Does anyone know what happened to Tefler and Three Square Meals? His last update on Patreon was on August 31, 2023. I know he has had health issues before. Is he still alive?
Does anyone know what happened to Tefler and Three Square Meals? His last update on Patreon was on August 31, 2023. I know he has had health issues before. Is he still alive?
So I know nothing about his current status.
I lost interest in the story over a year ago. The intervals between chapter postings to SOL has increased over the past year. No postings since August is not an auspicious sign.
He wouldn't be eligible for a Contributor Page on the ReaderInfo site until 2025.
He has dropped off for a few monthd with his last Patreon post (Ch. 163) being around the end of August. That being said there has been no reoccurring billing which indicates there some awareness from him. Side note: I don't get the feeling that there is warm fuzzy between him and SOL admin so Patroen is the more up to date web site for that particular author.
I think there's an object lesson there about creators relying on income from Patreon or Kickstarter to pay their bills. I backed a comic book artist on Kickstarter several years ago because I'd been reading his stuff for years and wanted to new books he was promising as Kickstarter rewards. His Kickstarter made a million dollars. Then, he suffered an accident that sliced his drawing hand and it took him the better part of a year to recover enough to start drawing again. Meanwhile, people were clamoring for their stuff. It wasn't a scam--he really was injured and he eventually fulfilled every one of the rewards that he'd promised, but it took him years.
Tefler is a similar story. He had enough Patreon backers that he was making pretty good money per month. Then he had a string of bad luck--repeated illness both of himself and family members, unexpected home repairs, etc. He kept borrowing on future months with promises to catch up, but instead got further and further behind. Patreon (and all other social media influencer sites like TikTok, Youtube, Instagram) is a hamster wheel. You have to keep producing week after week, month after month, or you don't get paid. All it takes is a short string of illness or bad luck to send you flying off the wheel and straight into a wall.
Patreon (and all other social media influencer sites like TikTok, Youtube, Instagram) is a hamster wheel. You have to keep producing week after week, month after month, or you don't get paid. All it takes is a short string of illness or bad luck to send you flying off the wheel and straight into a wall.
I remember reading a relatively old (pre-commercial social media) story here about a manager telling the same to a new artist -- if you want to live off your paintings, always save some for future sales. Otherwise, an illness or a couple of months without inspiration will wipe you out.
I guess for a writer, it would be to always have chapters in the buffer (or books, if you write short ones).
I remember reading a relatively old (pre-commercial social media) story here about a manager telling the same to a new artist -- if you want to live off your paintings, always save some for future sales. Otherwise, an illness or a couple of months without inspiration will wipe you out
That's true of everyone, and you don't need to be an artist. An artist can sell all their paintings, they just need the fiscal restraint not to blow all their money on crap they don't need as soon as they get it. Same as everyone else.
For context, here in the UK, 34% of the adult population has no savings what-so-ever and 65% of the populace believe that without a job, they wouldn't last three months before they needed to borrow money.
An artist can sell all their paintings, they just need the fiscal restraint not to blow all their money
For an artist like a published author, it's not about cashflow. It's about being visible. That's why they say an author needs to keep publishing. New books sell old books. The old saying "out of sight, out of mind" is relevant.
That is possible. Then again, I wonder how much of that is quoted as truth without anyone actually sitting down to work out whether or not it has veracity.
As an aside, I like to read books by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner, who like to take 'perceived wisdom' and see if the sums actually do work out. I mention them, because I look at generic statements like "out of sight, out of mind" and wonder if that is actually the case or if it is simply something trotted out by ad-men/marketing departments as a means to justify their existence (and large pay checks).
For instance, I look at my many pseudonyms and their readership numbers, and I compare them amongst themselves. Yes, readership does undoubtedly skyrocket when one of them gets a new story or a chapter addition, but they quickly soon drop within a week or two to match the numbers of the ones that haven't seen any activity for years. Now if I had only one account, I would be none the wiser and more easily led to believe the adage of 'new books sell old books' but I have access to data that says "Errr, no..." Which is borne out somewhat by all those dead authors that continue to sell books even though they haven't written anything since they snuffed it. And I'm not counting authors who have had a film/TV series made and just released, of their work which some would rightly argue has brought them back into the limelight (posthumously).
Pretty much most of the 'great' artists are dead and haven't painted/drawn/sculpted/whatever in literal centuries and they haven't dropped "Out of sight or mind"...
Which does take us back to that other thread about Social Media and how many are of the belief that they have to say something, regularly, to stay relevant and within public perception. This is heavily promoted by PR Companies (Can't think why). And leads to the problem, where certain individuals are so consumed by 'likes' and 'views' that they produce so much drivel, sorry, content, that their fan base (for want of a better word) is turned away.
