WinterWhereof

Tier Swapping

Added 2023-01-18 20:50:47 +0000 UTC

tl;dr: Please don't swap between 5$ tiers for free. I can see it. Didn't know Patreon worked like that. Will likely have to rework tiers again, but haven't decided how.

Hi everyone,

So apparently the way Patreon works, a person can swap between same-priced tiers for free. It's really easy to see when it happens (I get a notification) but there's unfortunately no way to stop it. Patreon has been consistently impressing me with its lack of features. Though, to be fair, it was probably never intended to be used this way.

Unfortunately, that means I'll have to rework my tiers again. If I want separate benefits for separate stories, I'd have to make two Patreon accounts. That's too much work, so maybe I'll go the way of other authors: different price tiers for different amounts of pre-release chapters, but the 5$ and 9$ tiers would have both Ascent and Dalliances tied in.

That creates its own problem: I'd either have to schedule multiple posts for each chapter, or manually adjust the chapter's permissions every day as chapters fell into tier boundaries. I prefer scheduling chapters, massively so. If I end up doing varied chapter advances, it means chapter releases (for the lower tiers at least) would become inconsistent, because I'd have to log in each night (and I'll forget to do so, here and there).

It would also mean everyone isn't paying for exactly what they want, but instead, my writing 'in general'. As a reader, I understand that even authors I love aren't always releasing stuff I'd want to pay for. But I'm not sure how else to handle it.

What a headache ...

I'll let everyone know what I plan to do. Maybe I'll separate the stories out into two Patreon accounts. Maybe I'll do tiered chapter amounts. Dunno.

Until then, please use the tiers as intended. I can see when you're taking advantage of it.

Or if anyone has fixes to the problems I mentioned, that'd be awesome too.

Thanks!