Patreon Fee Changes?

There's news about Patreon making the rounds - they've emailed info on it to a bunch of people, but not to us directly. Apparently, because it affects how they plan to bill patrons, they guessed it would only matter to you.

Not so! We care a great deal that you guys don't end up money you didn't expect to, so we wanna give you as much forewarning as possible. And let you have input on figuring this thing out.

Anyway, as of now Patreon's got a plan whereby they'll be charging patrons an (admittedly small) processing fee for their pledges. They say this is to help with the costs of transactions, banking, credit cards, taxation, etc.

See, previously, that processing money was being paid by us (The Cassiopeia Quinn Team) out of our end, sure. This change will, in fact, result in a tiny bit more take-home at the end of the month for us, which sounds nice.

However, a sudden increase in what you, our supporters, get charged (it's gonna be 2.9% + 0.35 cents on top of your pledge) is not to our liking. We planned out our pledge tiers carefully. It kind of feels like Patreon asking you to pay even pennies more is breaking our promise. It was definitely not our idea.

Up until now we liked that Patreon kept the gritty, fee-focused part of the system as our problem and didn't make you guys think about it. That's why we got on here in the first place - to make it easy for folks to send a bit of cash our way and for us to reward them with words and art.

(We like making words and art. It's a thing about us you may have noticed.)

Patreon has put info about this whole thing on their blog.

You can submit any questions or complaints you have about this change to Patreon here. I certainly have!

Anyway, this new system is intended to go into effect on December 18th and won't matter until the next billing happens at the end of the month.

Still, as small as the amount might seem, we know there are a few people giving us as little as, say, $1 simply because they like our content and that's what they can afford, and we care about them. This increase affects those smallest pledges disproportionately! We don't want to see them suddenly forced to kick in $1.38 all of a sudden if that's gonna present a financial burden they were not anticipating.

Do not pledge to us if it represents a hardship. You can support us in other ways - by spreading word about the comic on social media, by telling people in your life about it, etc. We're gonna have to move into merch sooner or later (although this kind of potential instability in our funds doesn't help that idea along). We can even create a direct donation thing if enough people ask for it, although that's not our preference.

So that you have as much info as possible, I'm gonna state what people pledging at the normal tiers are really going to be asked to pay at the end of this month. If you are put off by the fees and want to stop supporting us, please let us know. Maybe we can work something out in our pricing structure to keep most people happy - and I want to personally thank every one of you for everything you've done for us so far. It's made all the difference for Cassiopeia Quinn.

Well, let's see...

NEW FEE STRUCTURE:

$3 (COMMENTARY TIER) =  Actual Charge: $3.44  

$5 (PINUP + WiP TIER) =  Actual Charge: $5.50

$7 (CONCEPT ART TIER) = Actual Charge: $7.54  

Definitely not how we'd be doing it, if they'd asked us.

Our comic is free and will remain so for as long as we're able to do it that way. Hiveworks is very good to us about hosting and tech!

Update notifications, for people following the Patreon without donating, will also remain free. Let us know what you think, and what we may have to change to keep you around and happy.

We want to know. You, the audience, matter a lot more to us than whether or not we have to eat some bothersome fee!