Second Goal Reached (2 extra chapters!)
Added 2021-04-14 15:46:00 +0000 UTCWe've reached 25 patrons, which is the second goal! We've just been creeping along with someone new every now and then, and suddenly, here we are! Thank you guys very much for your support. It means a lot to me to see other people enjoying this story, and I hope to continue to put out interesting content.
As promised, I will be posting two extra chapters as a thank you. Tomorrow will be the normal regularly scheduled Thursday chapters. The extra chapters will come out on Sunday the 18th and Tuesday the 20th, on my website like always.
After that, it'll be the regularly schedule Thursday chapter, until we reach fifty patrons, when I will post another two bonus chapters, plus an omake chapter!
Some people have been having trouble accessing the advance Patreon chapters due to some trouble with the latest version of Wordpress and the Patreon plugin. If this is you:
1. Clear your cache and try again to force it to actually update the page with new information.
2. If that doesn't work, on Patreon, make sure you've accepted their cookies.
3. If you have an adblocker, make sure it's off on both Patreon and my website.
4. After logging in on Patreon, if the "refresh" button on the chapter you want to read my website doesn't work, try clicking "Unlock with Patreon." There should be an intermediate page that pops up asking you to allow the Patreon app embedded in my website to access your Patreon information.
5. If that still doesn't work, just log in with your Patreon info directly on my website and bypass the app's connective function altogether using page: azaleaellis.com/login
6. If none of that is working, contact me through email, the contact form on my website, or message me here on Patreon, and we'll figure something out.
Thank you again, and as always, happy reading!
Azalea
Comments
They do indeed seem behind. The big thing that made me decide to post here as well as my website is that I'm suddenly getting a slew of international patrons, and though Patreon insists that their API works just fine for all the different currencies, in reality it discriminates. Someone who pays €6.50 or DKK50 instead of $7.00 USD for the Master-level tier has a 30% chance or so of not integrating properly into the website. That's just totally unfair and not cool. Having said that, I am thankful to Patreon for making accessing fans a lot easier.
Azalea Ellis
2022-01-07 01:33:57 +0000 UTCHow are you using Patreon for notifications? Do you use their emails, or are you letting the notifications of “posts from my creators” build up and then browsing them when you want to read? There is no way to automate posts to Patreon. I've looked. It seems that the Patreon API doesn’t allow for it, for some reason. You can port a post from Patreon over to a website instead, but this doesn’t work for my situation because the back end settings for that function won’t update the site’s table of contents as well as the navigation buttons. However, I could post links to the website chapter on Patreon. The reason I haven’t done this is not because I don’t care, but because I have a huge workload and I have to make decisions about the best ROI for my time. I handle not only the writing, but all the other work that goes with being an independent publisher—running a small business. I work 6-7 days a week, with 40-50% of my time going toward administrative tasks rather than writing. From beginning to end, it takes me on average about 20 hours of work to complete 1 chapter of PGTS, including planning, writing, revising, and editing. I’m slowly getting faster, but I’m never going to be a speedy writer, so I do my best to focus on the most important tasks so that I can spend more time writing. It’s the same reason I don’t post regularly on any social media site, and even stopped posting the weekly chapters at some of the places I uploaded them when I started serializing. Now that there are a greater number of patrons, meaning more people affected by this issue, it might make sense for me to remove one of the places I post chapters in favor of posting to Patreon, and realign the back end so patrons don’t automatically receive my standard new chapter email as well. When I have a moment, I’m going to put up a poll about it to explain the situation and learn more about how people use Patreon and prefer to receive their notifications. Depending on the results of the poll, the situation may change.
Azalea Ellis
2022-01-03 19:51:39 +0000 UTCI would also love it if you started posting chapters on patreon, so I can be notified about updates in the same way as every other author I support. Links to new chapters would be less good, but still an improvement. There's no reason this can't be automated. IMO some of what you're saying here sounds like you're deprioritisng the people who are paying for your work (well beyond the cost of the books), which is a bit strange.
am
2022-01-03 04:04:38 +0000 UTCI forgot to mention this in my earlier reply (trying to get too many things done at once before I had to leave the house), but I have an automated system that keeps current patrons in that specific segment of the newsletter unless they opt out. Patreon also sends emails directly when stuff is updated. So posting on Patreon in addition to that little segment of my newsletter means that people who DO use email would be getting double notifications every time a chapter came out. The newsletter allows me to reach, with one action, people both on and off Patreon who want the updates. It's true that posting in 1 more place doesn't add a ton of time to the process, but there are many things like that--things that could add up and slowly eat up all my resources. It already takes me 30-40 minutes to get each Thursday's chapter up everywhere, and there are a lot of ways to get notifications for it. I'm not saying I'll never adjust the system if it's not working for a lot of people, but it's not in the cards right now.
Azalea Ellis
2021-05-03 15:42:19 +0000 UTCHey giom, I don't post about every chapter on Patreon because I have to try to manage my time, and Patreon isn't a discovery tool--it doesn't help me to reach new readers. I handle everything from the writing to the publishing to the marketing, and I've got to reserve as much time for the actual writing as possible. Still, you do have options. I have a newsletter, and one of the segments gets notifications immediately when a new chapter comes out on my website. https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/q4b8d8 Otherwise, RoyalRoad, Spacebattles, and AO3 are usually updated with their chapter (a few behind my website) very shortly after I post the website chapter. If you follow the story on any of those sites they can act as a cue to check. The problem with this is that I don't ALWAYS post the chapter outside my website on Thursday, if I'm getting swamped with tasks, so sometimes that notification wouldn't go out till Friday.
Azalea Ellis
2021-05-02 22:42:36 +0000 UTCHi, I enjoy PGTS, I was wondering, could you post a message when a new chapter is released on your site? I use patreon and royal road to keep track of latest updates. But if the chapters for patreons are released on your site without a message on either of those sites, it's hard to know when it happens...
giom
2021-04-26 16:19:17 +0000 UTC
