to help you keep the wheels greased.

If You Don't Like The Price, You Don't Have To Buy

Would we all like to be able to give our work away for free? Well, a lot of us probably would if we knew that we didn't have to worry about rent, food, gas, and utilities. But we are all stuck living under capitalism, which means that every month we have fees charged to our bank accounts just so we can stay alive.

Which means we need to get paid so that we can pay the other people who give us the staples we require.

If you think someone's work isn't worth what they're charging, you don't have to buy it. If you don't want to support them, no one is forcing you to. But if you want to see a creator keep producing work, they can't do that if they aren't making enough to pay their bills. Whether it's an author writing a fantasy noir series, a movie reviewer doing horror movie break downs, or someone who welds bizarre sculptures out of scrap steel, we all need a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, and the money to buy materials so we can make more things.

But if you absolutely refuse to pay for something a creator made, I want you to understand this if nothing else. We don't care. We would just really like you to step aside so that someone who is willing to buy a copy can step up to our booth. Because at the end of the day if you aren't helping us keep our heads above water, we don't have time to worry about catering to you.

And even if you don't have money, but still want to support the creators you love, consider what I said in A Lot of My Content is Free (But I Could Still Use Your Support).

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

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