How Your Patron Monies Are Spent...
The original unredacted post was published in The Veil two weeks ago.
I was asked a question, by someone who wants to be a supporter, but they wanted to know “how” I would be spending the monies they pledged and donated in support of this thing called Shai August.
It is an amazing and very fair question, that I probably should have answered before now. This post is my attempt to be completely transparent and let others know how the R & U Membership levels work.
1. Paying myself an hourly wage to create. Point blank period, I hope that’s self-explanatory enough.
2. Bills. Bills. Bills. - Office space, internet, Canva, webhosting, editors, typesetting, stock images, models, cover designers, software, and other subscription services necessary to run a small business like accounting software. Because the bills come every month, but the money I make from sales turns up like a bad ex-boyfriend sixty days later.
For example, Undercover Bachelor released in December 2020. There were pre-orders (thank you), new orders (thank you), and page reads (thank you) that happened in December, but Amazon won’t pay my share of those royalties until February 2021. Your generous support or future donations, helps me with cashflow to keep the lights on and pay others while I wait for those direct deposits to hit my account.
Gather round kiddos, it’s True Confession Time.
The Shifter Bachelor was originally supposed to release in August 2018. You know that whole August in August thing…I’d envisioned it for well over a year, when I originally selected my pen name. I had this vision of how I wanted the flyers to look with a bright summer sun shining down on me holding a physical copy of my book with the caption, “Paranormal will never be the same, these are not your momma’s shifters…Buy Now.” I couldn’t even afford flyers so I ditched the idea when I had to move the book to a Halloween release date. I digress.
The Shifter Bachelor didn’t come out until October 2018 because of one reason. I couldn’t afford to pay my cover designer the remaining money I owed.
Paying the cover model for the use of his image cost more than I’d budgeted, so I scrimped and saved from my grocery budget, worked extra hours and found the money to finally get everything moving in the same direction at once.
Some of your donations sit in the bank every month to help with cashflow, so I can pay the cover designers and editors and other services that I use to produce this world the moment their invoices hit. They shouldn’t have to wait on me waiting on Amazon, they have families and bellies just like I do and none of us want to be starving artists.
3. Future projects - I freely admit to being overly ambitious but there are a ton of things I want to do in the future.
Audiobooks! Everyone asks for these. Everyone, but it’s cost prohibitive (audio equipment, sound engineering, etc etc etc) to do it correctly unless I read them myself which I’m warning you now would be a disaster.
{Redacted Project Number 2}
{Redacted Project Number 3}
{Redacted Project Number 4}
{Redacted Project Number 5}
