An undetermined number of people are going to be offended or take exception to just about everything you do…kind of being in the limelight as you are…
If it eases your living and helps you continue your art….do it.

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

In theory this would allow an author to make money on books twice (such as when a fan comes to their site to find other books), as well as bring in a little extra money for thoughtful recommendations on other authors they respect.

There are plenty of similar ways that an author could monetize a site without “resorting” to begging, as well as drive traffic to their site from others (guest blogging on major sites, etc.).

Back on the “donate” topic, I was just having a conversation with a friend today that from what I’ve read, many authors get a much smaller (or no) cut from ebooks purchased from major retailers. I purchased a physical copy of Iorich for precisely this reason, while he purchased the ebook copy for convenience but promised he would send you an e-mail to see if you made money on it and donate if not.

Good thing you have a donate button.

You know those bits of story you have floating around in the compost pile? The odd parts that you cut for (gods forbid) brevity, or that place where you backed your way into a corner and had to abandon the chapter? The short snatches of dialog, background sketches on bits of history, etc.? The humorous “Day In The Life Of An Urban Jhereg” or “A Picnic With Kragar” that you wrote when you were drunk that time and never did anything with? Yeah, all that stuff. The parts that ended up on the cutting room floor.

Put those in a file, spend half a day fiddling with it to get it organized, and then publish it as a downloadable/print-on-demand .pdf at lulu.com. Sell it for $10 directly to your fans, a kind of “behind the scenes” or “special features” part of your work. Of that $10, you, the artist, gets around $9.50. Cash money via paypal. But you can set the royalty for anything, and if you don’t bother to get an ISDN for it, they don’t report it to the IRS. Not that you shouldn’t, of course, declare all of your income as per your legal obligation to do so, but . . .

Why do this? First, you enrich your audience and feed their greed for your work. Second, because you’re a writer, damn it, and shouldn’t be forced to beg. Not that I’m discouraging you from doing a dontate button — patronage of the arts is a hallowed tradition, after all — but it occurs to me that if you want to delete the guilt you might have, or the reluctance on the part of some to “give” you money for free, then an opportunity to support the artist by purchasing work wherein the majority of the royalty goes directly to the artist does just that. Your fan gets something cool, you get a happier fan who has more stuff to argue on web forums, you get the artistic satisfaction of seeing these timeless gems (or artistic abortions) see the light of day, and, hell, you already wrote it. Might as well get paid for it. Everybody’s happy but your agent and your publisher, bless them, and they can just look at this as a little qusi-promotional side venture that can’t but help keep sales up. You get a couple of hundred extra bucks and a venue for your exploration of Morrolon’s secret transvestism or Sethra’s fatal weakness for kittens or something.

Would we buy it? Hell, yes. I think I speak for many of us when I say the scraps from your table are more filling than half of the crap we buy while we’re waiting for the next Brust novel. If we can help you out directly and get a nifty piece of your work that isn’t technically “canon”, so much the better. I point you to the recent publication of Roger Zelazy’s lost “hard boiled” noir crime novel. I didn’t quibble that there was nothing fantastic about it. I read every word and savored the experience for what it was, an indulgence in good writing. So publish your notes and scraps, and keep the money. I’ve got a couple of books on lulu myself, under a pseudonym, and with little or no promotion I get a small but steady $40-$60 bucks — but I ain’t Steve Brust.

And hell, you already wrote it. Might as well get paid for it.

A): Patronage of artists to afford them the necessary freedom to create has long been part of civilization. I would like to make a comparison and mention that Mozart himself was largely destitute, and died a pauper, yet I consider his works to be superb.

2): Your personal feelings of self worth for asking notwithstanding, it is abundantly clear (to me at least) that you have a large group of friends and fans that care about you and your work. The feelings that we all have won’t be changed just because you have a donate button, or because you are bad an managing money.

iii): You making your living entirely by expressing your creative thoughts through words. And yet, you charge little if anything for it! I have purchased numerous copies of your books over the years (I give them out sometimes as gifts to friends that are avid readers). But your other creative “products” like your daily blog posts, I get access to for nothing. It certainly speaks to your innate generosity. I don’t know enough of the economics of being a writer, but I have to think there might be revenue streams for you to access there.

d): ok just scanned a few later posts…part of me really believes that creative work benefits from not being constrained by financial considerations. Art should not have to be an avocation that an artist can only do in dribs and drabs in their spare time, and also Art should not be solely generated by those wealthy enough to have the available free time to do it. Maybe that’s an unrealistic belief, but eh, I have lots of unrealistic beliefs.

I think Allison Williams/153 fleshed out the nuances of your particular situation, and why MM got it wrong, most clearly. If you had put up a static website that listed your name, your body of work, perhaps a brief bio, and a tip jar/donate button, and that site never changed from week to week unless you added to the bio, I would look askance at that. Donate for what? Just because you asked? Just because I got to look at your name on the computer screen and go “oooooh”? Oh please.

What you have here, however, is an interactive, dynamic, “living” site where you engage your fans directly (for an internet value of “directly”). This not only adds legitimacy to the question – people are actually enjoying an ongoing experience which has value for them and prompts their donations; you’re not just sitting there with your hand out – but also is likely to make it more pressing. A static, unchanging web presence might attract a handful of visitors daily – nothing that any low-cost hosting service ($8-15/month) couldn’t handle. An interactive site like this, where people know there will be fresh content on a regular basis, is going to be much more expensive to run.

Put up the button. Call it whatever you want – no matter what you wind up with, someone is going to complain, or think it should be called something else. Make it unobtrusive enough that those not inclined to donate can easily ignore it, but not so unobtrusive that those who WANT to donate can’t find it.

At the same time, explore the other suggestions made above – offer small (or large!) items for sale, auction naming rights for future characters, offer non-monetary ways for fans to support you – or the charities/causes you support, and make the sacrifice for a financial advisor (then please send his/her name and number to me, because I desperately need one too).

You could even consider offering some content on a “paid members only” basis, although as a general rule I think that sucks a LOT more than a donate button. I have clicked many a “donate” button in my life, but I have never signed up for paid “VIP” type content, and probably never will.

I don’t remember who it was, but someone famous said something along the lines of, “People want to give us their money. We merely have to provide them a way to do so.” Some people will never want to donate a dime, and that’s fine – don’t ever try to force them. But others DO want to give money, in one way or another. Let them. (And the people who say, “I’ll give you money but first you have to tell me what you’re going to spend it on or what you did with the other money you had”? Tell them to stuff their donations up their… tell them “no thanks.”)

Last but not least, don’t waste your time with advice columnists (unless it’s just for the thrill of seeing your letter in print). They cannot possibly understand all the nuances of anyone’s situation. Make the decision that’s right for you, not the decision that some stranger came to based on a few lines of text. At best, advice columnists are like flipping a coin – when the coin comes down showing heads and you say, “Damn! I wanted tails!” then and only then is when it’s helped you make a decision.

If you insist on calling your tip jar an “alms” button, you might consider labeling it: “Alms, alms for Belisarius”. Based on a (probably) historically inaccurate legend, and over the top besides. But calling it alms is already pretty inaccurate, so I hope in this case humor trumps accuracy.

Some have equated that to a musician passing the hat or paying a ticket, but that’s what I do when I buy one of your books.

Still begging isn’t inherently a bad thing. You offer a free Firefly novel on your site so perhaps your donate button as quid pro quo.

And if people donate to help you finish your books I guess it is similiar to having nano-patron of the arts.

In any case, keep writing. I love recommending your books to all I meet.