I’ll be rolling out a new pledging system for this site next week. Built on a platform called Memberful, it will let you pledge your support right from the site, without Patreon or anyone else inserting themselves into the conversation. The folks from Memberful have been great to communicate with, and I’m really excited about how this is shaping up. I think it’s going to be a great system that will work really well for many or most of you.
That said, my feeling after much vacillation over the last several days is that I won’t abandon Patreon either. Some of you doubtless would prefer to stay with them, for perfectly valid reasons: for high pledge amounts, the new fee schedule is much less onerous; some of you really like the ability to pledge per-article rather than on a monthly basis, which is something no other solution I’ve found — including Memberful — can quite duplicate; some of you really want to keep all of your pledges to creators integrated on the same site; etc. And of course it’s possible that Patreon will still do something to mitigate the enormous damage they did to their brand last week. At the risk of introducing a bit more complication, then, I think the best approach is just to clearly explain the pros and cons of the two options and leave the choice in your hands.
For right now, those of you who are current Patreon patrons don’t need to do anything. The article which I’ll publish on Friday will still be bound by the old rules; the new ones won’t go into effect until December 18. On or about December 18, I’ll introduce you to the new pledging system, and you can decide then what works best for you.
Thanks for your relentless positivity during what was a pretty stressful few days — and a big welcome to the few of you who defied all the conventional wisdom by signing on with Patreon in the midst of this whole brouhaha. The stress is vastly less now: the path ahead is becoming clear, and, best of all, I continue to be blessed with the best readers in the world.
More news in a week!
