Membership and Patreon Updates

Hi everyone!

The past year and a half has been an amazing journey of growth and transformation. I completed graduate school, embarked on a career in R&D, and commenced the gradual process of reclaiming my health. Additionally, this has been a fun period of exploration in how I write and tell my drone stories, with amazing feedback from all of you.

With this transformative mindset, I’ve been contemplating changes and improvements for my Patreon, and I want to share my plans with you and hear your feedback. Some of these will come into effect earlier than others, but my goal is to implement as many of these as I can before the end of 2024.

Membership Update: I don’t like writing a post about how my Patreon base membership price is going up from $2 to $5, but the good news is that if you are already signed up, your price will not go up. Starting October 1, 2024, at approximately 6 AM Eastern time, new members and returning subscribers will be able to join at the Mega Drones ($5) level and up. The Drone Citizen and Improved Drone tiers will be unpublished and unavailable to new members. If you are already subscribed to those tiers, you will not lose your current benefits so long as you stay subscribed to those tiers.

It really means a lot to me that you have supported my stories, and I am glad that I can provide this boon to you. Patreon encourages me to create custom drone stories and maintain a consistent posting schedule, so I appreciate your support and feedback throughout the process.

I thought about offering an annual membership at a discount to help cushion the price increase, but it looks like my account does not currently qualify for this option.

If you have any questions or need help upgrading your tier, do let me know. You can message me through Patreon or on Discord (tyng5).

Finding Existing Stories Across Platforms: I will investigate how to make my stories easy to find across various platforms (Twitter, Discord, Patreon) and across time. Some ideas I’m currently mulling over are (I’m open to feedback on additional methods):

-          creating a carrd.co link to my other pages (like Discord, GSS, Subscribestar, Patreon, and Twitter), like how I see other “Twitter” artists do on their profiles.

-          An updated list of my prior works that will be easier to find and navigate

-          Write that summary of Drone World (written from the perspective of a hacker character), of which I am halfway through the very rough draft.

Improved PDF Layout: I want to modify the layout of my PDF outputs using LaTeX and combine the individual chapters into one PDF. I would appreciate any feedback and suggestions you have for improving the layout (and feature suggestions like internal links) to enhance the visual appeal of the stories.

Patreon Layout: I am in the mood to make generic improvements/changes to the current Patreon page. I want to make sure that stories and rewards are easy to find, regardless of how much time has passed since their first posting. I would appreciate any feedback and suggestions you have on how to improve its accessibility and layout. Funny enough, I’m doing something similar at work for my projects and research papers.

Writing Plan for 2024-2025: I have many story ideas, and it's time to make a plan to prioritize them. I've already shared my story plans for the remainder of 2024, and now I'll start thinking about the plans for 2025. It won't be a rigid plan but more like a roadmap that I can use to stay organized. I'll also be sending out a poll to gauge interest in updated versions of my existing GSS stories (where I'll refine missing details, fix grammar, and maybe add extra scenes).

I will aim to create more polls to help me focus on the stories that interest you most.

Member Feedback: if you think that there is anything I could be doing better or have any suggestions for the Patreon or my stories, I would love to hear your feedback. You can message me through Patreon or Discord (tyng5).