Etiquette for Winning Bidders
So, you won an FTH auction, or maybe one than one! First of all, congratulations, and thank you! Your donations add up to making a real difference for the small organizations we supported this year.
When creators sign up to offer fanwork through FTH, we ask them to formally commit to creating the fanwork/doing the fan labor they've created. When you bid on the auction, we asked you to confirm your age and to commit to making your donation—and that's all! However, there's more that we expect of winning bidders to keep the auction running smoothly and make it a positive experience that will keep creators coming back year after year.
Open communication
Please check your inbox regularly for communication from your creator, and please don't "ghost" or disappear. One of the main reasons that auctions end up incomplete is because the creator was waiting for an answer that never came. And if you don’t hear from your creator in a while, don’t be afraid of sending a gentle checkin.
Be flexible, be kind
The creative process isn't always a straight line. Sometimes a prompt you’d agreed on just doesn’t want to work with the creator’s brain and you might need to let them change gears. Treat your creator as a collaborative partner, not a content-creation machine.
Near the end of the year we often have creators scrambling to finish, and some may need some extra time. Unless there is a reason for a deadline (such as using the beta work you won for a specific event), try to be flexible with timelines. If you know ahead of time that there will be a hard deadline for something, let you creator know as soon as possible.
Reread the offering post and make sure your requests are within those guidelines
Don’t ask for anything that is on their “Unwilling to Address” list; we are very clear with creators that they will never be expected to create anything on there. If they mentioned how they prefer to work with bidders, work within those guidelines - if they say they want lots of feedback, do your best to give it, but if they prefer to take a prompt and run with it on their own, don’t expect to be able to give your approval every step of the way.
It may also sometimes be the case that you want something that was not in the creator's "Unwilling to Address" section, but when it comes to an actual prompt, the creator finds that they're not comfortable. Please be willing to work with and respect any boundaries that your creator expresses to you.
Pay attention to our deadlines for you
Your creator needs to contact you by April 1 (please email us if they don’t) but they also need to hear back from you by April 15—even a note to say “hey, sorry, I’m swamped right now but I’ll be able to talk prompts in a couple weeks” works! Just let them know you haven’t ghosted them.
Then you need to have given them a workable prompt (something they agree they can work with) by June 30, or in the case of fan labor, agreed with them on when you’ll be working together (for example, “I’ll get you a draft of this Big Bang fic to beta in October”). If you don’t meet this deadline, or work out an alternative with your creator, we may release your creator from their commitment.
Stay Organized
We've had cases where a creator emailed us looking for their bidder, and when we look up the bidder, we see that they won a large number of auctions and most likely just lost track of some of their requests. If you're one of these serial bidders, a) We love you!! b) Please make a list and stay on top of your requests! Make sure you answer messages from your creators promptly, and maybe even set up some calendar reminders to check in now and then before the end of the year.
