So, after getting some stern twitter words from some of you, and some emails, and some comments, and basically nonstop, Phillip J. Fry shouts of “Shut up and take my money,” I am ready to quite uncomfortably approach the subject of donate buttons and other forms of remuneration for my time.
In the past, when people have asked me, “How can I pay you for this,” I’ve said, “Go buy one of my books.” It’s only recently that people have started saying, “No. I mean I want to give you money.” And god love you for knowing how publishing works. But I’m quite uncomfortable with the idea of getting paid, even in donations, for blogging. When I started this blog, it was as a way to raise awareness of and further my own writing career. That’s why authors blog. For publicity. But when I started recapping 50 Shades of Grey, I was at a point where I was seriously considering that my career might be over. I hadn’t contracted a book with a New York publisher since 2009, reviews and sales for my fantasy series had been overwhelmingly disappointing (time will tell on that one, Melville style), and while Abigail Barnette was doing quite well for herself, she wasn’t doing quite as well as Jennifer Armintrout had done. I figured my writing days were somewhat over, so I could do whatever I wanted on my blog (which no one was reading, anyway). If you doubt the veracity of this claim, I urge you to check out the entries pre-50 Shades recaps, where I posted cupcake recipes and pictures of smiley fries that resembled James Carville. So, when the blog exploded and there was this renewed interest in what I was doing, my biggest hope was that I would end up getting a little more work thrown my way.
Holy cow, was more work thrown my way. In addition to my involvement in the 50 Writers on 50 Shades of Grey anthology, I’ve done interviews, launched The Boss, and embarked on an entirely new phase of my career writing YA. And on top of it all, I found this amazing tribe of weirdos. All of this should be thanks enough, right? But there are still some people totally like:
So, tl;dr, I’ve been resistant to the notion of putting up a donate button or anything like that. But enough of you have asked that I decided I would put this up for debate via poll, here on the blog. I’ll go with whatever you guys decide. If you could take a second and answer some brief questions, I’d be grateful. I guess I’ll give it a week and see what happens?
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