Just a number of weeks into its launch, the promotional website for fiction writers, PatronQuo.com, announces the creation of its Patronage Matching Fund this month.
As J Leland Kupferberg, one of the owners of PatronQuo, explains: “It’s our way – in this initial stage of the launch – to put our own money behind the initiative to support writers through a patronage model, benefiting both the writers (as the fund recipients) and the patrons (promotionally, as the prominently showcased donors).”
Mr. Kupferberg, who describes himself as a “frustrated writer,” set up PatronQuo.com as a means for talented, undiscovered fiction writers to take their case directly to the public instead of fruitlessly waiting out the years to find an agent or publisher.
In its opening phase, PatronQuo.com is seeking out talented creative writers to submit short stories for its short fiction category. The website features a number of different ranking charts for the participating writers and their patrons, so that visitors to the site may see which writer is making money from their posted stories. The money rankings, in fact, set PatronQuo apart from all other short story submission sites, most of which offer little more than an option for feedback comments from fellow writers.
“We’re not here just to offer emotional support for writers,” Mr. Kupferberg explains. “The key here is to get the talented, undiscovered writers the crucial financial support they need to keep writing.”
To do that, Mr. Kupferberg expects that PatronQuo.com will generate interest well beyond the confines of the literary community, to those who might be interested in the “blood sport” of a good old-fashioned ongoing literary death match between the participating writers. “We live in an age where people are as interested in the box office performance of the movie they just saw as they are in its plot. So we’ve just applied that mass psychological appeal for writers and their stories – tracking how much patronage they attract through our site.”
Mr. Kupferberg also expects that the essential competitive aspect of PatronQuo – as each talented writer vies to prove their story most worthy of patronage – will, in turn, prompt a steady supply of readers and fans to mix in and become part of the action. PatronQuo achieves this by billing itself as a website that promotes and showcases the patrons just as much as the writers they patronize.
In this respect, the patron’s contribution not only helps a writer’s story to move up the charts, but also garners the patron their own placement in the rankings, along with the showcasing of their name with the story they’ve patronized.
Presented in an eye-pleasing frame, each posted short story on the site is “crowned” with a prominent scroll that announces the top month’s patron, whose name – when clicked – leads to that patron’s profile, where visitors can learn more about them, and perhaps visit a link to their web site.
“See, we’ve taken this beyond the conventional advertising model,” explains Mr. Kupferberg. “Number one, people are now trained to ignore advertising as a distraction, as irrelevant to their main activity. Our goal is to focus that attention on the patron, who is now a crucial part of the action. And number two, we’ve created a model where any patron who wants to market their services to the literary community is essentially giving back to that community in the very act of communicating with them.”
It’s a powerful incentive to come on board as a patron, Mr. Kupferberg believes, but one that will at first be a difficult sell, particularly in view of its essentially unique quality. In order to get the idea sparking faster, PatronQuo has decided to create a Patronage Matching Fund this month.
With a set budget of $200, PatronQuo will offer to match, dollar-for-dollar, a patron’s payment toward a writer until the budget is exhausted. As the minimum patron payment, for instance, is set at $5, a participating patron will be credited as making a $10 patron payment – split up or focused on any story of the patron’s choosing. If the participating patron’s payment is $50, they’ll be credited with a $100 payment toward any writers of their choosing -and so on, until the budget is exhausted. “We’ve set it so that those patrons who jump in early will have first crack at our budget – and a boost in the rankings,” Mr. Kupferberg asserts. As a hedge against gaming the system, the Patronage Matching Fund is only open to patrons by invitation.
In the end, Mr Kupferberg trusts that both the patrons and the writers will be mutually enriched through their participation on PatronQuo.com – the writers, by receiving the overwhelming bulk of the patronage payments; and the patrons, by prominently showcasing themselves to their target market while signaling their support for this community.
“And who knows?” Mr. Kupferberg muses, growing starry-eyed at the thought. “Perhaps the masses of fiction readers out there will be stirred to action, each stepping up in their own small way to support their favorite authors, so that they can continue to do what they love – to write and put out more work for the fans.”
Surely a dream worth patronizing.