First, some quick info:
Anyone who has not already switched to the $5 tier will be receiving a refund for this month whether they want it or not. These refunds will be going out as soon as we're able. Currently some refunds are not going through, which we think is because Patreon is still processing pledges. As soon as that clears up, all refunds will be sent.
If you haven't already switched to the $5 tier after that point you will have to re-pledge.
If you re-pledge after already having been charged $1 for this month, Patreon will not charge you another full $5 to switch your pledge. You will only be charged the difference.
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Now the meat and potatoes.
We wanted to answer every person who left a comment on our previous two posts, but there are a lot of them, and we've found that we've begun to repeat ourselves a lot, so we're going to make one more post on this topic and leave it at that.
First, to everyone who has been supportive and stuck with us, even if the timing of this change wasn't ideal, thank you. We really appreciate the support, and we hope that after things settle down, we get some IRL stuff under control, and I have given my wrist some time to recover we'll be able to move back up to 5 pages per month again. Having to produce less work isn't what I want, but with the current state of my health and things going on in my personal life, I just can't feasibly keep up the pace I've been working at without the shit hitting the fan somewhere.
To everyone else, thank you for your support so far, and we understand if you either can't or won't continue to support at the new cost.
The increase to a $5 minimum tier has been a long time coming. The amount of work that I put into this comic has been more than what I could justify for how much support it has actually brought in since the very beginning, and the pace I have had to keep up at the expense of pretty much all other work and even a lot of real life events like family gatherings or holidays has taken a toll on me as of late. I had wanted to make these changes with some advance warning, but plans don't always work out like we want them to, and it became necessary to make the changes immediately. I didn't like having to do it, but it is what it is.
Unfortunately, working a full time job with few or no breaks or holidays and only asking for a dollar in return for the work just can't pay the bills. If I can't make ends meet, I'll have to stop doing art and go do something else.
I tried to make it work. I thought that if I just kept at it, eventually enough people would join the Patreon that I could keep making comics and be able to pay my bills and make a reasonably comfortable living. So I kept pushing myself. After three years of trying, it's clear that it's not going to work out that way without some changes.
When I was working on Family Matters, after I began accepting donations to prioritize working on it, it received enough support to justify creating new pages, but it never really brought in enough for me to support myself with it. When we temporarily lost our ability to accept donations, I continued to work on it for free just so that people wouldn't be left hanging. We eventually got that one done, once we were able to move to Patreon, but it was never enough to justify making it a full time job.
No Hyenas was even worse. We tried to accept donations to get that one finished, but the amount of people who bought the support pack didn't even end up being enough to justify the work that had gone into the support pack itself. In the end, I ended up doing as many free pages for that comic as I could, until, finally, I just couldn't justify working on it any longer.
Now with No Harm No Fowl, the same thing is happening. The amount of support I receive at least pays for the pages, which I have always severely undercharged for, but the work that goes into these pages is far beyond the work that was required for Family Matters or No Hyenas, and I just can't afford to continue at the current price anymore. It's impossible. Either I raise the minimum tier and try to make that work, or I won't be able to continue.
It seems that a $1 minimum just doesn't work very well. My own portfolios and other projects that don't have a $1 minimum almost always seem to justify their creation with their sales, but the $1 tier on Patreon does not. That's just the reality of the situation.
So, all of that being said, this is the decision that I have come to, and going forward, the minimum tier for my Patreon will be $5. I know that will price some people out of the Patreon, and I'm sorry for that, but I have to do something, and this is what I'm going to try.
If you're one of those people you will still be able to see the comic as I release it for free. Family Matters, No Hyenas, and No Harm No Fowl have never been locked exclusively behind a paywall, and they're not going to be.
Now, onto the $1 Patreon pledges issue.
I thought that I would be able to work this out by letting people decide if they wanted a refund or if they wanted to continue supporting and change their pledge to the new $5 minimum. The result has actually not been what I expected, and very few people who have yet to change their pledge to $5 have asked for a refund. Keeping that money makes me extremely uncomfortable, and I have no desire to try to take money from anyone for nothing.
I have decided that whether or not anyone has asked for a refund, if you have not changed your pledge to $5, I will be issuing a refund anyway. I'll feel a lot better not having something like that complicating things. So, I'll be going down the list and issuing refunds as soon as I can for the month of September. If you are one of these people, Patreon takes 5-7 business days from the time a refund is issued for it to end up back in your account. One thing to note though, is that I have been having trouble issuing some refunds over the past day. I believe this is because Patreon is still processing pledges, but rest assured, I will continue to retry the refunds until they all go through.
If you end up being refunded before you find out about any of this and still want to support, you will have to re-pledge at the new $5 tier to access any of the new content from this point forward on PrimeLeap. I'm sorry for any inconvenience that this has caused to anyone. This whole situation was not how I wanted it to happen, but as I've already said, sometimes things just don't turn out how you plan them.
One last thing.
I have always tried to be as polite and helpful as I can toward both my Patrons and toward just fans in general. It's something I pride myself on. I always want to treat people with respect, even if I have disagreements with them.
I could never have imagined receiving the sort of insinuations and insults that I have received in the last few hours before today. I honestly just don't even know what to say. It's one thing to have a disagreement and voice that disagreement, it's another thing entirely to come at me with the sort of things some people have chosen to.
I'm not some nameless robot. I am an actual person, and I don't have to sit here and take abuse like that. I won't. Those few of you who have decided to go this route will still be receiving your refunds, but after that, I think it's best that we part ways on a permanent basis.
To the rest of you, who were civil, thank you. I hope I've answered any questions you may have had with this post. This is the last that I'll be talking about the changes going forward.
