15 March 2019

Instead of doing real work, even housework, Max and I (shuddup, he's helping) have been setting up a site for The Wick Chronicles. It's bare bones right now, with links that probably go nowhere, and one that leads to my Amazon author page, but eventually we want it to be comprehensive, interactive, and we'll occasionally offer freebies.

This is how he's helping...

The original idea was to set up a Patreon page, but I keep reading horror stories from both the creators and their supporters, and I don't need any new headaches. I'm not totally dismissing the idea, but if we can offer up the same things without committing people to something every month, all the better.

I have no idea how this will play out, really. At the very least I'd like to be able to offer moderately tech savvy people discounted first reads on Max's books as they come out--you'd only need to know how to side-load a file onto your Kindle or other reading device--but I also need to figure out how to implement that without the books winding up for sale under someone else's name before we get to print. Or even after.

I've never had DRM on my books; I believe in trusting people with the things they purchased and presume they'll be fair about it. The only time I know for sure that I've been burned was by a publisher who offered my entire first novel online instead of the first 20% as intended. There were, the publisher estimated, 25,000 downloads before they caught the mistake.

No, I was never compensated.

We'll figure it out.

Since we're not going down the Patreon path, there might be--I stress might be--a tipjar* at some point. It depends on how much content we can generate. The tipjar would function as royalties do when you buy a book online--the money Max earns is used to purchase toys at Christmas for either Toys for Tots or the local foster kids program, and once in a while it's used for other charitable donations.

There will be more than Wick content available, eventually. If you haven't read any of his books, they'll be offered at discounts, and on random days, perhaps even for free. My books will show up there at some point.

But, we're getting things ready. Mostly, I need a better theme, because it's kind of bland right now. I'm not creative enough to write the code for my own, so I'll probably wind up buying something, once I find a reputable site for Wordpress.org themes.



*I mention that upfront because many, many years ago, I had a link to a joke tipjar, a link no one clicked on, and got reamed for my crassness in having it. If anyone had followed the breadcrumbs, they would have eventually landed on a "Thanks, but..." page. The max total anyone could have clicked on to donate was 50 cents, and even then they would have wound up at the Thanks, but... page. I expected one person to click on it, someone with whom I had a long running joke about owing me fifty cents for a long forgotten debt...but the whole thing backfired, and after it languishing on my blog for over 3 years, someone noticed it and started yelling...people piled on...it was not pretty.