Dollars and Sense

(Originally published Jan 7, 2017 here.)

It’s a new year! Generally, it’s a time of reflection and personal goal setting, but I covered this for me over at my blog in my New Year’s post, so I won’t rehash it here.

Instead, I’m going to say something horribly controversial:

There’s nothing wrong with authors making money.

Nothing at all.

There’s nothing wrong with authors making money via a huge publishing house, or with mid-sized ones, or small ones, or by self-publishing or by some combination of all.

There’s nothing wrong with authors having their books in Kindle Unlimited. There’s nothing wrong with authors not having them there.

There’s nothing wrong with authors having tip jars on their websites.

There’s nothing wrong with authors setting up Patreon accounts.

There’s nothing wrong with authors setting up Kickstarters.

There’s also nothing wrong with authors giving away stories for free, whether it’s a novel or snippets or fics of their works. Or fanfic or whatever.

What is wrong is when people think they can dictate how an author runs their business.

Every author is different. Their journeys are different. How they run their business is different. It’s not a zero-sum game, where someone who supports someone’s Patreon won’t buy another authors book. That’s not how it works.

And the thing is, there are a whole hell of a lot of writers I will never measure up to, both for the beauty of their prose or for their business acumen. I know this.

I can only improve my writing and my business, and give back however I can to my readers. And how I do that is…you guessed it…my choice.

And as a reader, I get to choose how I support the authors I love monetarily. Because it goes both ways, you know.