Over saturation is a known phenomena and it exists in every market. Whether it be music, art, oil production or farming. The less of a thing, the more it's value, the greater the price that can be charged. If a writer churns out novels on a monthly basis, the quality is going to be poor, most likely containing plot elements from previous works. Yes, the author is going to be very much, 'in sight and in the mind' but the actual work is going to be like the content from a regular 'Social Media Influencer' and pretty vapid with regards to substance. Pretty soon that shiny exterior flakes away.
What was the topic of this thread again....? 😂😂😂
how much of that is quoted as truth without anyone actually sitting down to work out whether or not it has veracity.
When I was active on wattpad, that's what the published authors said. They had to keep publishing one or two (or more) novels a year (mostly Romance genre).
They had to keep publishing one or two (or more) novels a year (mostly Romance genre).
When a dead tree literary agent was giving a talk about his work, he said that publishers want to invest in more than just a single novel, and authors should present themselves as capable of writing a couple of novels a year, and that included all genres.
Mind you, a long gap didn't seem to hurt Harper Lee's popularity.
AJ
SB, AJ, I'm not quibbling with what published authors are saying, I'm just very sceptical about the reasoning behind what they are being told.
As AJ said, some authors seem to do very well with long gaps between books. However, it must be borne in mind that many of these agents are on commission and only get paid if there is a product to flog.
With that in mind, they are going to tell their authors absolutely anything, if it gets them writing. Very few people in the World don't want money and literary agents are only a few pay checks away from being double glazing salespeople.
I'm not quibbling with what published authors are saying
I think the drivers are the publishers. Authors who churn out several novels a year, like the Pattersons and the Baldaccis, are like gold dust. By comparison, if publishers shell out a lot of money promoting a 'one and done' author, most of it is wasted. So it's the cart driving the horses and horses will usually have to conform to the system to achieve continued success.
AJ
You have to keep producing week after week, month after month, or you don't get paid.
To be fair, you can say this about all creative jobs. I heard a very similar thing in an interview years ago from a published, best-selling author. There's no health insurance, no weekly wage, no safety net.
Even your annual royalty cheques are highly dependent on continually putting out new content because people are more likely to buy your back catalogue when there's a new book coming.
He's a scam artist and he didn't like his Patreon calling him out as a scam artist, so he pouted and ran away with their money. He was charging people for chapters up to 4 chapters ahead of where he was at, and the chapters he was delivering were 50% recycled sex scene. The story ground to an absolute halt and people were fed up waiting an entire year to discover how a small battle ended. I was a member of his Patreon up until like 6 or 7 months ago.
If you are more curious, you can just google the name of the story and the author and like 4 or 5 links down is free access to his Patreon, including the entire story up to date and all of his Patreon's comments on his posts calling him a scammer.
I strongly disagree with that assessment. He wasn't a scammer. He was someone who got himself way over his head. I seem to recall that he quit his job to write full time. But that only works as long as you can keep running on the hamster wheel. He relied on that patreon income to keep a roof over his family's head, then he experienced a string of bad luck--multiple illnesses of himself and family members, emergency repairs on the house, etc. and found himself getting further and further behind. Life happens. Like a desperate person stealing from his employer's cash register with the intention of "paying it back later" he thought he could catch up and everything would be fine, but instead he kept getting further and further behind. Was it wrong? Absolutely! But a scam? No.
Yes it got ridiculous, and yes I was thinking about dropping my support too, but before I could do so he voluntarily stopped charging people until he could catch up. Last month he delivered the first new chapter (one he'd already charged for) in about six months, so hopefully he's starting to turn things around.
I think it also helps to remember that Patreon wasn't initially built to be a sales store. It was built as a way for fans to support artists, like art patrons of centuries past, so that they can afford to make their art. I support another writer who is in forced retirement due to severe medical issues. She is nearly a shut-in, and her royalties are drying up becuase she hasn't been able to write anything new. I pitch in a couple bucks a month not out of expectation of getting anything out of it, but because I admire her writing and can't stand the thought of her becoming destitute.
EH, agree to disagree. Nearly a year of him lying to his Patreons that he'd catch up the following month, followed by one sob story after another, none of which was verifiable, is a person scamming you. The second he found out he could still make the money without having to put in the work, after the "tree" damaged his roof and he charged everyone for a chapter without delivering one, suddenly every month he had new calamities. I've been on the internet since it was created and I am fairly adept spotting a scam, but I could have joined yesterday and still spotted this one.
And then add to that the chapters he DID deliver were declining in quality insanely, to the point where nothing was actually happening and it was one useless sex scene after another that we have all read 50x already in the story, and it was clear that he had checked out and was just milking his subscribers for their goodwill without putting in the effort.