Pay for your Art
Hey guys. Serious discussion time, today.
I've been on the internet for a long, long time, and I've been making art on the internet since I was twelve years old. Goes to show you how well those, "yes, I am x years of age" barriers work on sites like deviantart and such. I remember being frustrated about this before, but my younger self didn't know how to put it into words. I'm older now with a lot more experience sharing my digital art with the world and a lot less chill.
I put a lot of energy into my work, and I'm proud of what I've been able to create in my lifetime. But my art and my writing has never been easy -- perhaps I have "talent", but talent is like a head-start in a race that ultimately every artist has to run in. I've still had to work to refine my craft to get it to a point where I am content with my results, and I'm still finding ways I can improve.
It hurts more than I can say when I receive responses like the one above. The example I provided is very generic, but I've heard so many variations of this excuse that it all sounds the same to me. I've been told to "get a real job", as if the money that I receive on Patreon isn't ... real money? I use it to pay bills, it gets transferred into my bank account, that's pretty real to me. (Let's not even go into the fact that what you pay does not equal what I receive, I make a percentage of what you're paying.) And while I understand that these are trying times financially, I'm as woefully affected by this recession as you all are -- and by telling me that you can get what I'm selling elsewhere for free, you're telling me that you don't think my work is worth the money.
Artwork does not happen easily or quickly, especially with my limitations. My hand tremors make lineart incredibly difficult and taxing for me, and with my mental and physical health creating my work is taxing and often results in the fallout taking days for me to recover from completely. There is very little I have made that has taken me less than a few hours to create and be happy with, and the prices I have set for these pieces reflects that. My book is an example of this, and frankly I slashed the price in the hopes that I could prioritize accessibility of the story.
The book is my baby. 110,000 words, 391 pages, and over 1,500 hours spent writing, rewriting, and editing this novel -- and that's the novel alone. The ideas for A Clockwork Melody have been swirling in my head since I was thirteen years old on holiday with my family in Devon, and it was during one of the last visits I made to England while my grandad was alive that I first penned what would be the prequel to Jasper, Evelyn, and Fenyang's stories. Azrael as a character alone is ten years old this year. This story universe is so unbelievably wound into my very existence, I can't remember a time when I didn't dream about it.
In an ideal world, I would market A Clockwork Melody as a freely available story, a free eBook for download. In fact, when I was younger, I wanted to. But the reality is that I cannot afford to freely give this book away when the costs of self-publishing are so high. I desperately want to give you guys things for free, because I know times are hard and I genuinely enjoy sharing my work with you -- but I am not an idealistic teenager anymore, and I am not able to work for free.
Pay for your artwork, please. The term "starving artist" isn't a joke; when art is undervalued as a trade, it hurts us all. If you're struggling, talk to me! I can usually swing a discount for you if you want a print, merchandise, or a subscription on Patreon. But I can't lower my prices or give things away for free, not anymore.
DJ
