Hello Quetzal2006,
Thank you for joining the forum and posting your comments. I am the AuthorLord's wife and beta reader. I welcome reasonable constructive criticism here and I'm willing to discuss your concerns. This does not mean that I will allow the discussion to go down the road of insults. So please be polite to both the AuthorLord, other writers, and the members that post here. This also goes for other posters in the thread.
Matthew / AuthorLord has been writing fanfiction for free for more than 7 years. From your commentary, you believe that fanfiction should be offered for free (which it is) and that the writers should not be paid for their fanfiction work. I agree with this.
Matthew and I have been very careful to separate his original fiction from his fanfiction. Let me explain why there are mentions of fanfiction on the Patreon page: Matthew has a large following of fans for his fanfiction writing, so some of the perks and rewards are intended to please some of those people. Over time, he may also gain fans of his original fiction, and so some of the perks and rewards will be changed to reflect this. I would prefer that we not mention he writes fanfiction at all. Frankly that's not going to happen, because he has a large fanbase (AuthorLord's Army) who recognize his writing from NOFP and Team 8.
The fanfiction writing has slowed due to various reasons and I will provide an explanation below.
The AuthorLord started the NOFP story when he was laid off from a full time position. This happened to me and 1500 other employees at the same time. He decided to focus on writing full time and wanted to make a change in careers. Note that careers suggests that even at this time, he wanted to get paid for writing.
Losing his job meant that he had plenty of free time, but not much money for entertainment, so he spent time on things that were free (fanfiction) that helped him get closer to a career as a writer. He had also written some original fiction before the layoff and had attempted to get it published. This effort failed, but he did succeed in getting a short story published in a compilation of stories.
During this time, he continued to look for paying work and I expanded a part time business to full time to pay the bills. However, we had lost 30% of our previous income due to job loss. A year later, Matthew joined me working at a call center and we both worked full time again for 6 years. We were promoted into other roles and continued to work for the call center. During this time, the writing slowed down but he was posting about once a month. Matthew found that his motivation for and energy for writing declined when working full time in a call center. Moving to a different job didn't really help because his energy was still being drained by the job. Compounding this, a few years later, his health began to decline in ways that preventing him from sitting at a desk for long periods of time (1 hour or more). His health, energy, and the working conditions at our employer all combined to drain his interest, ability and energy for writing too. People started asking if he had abandoned the stories. He responded that no, he had not stopped writing, but it was painfully slow and would continue to be painfully slow until certain conditions improved.
Fanfiction is a free effort and a gift from the writer. If those gifts stop coming, the fans should not demand that the pace picks up or that the writer must continue updating. It's a gift and there are no strings attached. From what I've seen, most fanfiction writers lose interest and stop updating eventually, which does hang the fans out to dry. But the fans read other stories that are updating. It is a gift if they do, but it is not a tragedy if they stop.
Now that you have some history here, I hope that you can understand what happened more recently. Matthew was laid off again in January 2015. I was not laid off and continue to work for the call center. But our income never went back to previous levels and was halved again by the layoff. We had already done the cost-cutting and debt payoff that allows me to pay our bills with my income solely.
Matthew doesn't have to work full time anymore and he can start writing full time again. So, we discussed opening up a Patreon site and decided to post The Deal and The Journey (2 original fiction novels) through the Patreon site, one chapter at a time, for money from fans. Fans could support him for as long as they like or they could send him a dollar and get one chapter, then move on. His fanfiction writing has been more frequent now due to not working full time and perhaps his fans would also like his original fiction. Matthew is getting paid to write his original fiction. He is not getting paid to write fanfiction. Period.
I asked about what perks, rewards, and milestones people would prefer for the Patreon site on this forum from the fans that have stuck with him for years during the "dry spells". The responses I got were "cameos, chats with the author, and sneak previews of the fanfiction". Matthew has veto control over what cameos are completed and where they appear. Matthew will be careful to keep the story consistent while also providing the reward he promised. If the cameos cause problems with the story, he will take down that perk and modify it. As for scale, the cameos will be limited if too many people sign up for them and a different reward will be offered.
