State of Something Address Sept. 2020 (Pixiv Fanbox)

Hey everyone. I know it's probably a little early to be doing a State of Something, but there's a few things I want to talk about that are a bit attentive, and rather than wait until next month to cover it I feel now is the best time to do so.

Patreon

Let’s get this out of the way: I'm moving back to Patreon.

I don't fully regret moving off of it, no, but I've been doing some thinking. What I've been doing with these support sites and the goal of making full audio dramas based off my stories? It's not going to happen without Patreon.

Sure, other content creators might be able to get by on Fanbox or Subscribestar. I thought the same of myself. But as it's becoming apparent, there are more people that utilize Patreon over those two and any other sites similar to it, in spite of all the stuff that happened over the summer. No amount of push has been able to bring the majority of supporters over to the other sites. And I'm thankful to those that did move over, but I also feel sorry for doing so because now I feel I wasted their time.

But let me make that clear: I'm not moving off of Fanbox. I'm simply adding Patreon back to my repertoire of websites to post to. Yes, I know it's risky because Patreon has done a lot of dumb stuff over the past few months: The TOS changes, being Big Brother towards certain content creators, kicking said content creators off their website...I get it. There's a principle to it.

However, nothing major has happened since then. They haven't gone full Tumblr on content creators, and everything just seems to be quite on the 'booting NSFW creators off the platform' front. So even if it does inevitably happen, it's best to just ride it out to the bitter end.

And in case anyone is wondering, yes, the DxD audio will be posted on Patreon this week. It's just a matter of finding the time to do everything, because right now with the schedule I have for my full-time job, there's not enough of it in the day to cover everything like it used to.

Again, my apologies to everyone that moved over to Fanbox and such. It's just for the best on my end.

Commissions

If things hold up as they are currently, I might be able to take a few more commissions at the start of November. That's likely going to be the last opening I'll do this year, but I'm going to do things differently simply because I feel I need to take it easy around this time.

I'm sure you guys have noticed, but I've taken on a lot of work the last several months, so much so that I ended up having to take a week long break off of work. 30+ commissions in July's opening, and 25 last month. So I'm going to make things easier by experimenting with the sales.

Basically, a set amount of slots will be open towards a theme, something that I find near and dear to myself in regards to the Christmas season. There will also be a character sale like before, but this time around it'll be much simpler. Maybe no theme to go with it, just characters I either haven't written in a while or have an itch to touch. And even the characters will have a limit to them.

As I've said in the past, this is because the holidays are where I need to recharge myself, since I'll likely be working harder at the full-time job, especially thanks to the change in hours post-state shutdown. Hopefully next year I can go back to the hours I had, but we'll see how that goes...

Price change

Speaking of commissions, starting next January I'll be raising the prices of my commissions, though not by too much.

Right now, I'm considering the price to be 1.5 cents per word, or $15/1000 words. I feel like this is enough of a raise that should be fair to everyone involved. Like the last price increase, this will have a 'grandfathered' system, meaning stories before January 2021 will still be priced at $12/1000 words. However, any of the stories that were priced at a penny per word before April 2019, when the last price change happened, will now be raised up to $12/1000 words, unless you have an agreed to deal with me already.

Of course, if you support through Fanbox, Patreon, etc., you'll still get the same amount as before x amount of words that matches up with your fee for the month. Plus the sales will be going on as well, which will still be priced at a penny per word.

And I think that covers everything for the time being. If there's any further updates, they'll probably be given their own posts.

Take care until next time! Happy Halloween!