Forthcoming update to pricing

Hi all,

Apologies if this is a little verbose, but I'm making a few changes in the near future, and being transparent about changes is pretty important to me.

First, the most important and most imminent change:

The TLDR is that in a few weeks, I'll be moving the current $3/mo Reader tier to a legacy tier. (My target date for this change is July 1-ish, for what it's worth.) New subscribers won't be able to subscribe at that rate anymore.

The new Reader tier will be $5/mo.

If you're subscribed already, and stay subscribed, nothing will change for you. You can continue to pay $3/mo as long as you like and receive all the same legacy Reader benefits and access to my writing.

I want to honor the folks who've been subscribed to me and supporting all this time, and plan on staying subscribed; your early support is what's made me keep doing this!

If you're not subscribed at that tier -- or you cancel your subscription, and decide to renew it at a later date -- when you do subscribe or resubscribe, you'll be paying the new rate, $5 a month. The benefits will remain the same.

I'm giving a heads up on this so that people who want to lock in the $3/mo rate can do that by subscribing now and knowing to stay subscribed!

My rationale is that, at this point, I think I deliver a pretty predictable output that hits the little niche I write very consistently, in a high-quality way. Every creator I've looked at is charging more, often significantly more, for similar release cadences and content quality. I want to price things appropriately for future growth in supporters, and this change reflects that.

(As a side note: for folks who have been dedicated supporters at the story sponsor tier, if and when you decide to take a break from that and move down to Reader, I'll be happy to offer you a discount for a few months or similar. If you have concerns, message me and we can discuss.)

Two other less-significant upcoming changes I'm considering:

I am considering a higher tier for folks (think $8-10/mo) who are interested in giving a little more, that would offer some access to additional advance chapters, or maybe another release each month, that sort of thing. This seems like a fairly common model to offer people who'd like to support at a higher level a way to do that. I'll share more details when I have this mapped out better and that tier is closer to being ready for launch.

I am also mulling over the best way to give the site a more inviting visual theme. Or, y'know, any visual theme. Visual design is not my forte, but it feels like it could use a facelift. So you may notice changes as I test things out in the weeks ahead; apologies if it's jarring and I welcome feedback if something feels off/weird/doesn't show up right on your end.

Finally: thank you all. It's pretty wild that I've been doing this Patreon for six months, especially when I look back at December 2024 and how much progress I've made since then -- in terms of how much I've written, how I've improved as a writer, and how many more people are reading. I couldn't have done it without the strong showing of early support.

All of the changes above are things that will help me continue to justify putting more time and effort into writing this stuff, and thus deliver more and better stories to you!

Thanks for reading.

-- JF