Well, due to a few highly dedicated fans, I’m going to call my Patreon launch a success in the past 24 hours. Yes, right now I have only 3 patrons, but there are much better-known authors than me who have only about a dozen after months, so I’m not worried. So what HAVE I learned in this process that I could pass along to anyone else?

Have Your Rewards In Place: I was not expecting to have to fulfill high-level rewards so soon (if ever) and was really taken aback by having to fulfill them immediately. Be ready for success.

Editing Is Hard: I placed a Kindle self-pubbed novelette in place for my rewards. Despite having read it over several times, and having had other people read it, I still noticed errors within 24 hours and had to reupload the book.

Book Covers Are Not As Hard As I Thought: It took surprisingly little time to find an appropriate book cover app for no money. I recommend Calibre for converting to Kindle, Canva for cover creation and Pixabay for images, but there may be better resources (if you’re aware of one, let me know!)

Of course, there are a number of things I still wish I knew. Productive advertising remains very difficult. Facebook’s advertising has not seemed profitable to me in the past. Word-of-mouth (or perhaps word-of-share) is the best, but hard to generate even from good fans. I will continue posting about this as I learn more.