I'm glad that you enjoy his work! Thank you for commenting and providing your input.
Now to address your comments specifically:
Author Lord, the guy who has literally left us waiting for years for updates on his (and deservedly so) his much loved fanfiction.
Yes, his writing slowed down to posting one chapter a year. It was still free and still showing up eventually. Sorry you were unhappy with the posting speed. FOr reasons detailed above, the posting speed was slow and there was very little he could do to improve it until he was laid off again.
You guys are paying him over $300 to continue writing for you.
Yes, he is asking his supporters to pay him to write original fiction. Most writers wish to be paid for their original work and do not provide it for free. They publish books, story story compilations, and articles for which they are paid. The AuthorLord is not getting paid to write fanfiction. Let me repeat this.. the AuthorLord is NOT getting paid to write fanfiction.
Its incredibly selfish of him, don't believe me check out milestones and see for yourself isn't a milestone something that you, his "Patrons" receive after meeting target? Sort of like a new feature for reaching a predetermined target, granted Matt is writing regardless but that really isn't point.
Milestones are expected to be things that the person you support needs or wants and in return, the AuthorLord provides a reward or bonus. This is not Kickstarter, where the bonus is the milestone, where an additional effort, reward, or enhancement to the "product" or service is provided for the milestone reached. Patreon is about supporting artists, writers, and musicians and paying for a product or service that they provide to their patrons. Milestones are achievements in how much money they receive for these efforts and they give a little something back for reaching those goals. Matthew has a little something for each milestone that patrons receive. Yes, Patreon is selfish. The AUthorLord is asking you to pay him $1 per chapter of his original fiction in return for getting those chapters. It's a writing vending machine basically but the novels are already complete and have been for years.
There are many places your money could go to, more worthy places.
You are correct. There are better places for your money. You could instead support a starving child who gets food when you donate. People are paying Matthew for entertainment in the form of a novel and they are getting entertainment out of it. It's discretionary funds and no different from going to the movies or eating out at a restaurant. That money could be better put to other uses, sure, but some people still buy books, watch movies, and enjoy television, regardless.
The second big problem and I've started to notice this already In his work....is the mess his chapters are going to become as he accommodates the perk of allowing certain pledgers a cameo in his work. Having some many poor changes of POV in one chapter is bad especially for a writer of Matt's quality.
Lastly if he's getting paid to write he's not doing out of passion - he's doing it out of pure greed. I would soon less updates and more quality the monthly updates and less.
You know what? Most writers write for money. Whether you agree with that or not, most writers who publish books do it because they love the work and also want to get paid for it. Only in the fanfiction community is it considered "greedy" to ask for money for writing. Matthew has been motivated to write for various reasons including the love of the process, but money has been a motivation for the past 10 years or more. You have enjoyed his writing all of this time and it was already motivated by money. This is the reality: If he gets paid to write original fiction, he will produce more original fiction. He will continue to write fanfiction for free regardless.
Regarding the commentary on the quality of his work, that is a separate issue and not related to Patreon. The point of view changes happened with or without the cameo of Eric Buehler the auror. That was an example of a cameo but none of the other chapters have had a cameo. He has been working on several chapters that were nearly complete before he was laid off and well before Patreon was launched. So the quality of his work is affected by multiple things, including energy, health, getting back "in the saddle" so to speak. His writing can and will improve with comments and feedback from fans like you. Thank you for posting these quality-related comments.
[Edit]:
Matthew has posted cameos before in his stories. However, he has not yet posted any cameos from Patreon yet. Eric's support happened before Patreon was launched and he didn't ask for any rewards at all. Also, regarding the original fiction, before we released chapters to Patreon, Matthew and I went back and seriously polished the completed chapters for The Deal and The Journey (novels). Some sections were rewritten and characters were altered.