What is the Difference Between my Patreon and My Substack?

A lot, actually.

Almost everything on my Patreon is behind a paywall. Almost everything on my Substack is not behind a paywall.

My Patreon does most of the financing of my work, which includes producing roughly 200 blog posts a year, and some of that is comic art. As it brings in the most money, it gets priority. All posts go to Patreon first.

Almost all posts on Substack were on my Patreon a year or more before they showed up on Substack. I edit them and update them before reposting. Sometimes just a few tweaks, usually no more than a few paragraphs.

So why have a Substack and a Patreon?

And if I’m going to put things out in public anyway, why not just go whole hog and post everything publicly now? Why put anything behind a paywall at all?

Well, like most people, I like to get paid for my labor.

I blogged for decades, all the way back into the 1990’s, and made very little money despite getting millions of hits a year and working at least 40-50 hours a month. At most I made about $200 or so a month when donation buttons became a thing. Usually about $20.

In the beginning, you could only finance a blog with ad platforms like Google. I could get 100,000 hits and make pennies. Yay.

Now my work is behind a paywall on my Patreon. I not only have one of the most productive Patreons on the site, it finances my writing, my work for publishers, and commissions. Top supporters can choose to use their Patreon support to make payments on commissions, or to pay for published original art purchases. Top supporters also get signed copies of my books as they are published, as well as prints. I cover shipping.

It’s no secret that page rates in comics aren’t great, even if you’re a known creator. Money is made on the back end via royalties or the sale of original art, assuming the book does well. The more time and effort you put into a project, the bigger the financial risk.

I can make as much money up front from a publisher on a page that took me four hours as I can on a page that took me forty hours.

You read that right.

Drawing a comic in a very simple style always pays off. Bringing your A-Game doesn’t.

If the book does well on the back end, yay. If it doesn’t, well, them’s the breaks.

But one of the reason I can afford to take the crazy amount of time it takes to do pages like this…

Snow Glass Apples, sold out of 8th printing, get it at my bookstore.

is because my Patreon is acting as my basic income.

When I was working on Troll Bridge, it took me between 4 and 5 days to complete most of the major pages. they look like this.

I did not have a Patreon when I did this book. It took me years to do it because I was getting about $450 a week and squeezing it between other assignments. This took over 4 years to complete for which I was paid something around $25,000 for over an entire year of work.

Most artists can’t afford to take those kinds of risks. If there isn’t any value in the original art, or if there are no royalties, then you just worked for low income for a year.

How many people can take that blind risk?

I’ve done it over and over. Sometimes it pays off.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

With Patreon, that’s not as much of a worry.

My Patreon is pretty successful. Patreon pays my bills. And Patreon supporters gets a lot in return for that support.

I have SWAG giveaways almost every week, books and art supplies mostly. I’ve given away over 300 items, shipping included, to Patreon supporters at all levels. I even pay the shipping.

I review art supplies for a major company and get plenty of them that I can’t possibly use. I move the excess on to my Patreon supporters. I’ve given away more books than I can count.

We have twice weekly Body Doubling focus sessions which are very supportive and productive groups that encourage everyone to concentrate and meet their goals.

My Patreon has been an incredible gift.

A lovely example…

After my first year of running a Patreon, I found myself in a sticky situation. A major book contract had been delayed and I was without work.

A company (you probably never heard of) offered me a great project. I thought I’d have enough lead time to work on it until the new project came through. I really needed a regular gig!

The contract came in, and I couldn’t believe how bad it was.

Not only did the client want all the original art as part of the agreement, the page rate was very low, written in such a way as to virtually guarantee I’d never see a dime of royalties unless it sold more than almost every major mainstream comic currently in print.

They clearly didn’t believe I’d have any idea what the contract meant, and were very jolly about the prospect of my signing it.

Didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, bro.

Also, the client could take my name off the work for no reason whatsoever, and there was nothing I could do about it.

It was an adaptation of a PUBLIC DOMAIN WORK.

That’s right, this company wanted me to do all the labor on a PUBLIC DOMAIN WORK, take it for a song, take the art, and then not even give me a guarantee that I’d get credit for it.

And the best part was…no…no…wait…wait for it…

they were going to finance it via crowdfunding.

I could not believe it.

Because I had regular income from my Patreon, I was able to say no to this dog. A few months later I got the delayed contract and got a gig that ended up doing gangbusters.

I was incredibly grateful to my Patreon supporters. I’ve thanked them over and over.

While writing this, I wondered if this company was still in business.

It is. Kind of.

They financed another public domain book via crowdfunding five years ago.

I can’t even.

It brought in a modest amount of money. Very modest.

The final product looks awful, sank without a trace, TOOK FIVE YEARS TO COME OUT, is almost HALF the length of the Good Omens graphic novel, a tiny fraction of the complexity, a very tiny fraction of the production values, and less than 1% of the fulfillment issues, (and I bet no one went blind during production, and I didn’t see people mobbing them about being four years late either, double standards, I say)…I just gotta…

FOUR YEARS LATE on a 120 page book with virtually no extras.

Yeah, whatever.

What an honor it would have been to work for you.

If I want to do a public domain work, I can run my own crowdfunder.

Asshole.

Anyway…

My Patreon is a better deal for readers as well. It’s not only less expensive (support starts at $1 a month,) you just get a lot more stuff.

So why have a Substack at all?

I have an audience here that doesn’t use Patreon. Patreon is more of a closed system, a kind of cocoon.

While it is a safer space than Substack, it is harder to grow than Substack even though it is, objectively, a better deal for readers.

There is a lot of very lively discussion and interest here on Substack I’d hate to lose. I find so many interesting things on this platform.

However…

If you are looking to deeper dive into my work and get more stuff…my Patreon is a great deal at $1 a month.

You get more posts, more art, more engagement, and more access to stuff. At higher levels you get even more access to stuff.

But I like being around different people…so.

Substack.

I’m staying.

Hi.