Commission Reopening/Guideline Changes · 7:07am Sep 24th, 2017
Hello Everypony!
This has been a while in the planning stages, but it is finally time to reopen for commissions! I've been closed since May, but since then I have busted out over 40,000 words for satisfied patrons in order to shore things up. My queue still has a few entries waiting, but it is not so overwhemling now that I feel I cannot handle more. Just be advised that if you're planning to send a new commish my way, there are still a few in the queue (which you can view on my profile) ahead of you. As always I do not charge until I am ready to begin work on your story, so if you'd like to talk about an idea, feel free!
This should go without saying, but if you're commissioning me, PLEASE read ALL of my guidelines first. It's as much for your benefit as my own!
On to the second portion of the title of this post. After much debate and discussion, I have made a number of changes to my commission guidelines. Some were minor, such as consolidating all the relevant information to a single blog post for easy reference, rewording some things, or changing around the entries on my content limits. There were, however, three considerable changes:
1) My rates have changed.
2) I am imposing a maximum word count limit on commissions.
3) I am no longer accepting 'placeholder' spots in my queue, or consecutive reservations from the same patron.
Allow me to explain the reasoning behind all of these changes. As for #1, yes, my rates have changed, and the change was an increase. Before you groan, please hear me out. Exactly one year ago (last September) I began the adventure of taking commission work on Fimfiction - prior to that the only money I ever made off of my writing was the sale of a few novels here and there via Amazon. It has been a very exciting year for me because not only did I put enough extra cash away to afford Bronycon this year (thank you patrons, without you that might not have happened), but I was able to take on challenges in the form of folks coming to me to ask me to write a story for them. That has actually been much more exciting to me than the money. Despite that however, I have spent the whole year inundated with commission work, and on a few choice occasions I have had a patron tell me the reason they came to me was not because of my work, but because I am "cheap". As distressing as that is, up until now they've been quite right. My original rates were developed with the goal of encouraging potential patrons to take a chance on a 'new writer' (at least in terms of taking fimfiction commissions), and they were exceedingly low indeed. Thus I have had so much work that I have had difficulty keeping up with it all. With this increase, I hope to exercise a bit more control over the backlog of commission requests, and demonstrate to my patrons that I am that much more committed to doing my utmost to make their ideas a reality (if I'm charging more, delivering quality should go without saying). So I have imposed an increase, though it is less of an increase than some folks have suggested to me, and I believe the new rate remains competitive. Will it change again in the future? Maybe, sure. But let's see where things go for now.
As for #2, put simply, busting out a 15-20,000+ word commission is a major project, which can take anywhere from 3-5 weeks of planning, drafting, proofreading, editing, and so forth until publication. (I don't half-ass where your money is concerned.) I love writing, I really do, but something of that magnitude can be draining all the same, and because I love a challenge, I also love taking on new ones. This new limit does not mean that I will never write a story greater than 10,000 words for you, however. It just means that I would prefer to keep a single commission from a single patron to a more manageable size. If you'd like to commission me again later to add chapters or a sequel to your last commission, that's fine. But let's give everypony a chance! That said, the word count limit is not a concrete, unbendable rule. Please check my guidelines for more information about it.
With regards to #3, there is little value to #2 if a patron can simply request to be placed on my queue several times in succession until their 50,000-word epic is complete, and since getting on my queue costs you nothing, what's to stop somebody from asking for four spots instead of just one? This rule is being imposed for the sake of fairness to all patrons, and I am also asking that from here in, patrons give me some idea of what sort of story, at what potential word count, they're approaching me for. None of this preliminary information needs to be set in stone, but I would prefer to have some idea what the scope of the next project on my list may potentially be, and I would like to discourage the 'just put me on the list, we'll talk about it later' approach.
There you have it. Commissions are open, and I will be starting work on the next one as soon as I am finished with the personal story I am working on right now. As always folks, thank you all for any time you spend enjoying any words I have created. I'm grateful for your support and I am available to discuss any topic or idea, no matter how zany and/or personal. I am 'safe to talk to' after all - it says so on my pretty profile page!
New guidelines can be accessed from my profile, or right here.
I do art trades too, don't forget!!
That's quite a big rate increase, going from 6$/1k (If I remember correctly) to 15$/1k
Work at King Soopers. Part time, $9.50 an hour of 8 hours a day which equals $80-$90, and 5 days equal between $270-$300. So if I commissioned just a 6,000 word story for $15/1k, I pretty much spend entire work day of money just for story...
