David Stewart

No stream tonight, as I picked up a cold while traveling. I plan to be back on Friday.

1 month ago | [YT] | 45

David Stewart

Hey all. I know there hasn't been any content for the last few weeks. Some things came up while I was travelling, and we are still settling them. I'll have more info in the future for those who are interested. To make up for it, there is a bunch of free stuff for the various patreon tiers, including a few of my albums.

www.patreon.com/posts/im-back-136208721?utm_medium…

1 month ago | [YT] | 99

David Stewart

The stream will be a little bit late tonight. More map work in case you are interested.

6 months ago | [YT] | 24

David Stewart

People think I'm being hyperbolic when I say this stuff is religious sentiment.

7 months ago | [YT] | 92

David Stewart

No stream tonight as I'm still taking care of the family.

8 months ago | [YT] | 86

David Stewart

For the holiday season ONLY you can get TEN Eternal Dream books (everything minus the Moonsong series) in one MASSIVE and affordable volume.
PS Vita for scale.
Search on Amazon if interested.

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9 months ago | [YT] | 47

David Stewart

No stream today as my whole family is sick with a cold. See you on Friday.

10 months ago | [YT] | 72

David Stewart

No stream tonight as I'll be spending the day with my family.
If there's any topics you want covered, let me know and I'll get to them on Friday.

11 months ago | [YT] | 57

David Stewart

Hey Folks!

So, here’s what is going on when it comes to “everything that is not YouTube and books” for what I do. My goal is to simplify all the additional services I offer and keep my “monetization” in fewer places. This makes it easier to keep track of what I am doing and for whom, as well as making general accounting easier. I hope that reducing the friction required for me to deliver products and benefits to all my supporters will allow me to deliver more value for everyone, whether you are interested in giving additional support, getting extra stuff, or just like to watch videos.


With that in mind, here is what I am doing:

- I will stop offering monthly memberships on ko-fi and subscribe star because it is too difficult to give away the monthly books, etc. compared to Patreon, where people can get everything in one place and without having to go to another site like Bookfunnel if they don’t want to. If you want, you can still tip me on those sites or request video/article subjects if those are sites you like to use, but I won’t try to deliver the monthly books on them anymore. You have to come to Patreon if you want those benefits.
- YouTube memberships will stay enabled but won’t have any specific benefits other than the basic ones like emojis, etc. This is because, again, it is too hard delivering the membership benefits I want to (books, mainly, which means audiobooks on YouTube) and I have to be realistic with where my life is right now that I will not have the time or inclination to make enough additional video content for members for it to be at all worth it. It’s a voluntary thing if you like me. Send me an email if you want a book – I’d be excited to send you some. stu@dvspress.com
- I am of two minds with the discord channel. Most supporters are not interested in it; those that are not very active, but I do try to answer any and all questions on it. So, the question is whether to make it easier to access (like opening it to all free Patreon subs) or to shut it down. Right now, it’s in the burdensome “one more thing” category and I don’t much enjoy using discord, personally. I will accept that I probably don’t interact with it enough. I’m usually open and enjoy interacting with viewers and readers, so a walled garden for that purpose doesn’t make sense to me unless the input is truly overwhelming. It’s not like I don’t respond to questions in YouTube comments or on Twitter, when they pop up. Discord has the benefit of keeping a record, like a message board. Anyway, I’m open to feedback on it.
- I’ve also drastically simplified the membership benefits on Patreon. I’ve chosen to do this for several reasons, but the main one is that people were not taking advantage of most of the options and instead opting for the simple, higher-value options, which were also the cheaper options. Consumers generally prefer a few choices over many, and for higher-value services (like private lessons) I can always just negotiate that on a case-by-case basis (which I prefer anyway). I also ran into the problem where people were subscribed at a tier that gave them a physical product benefit but wouldn’t give me an address, meaning I could not give them their benefit, which doesn’t feel good for me. Digital products are much easier to distribute anyway.
- Patreon benefits will therefore be scrunched down into:
o Patrician (7 dollars), which gets you an extra free book every month in addition to all other things.
o Equestrian (3 dollars), which gets you Keys to Prolific Creativity, occasional extra free books, and copies of all the live writes.
o Plebeian (1 dollar), which gets you access to the live writes, plus discord and any other paid posts.
- Livewrites will continue to be published on Substack and Patreon. I may also publish them in discord, just so everything is in one place on one channel.
- Music is part of what I do but I’m not sure how to integrate it into the neo-patronage model. Maybe free audio files? I don’t know! I also get asked whether my music is on Spotify. It is as “Zul” or “David V. Stewart’s Zul.” I don’t upload every improvisation there. Should I? Let me know. I know some people have been enjoying the ambient music for writing.

With all that in mind, I have a few other thoughts.
First, the Patreon model is always hard for me to find value in as a consumer, which makes it hard for me to figure out value as a creator. I lost about 2 weeks of work because of a hurricane, but life is full of those little interruptions. Those aren’t a big deal on a longer time scale as books will eventually be finished and videos will eventually come out, but when you are operating a business that has a monthly subscription and you need to deliver that value every month, it becomes stressful to miss time and feel like you aren’t giving your patrons value. Focusing on delivering a defined monthly benefit (a book, for instance), makes that loss of time much less significant.
At the end of the day, neo-patronage is one option among many. I prefer to sell books directly and make videos according to what the market wants and what will likely get views, but I’m happy to do things another way, too, if it is valuable. If you want to tip me to make a video, great! A lot of times, I don’t make a video because it isn’t worth my time for views or ad money. That’s how it is working for the robot.
I’m still patiently working on other books, which I hope to deliver by the end of the year in addition to the book I have been writing live. This includes King Leper (all three books of which you can read in its pre-release version if you are in the appropriate Patreon tier), the third book in my mainline Eternal Dream high fantasy series. There are a few books languishing on Kindle Vella that should probably get a full release as well.
I frequently get asked when I am going to work on a visual novel/game, and I definitely still want to do that, but I also need to finish up and publish all the book projects piling up.
I appreciate you all!

1 year ago | [YT] | 91