Indy’s Archive

What you can do, is say “follow me on tumblr” and promote your ko-fi on your tumblr. But I’ve seen people do the link to their ko-fi/patreon without explicitly mentioning them and still losing their accounts or getting hit by warnings cause someone reported them. (The one person I knew who outright lost their account just kept doing it repeatedly despite multiple warnings, like a doofus, so that was on them.)

Link Directly to:

Kofi

Patreon

Amazon

Your private book site where you sell your writing

Any other fundraising site such as gofundme etc

If you link and are reported your work is in danger of being deleted, but you will be given a warning and time to fix any issues.

You also cannot mention that a work was directly commissioned with $$, hide the rest of your work/novel/chapter/ or in any way paywall the remainder of your work. Things like “support my writing here!!” are usually no go.

General phrasings like trade, requested, asked for, etc are OK.

Joy is correct in saying linking to your tumblr which advertises your kofi or fundraiser is ok.

If you are reported, the AO3 team will do their best to let you know EXACTLY what works and what phrasing is not allowed. They do issue a blanket “responsible for the rest of your works” statement so be thorough.

You also cannot link to something like a linktree that contains direct links to a means of generating income, e.g., ko-fi, patreon, PayPal, Amazon, cash app, Gumroad etc

The safest thing to do, both for yourself and the longevity of the site is to link to your blog, which in turn may link to your ko-fi. Make separate posts reminding people that if they like your art/writing, your ko-fi exists. Just be smart about it.

As I tell people who ask me about creating fanworks of my OG work absolutely 100% do the thing. Just don’t let me, the copyright holder, see a link to ko-fi or patreon associated with it because I am then legally obligated to file a takedown. And no one wants that.

Sure, maybe some of us have some old works that aren’t up to our current standards of writing. But I, personally, am never going to look at a kudos email and think “ew omg I can’t believe someone found this fic from 2016 why are they liking it”. In fact, I am entirely going to go “nice! people are still reading some of my older works too, I’m glad they enjoyed it”. It’s an archive, it is meant to be a collection of transformative works, old and new, and you are meant to find them. 

In fact, if you find a work that is from five years ago and you really liked it? I bet the author would love a comment even then.

Stories are written to be read. 

Things Ao3 can do for you that you're doing manually on Tumblr and creating more work for yourself:

Chapters and Collections - Your fic ends up having more than one part? Great! Chapters may be what you're looking for, rather than scattering your story across multiple reblogs or new posts. Do you have multiple stories that are all related? Make a Collection! People can easily find all the stories in the world you've made all together.

Organization - On Ao3, the only thing on your page is your fic, no need to sort through random reblogs of other stuff. Great for readers AND you to find fic quickly! Edit a fic and you'll know everyone will see the edits! Readers can bookmark your fic and read it over and over!

Reader subscriptions - I see SO MANY of you with huge lists at the end of your Tumblr fic where you're tagging people to notify them of a new part. On Ao3, they can just subscribe to the fic. They will get automatically notified that you've put up a new part! Plus, if they REALLY like you, they can subscribe to your account in general so any time you post ANY fic, they'll be notified!

Legibility - Outside of the dashboard, I swear to god some of you don't understand that tiny font on your blog theme is inaccessible. On Ao3, readers can customize their experience so they never have to deal with eyestrain.

Tags and Warnings - This is a huge one. People can easily filter if they want to see your fic or not, and if you tag right, people can FIND your fic more easily.

Quality - YES, your fic is "good enough" to go on Ao3. Ao3 isn't some fancy publishing company, it's a repository for ALL fic. Even yours. Yes, your drabble. Yes, your bullet fic that turned into something more. Yes your twittfic that became really long.

•$50k student loan relief: this one he could do with an order, because Dept of Ed is executive branch. Get on it.

•No kids in cages: has to get through the courts—which Cheeto Mussolini loaded with unqualified fascists; one executive order already stopped by a court in Texas. Working on it.

•$15 minimum wage: has to go through Congress, not executive order. Working on it.

PLEASE. I am BEGGING YOU. Learn how the US government actually works.

This means 15$ wage is going to have to be its own bill. That’s a massive problem because the GOP and like four moderate Dems don’t want to pass it. And we need something like 60 votes to pass it anyway bc fucking Manchin and Sinema don’t want to kill the filibuster.

In my grandparents’ time, it was believed that spirits existed everywhere… in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything… I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything. — Hayao Miyazaki.

Christmas Love (2020) - Jimin