Pay What You Want (No, Really)

As I'm about to release a new game, I thought it was time I put this in writing (not least, because I want to link to it).

What should I charge for my actual indie zine releases? The TL;DR is "It's pay what you want, with a suggested price, but really, pay nothing, it's cool."

My initial urge was to to make everything free. I don't need the money. In my other life, I'm a successful writer. By which I mean, I can afford to eat and own a house and all that other stuff which is unlikely when you do what I do ("Make up stuff for money"). 

The problem here is basically me releasing stuff for free (especially stuff which of a significant zine-size) implies that it's not worth any money, and when there's many other people releasing zines who do need the money, that's not ideal. Especially as I suspect I get some crossover readership from folks who don't know much about indie underground games culture, and so their introduction to it will be me saying "This isn't something you should consider paying for."

(There's also an argument that it's never good to devalue your own labour. This is worth money. I don't mind folks not paying, but this is a real thing.)

So I've gone pay what you want with a basic suggested price. 

I suspect it leans a little low for what one should consider paying for a zine, but signals it's stuff which is worth money. 

However, in a real way, don't worry about paying nothing. Download and nose. 

However, that doesn't solve the question of what I should do with the money folks have given me.

I chewed over a few things, but what I'm going to do is basically use it as a separate budget for the development of these indie games - mainly paying for art. For example. the majority of the money I've earned so far went to pay Max for the art they did for HOW DO ALIENS DO "IT"?

This seems to be workable, at least for now. Of course, I'm a writer and everything could collapse any minute. There could come a time when I really do need the money - in which case, I'd absolutely use it. Hopefully not, of course, but consider this post my intent rather than a binding pinky-swear. There's also the chance a small project may grow to become a big project, effectively becoming my day job like DIE RPG did. In which case, this doesn't apply either. But for my zines? This is how I'm going about.

As a final note though: I'm a working class British ex-zine kid. This is a very pure thing, and I don't want this essay to make folks think I don't appreciate getting money. The few hundred dollars I've made from my zines so far has been the favourite money I've earned in years. Thank you.