Don't know how to feel about that.
Hope you get all the commissions you are hoping for.
4677176
Thank you, I'm hoping to do my best for folks where I can
4677173
4677168
What it ends up rolling out to is an additional $5 for the first thousand words, and somewhere around $9 extra for every thousand words after that, given that in my previous rate structure, I cut the rates even further for each additional thousand beyond the first. This, again, was done as a purposeful undercut from what many other commission authors charge, in the hopes of generating business for an unknown, as the additional work worked out to a mere half a cent or so per word - well, well below any sort of industry standard. With no intention of being argumentative, allow me to provide a few points that may help put it in perspective better-
1) While I do love writing, I am unfortunately not in my 20s (barely even my 30s) anymore. I have a spouse, several small children, a demanding day job, and an extremely long daily commute (3-4+ hours) that eats up a lot of my time. Even on weekends my time tends to be spartan, as I cannot simply vanish into the computer or a notebook for 2-3+ consecutive hours when the little ones want to spend time with me. While I cannot speak for what other authors may be doing with their time, rest assured that once I am working for you, I am not sitting around with gobs of free time that's going into something other than the work you've paid me to do.
2) Consider the rates of most commissonable fan artists out there. In Twilight's example above, a 6,000-word story would cost about $90. However, a story of that length, from initial discussion, to planning stages, to drafting phase, to proofreading phase, to editing phase, to final publication, would probably take a week and a half, if not two weeks of daily work to complete. Further, I generate cover artwork at no additional charge (many of my covers are my own work), and I provide services like keeping my patron 'in the know' at every stage of the process so you don't have to hunt me down, discussing your project with you and providing thoughts/feedback that may assist the development of the story, and even generating story notes/outlines before the actual work begins for the patron's review (that also takes time). If these practices are set akin to a visual artist going into considerable planning stages, offering extras, and then taking that much time to generate for you the best image they can manage...well, let's just say I've paid more than that for artwork with that sort of investment behind it. The increase of $5-$9 per thousand words, I think, seems a lot more reasonable in this perspective, considering that many commission authors of note still charge more than that - sometimes upwards of 2 cents a word or more.
Please understand that none of these decisions have anything personal to do with anybody. I remain hopeful that I can generate quality work for invested patrons while not being too overwhelmed, as I have been in the past year.
Does the increase go for everybody already on the list, or only new additions?
4677373
In the interest of making the transition smoother, I am willing to honor the original rates for folks that were on my list already before I reopened, despite the fact that I haven't accepted payment from them yet. Some of them have been waiting for a long time, after all. This may be somewhat dependant upon how massive project were talking about though, given that there are still a number of ambiguous placeholders in my queue - a practice that I'm hoping to ultimately discourage, given that it makes it difficult for me to project to other patrons how long it will take for me to get to them.
4677386
Looks like you also removed one of my placeholders from the list. IIRC I had two one them still
4677389
Umm... I thought we merged your last one into two? At least I thought that was the agreement we came to at the time.
4677421
I'm not talking about Taking the sun. I'm talking about the 5k placeholder and the placeholder without details that were still on the list for future writing. But nevermind that, I was planning on dropping the unknown placeholder anyway
You've finally stopped undercharging!
4677497
Right, I thought we agreed that the last project, that very large one, was going to be a combination of two queue slots. Well, either way I guess. You've been a good patron so I'm sure we can work something out if you're still interested.
4677511
Well I guess we'll see how it goes, eh? Other than here the only place I announced it is on my Discord server, but that's probably enough.
4677323
You're welcome.
4677511
I don't know, I think a more fair price for both parties would be around $12/1k.
4678034
How is that more fair for the author?
Depending on the author, that could come out to less than minimum wage.
4678034
4678107
I do enjoy the challenge and I like doing it, but after the extreme amount of time I have put into it, I've had to put some things in personal perspective. I won't sacrifice quality, meaning that all my stories must have a rough draft, proofreading, edits, time for the patron to review and make their own edits if they so choose, cover art, announcements, and so forth - all of this around my already tight schedule. As much as I enjoy it...two weeks worth of work for what amounts to around $40 or so just doesn't add up. To put it in a different perspective, my previous rate, plus the time that goes into crafting the project, worked out to having a part-time job that pays approximately one dollar an hour.
It's possible I may consider negotiating for a given project too, if it's something I'm really excited about writing.
I will, of course, continue busting out my own works for the enjoyment of whomever would like to enjoy them