What would you enjoy as Patreon content?

[hrj]

I'm reviewing various aspects of my social media presence and looking for new ways to engage with people. By "engage" I don't only mean "get my content in front of eyeballs" but "successfully use my content as a way of starting meaningful interactions with my readers/listeners."

(Look, I need some sort of positive feedback to give me a reason to put the work in. And honestly, social and intellectual interactions are my preferred form of "payment". Maybe if I were making ridiculous amounts of money from my writing, I'd consider that enough. But I'm not. So positive evidence that people care about what I'm doing and would miss it if I stopped is what I live for. And there have been times that I *have* stopped doing particular projects because I wasn't getting that evidence. Nothing is guaranteed.)

So, since I went through the (minimal) trouble to set up a Patreon, and it's one of my potential venues for getting concrete feedback (in the way of patrons, though not necessarily in the way of social/intellectual interactions), what would you enjoy receiving from me in the way of Patreon benefits? I don't want to skew the results by offering options because I honestly don't have any specific ideas yet. It's more in the way of, "Is there some type of content that you'd enjoy receiving from me that you aren't currently getting that you'd be interested enough to go out of your way to get?"

Comments

[kareina]

I had to look up what Patron is, and it sounds like a cool idea, however, despite being one of your biggest fans, I am not in a position where I could commit to a monthly payment. While my base rate of pay is quite decent, half-time income means that some months I have a bit extra over for fun stuff, and some months I don't.

I am, on the other hand, totally willing and able to engage with you on what you are writing--that I enjoy!

[hrj]

Yeah, I don't see Patreon as a place for engagement, necessarily.

[choirwoman]

Character writeups like you do in the newsletter, language geekery, stuff like that. (That's not something I'm not getting now, but I wouldn't mind if you put it in the patreon instead of in the newsletter)

[hrj]

I like doing that stuff in the newsletter because the newsletter is supposed to be the equivalent of a "fan club" to some extent. The idea is to use bonus content as "bait" to collect a group of highly-engaged readers who could potentially be mobilized for promotional purposes. Also, the Patreon is, in theory, focused on the Lesbian Historic Motif Project. So I'm thinking more in terms of "what sort of extra research-related content might make more sense as a paid extra?"

For example, one thing I floated a few months ago was to have a Patreon post in which I review excerpts from the "new books listings" from the On The Shelf episodes to help people find books they might want to read. I don't necessarily want to give my candid opinions on books on the podcast itself (although I occasionally provide content cautions if I think I book may be problematic). But people might value something like "looks solidly researched but badly needs copyediting" or "the characters sound fun but the setting is Hollywood-medieval" or "looks like a competently written story and reading the excerpt sent me off to buy it". That sort of thing.

I've also been thinking of doing some articles that distill down some of my historic sexuality research into useable form for other authors, such as terminology, or examples of "love language" between women in historic texts, or timelines of types of relationships that can be documented. It would be a different kind of content than what works in a podcast.

[choirwoman]

I would like reading notes! I'm not in your audience for the podcast (find it hard to process audio-only) but candid opinions on books are definitely my catnip.

[hrj]

I've drafted up the first test-run of this with the books mentioned in today's "Lesbian Vikings" podcast. The Patreon content will be text-based so that shouldn't be an issue. (Although all the scripted podcasts are also posted on my Alpennia bog, and I've been working on getting the interviews transcribed.) This won't the full book reviews because in most cases I won't have read anything but the preview available on Amazon or on a publisher's website. So mostly my basic take on the writing style and an assessment of historicity.