Membership Subs

I don't know whether it is possible but it has occured to me that Tony must have connections which would put him in a good place to act as an agent.

I was thinking that people could submit pieces into various catagories eg. Story, Poem, Lyric and Tony could pick ones he thought might be commercial and try to find a good home for them for a small percentage of the deal :O)

It might take a bit of getting off the ground but it could do well!

Just a thought.

Ah, Tony's magic publishing powers. We should never underestimate those. He only witholds them because ... because ... well, because he does.

I'm sure that if Tony saw a brilliant piece of work on ABC he'd alert anybody he could get hold of, and he wouldn't want paying for it either. But the future of ABC can't rest on waiting for a genius to come along.

If he constantly bothered his contacts, supposing he has such, to read stories by angelface23 and donglenose, it wouldn't be long before they stopped taking his calls!

And again, a brilliant 2,000 word story on ABC isn't a valuable item.

In short, it ain't gonna work.

Umm...no easy solution, I suffer from lazybuggeritis like the majority and don't like using the net to make payment, but would set up a yearly s/o on a voluntary basis?

2, 3, 4 are all worth considering in theory but none of them can be usefully taken forward without significant investment (particularly of time and thinking but also of some money).

2 would lead to a significant reduction in active membership.

3 has been tried in the past without the added benefits. It was unsuccessful at a time when the site had a much higher profile and far more active users than it does now.

The challenge is to think of what the added benefits would be that could be provided to a relatively small number of people without costing more to deliver than would be made from selling membership subs.

4 could be a good idea in the sense that there's a good argument for a subscription site for people who take writing quite seriously.

Whether people are good at writing is difficult to judge objectively (and you don't necessarily want to turn away loose-walleted egomaniacs with limited writing talent) but people can judge for themselves whether they want their writing to be ruthlessly critiqued and to be signposted to publishing and career development opportunities, rather than to be given generalised gentle encouragement for writing as a hobby.

The problem is that for any of these options to be successful Abctales.com actually needs to be made into a business.

None of them are likely to generate much income without the investment of time, effort and cash to create a product (or products) that people will choose to pay for.

Certainly thee's not much point in having a subscription fee if it's all spent on benefits. My initial thoughts on (free to ABC) added benefits for subscribers are:

They can post more stories each day.

Their stories sink more slowly down the 'recently added' list, giving potentially greater readership.

They can add pictures to their stories and forum posts, not just links. This isn't done at the moment for security reasons, but we can (probably) assume that those who pay their fees aren't hackers, pornographers or spammers!

More tentatively I also had the idea that authors could be graded (e.g. on the basis of cherries received, competitions won, SOW/POW awarded). ABCers could select on their home page to only see stories by authors above a certain grade. Only paid-up authors would be graded, and would get more readers. This is obviously more complicated and would take a bit of experiment to get right (e.g. a brilliant writer who had only posted one story couldn't be more than a one-cherry author. If we do it by cherry average, he becomes a 100% cherry author. But...etc.), so as I say, only a tentative suggestion.

I also thought there might be social doodahs, such as chat rooms.

Other ideas, please!

I like the idea of social doodahs - in a facebook way rather than chat rooms. Could you expand members' pages? I mean the ability to add friends, pictures, comments, and possibly updates, so you could see on your page if a friend had added a story or a comment.

Or would that all cost a lot? I have no idea

Hand in the folding or fold, it's as simple as that.

I like FTSE's ideas and will probably like them right up until the moment I realise I have a 0.00002% cherry rating. This will be a problem for me as I am an egomaniac with an empty wallet.

Whilst I would like more social doodahs, I'm not fussed about having a Writerbook-type site.

IPFNH, have you checked out www.authonomy.com?

Incidentally, Mangone, the above site is endowed with the magic publishing powers you attribute to Tony. God knows how many members it has now, but I bet the ratio of publishing deals to members is roughly equal to my predicted cherry-rating percentage.

I'm sure all this is of very little help. However, I am happy to pay a reasonable fee to be a member at ABC.

Option 1 isn't really an option of course, it's an acceptance of pending demise.
I don't like 3 at all. It creates a two-tier membership and an 'elite'; never a good thing in my view.
4 would avoid the problem that 3 creates but only by putting 'the elite' into a different chamber, as it were. But, as others have asked, who gets to decide who is worthy? Basing it on ‘cherries’ won is a problem because the criteria are so opaque and they are often given, I’m sorry to say, somewhat arbitrarily. In addition, one single work, in chapters, could win dozens of cherries, thus skewing the supposed measure. ‘Cherry’ giving is also, I suspect, potentially prey to ‘pressure group’ action and would be even more so if a system of voting was introduced.
Would we have promotion and relegation? Sorry to be facetious but that's the thought that it provoked.
This leaves 2.
Before I come on to that, I would still say this but more in the way of hope than expectation. Perhaps there is still an alternative way of generating income but someone will have to come up with a novel idea (not the sort of novel idea that grace these pages unfortunately) that will work … and soon! Like FTSE, I don't like the idea of being bombarded with adverts nor ABC becoming a kind of gatekeeper to some vast, profit making enterprise. That really leaves only sponsorship. Perhaps one or more Publishing Houses, or enterprises of that kind, would want to get involved if they could see something in it for them. A pitch might be made along the lines of using ABC as a kind of ‘grooming stall’ to identify future authors with commercial potential. Just an idea but no others come readily to mind.
Finally, let’s look again at option 2. Personally, I would pay a subscription if I felt I was continuing to derive some benefit. I think so at the moment but I could not guarantee for how long I would continue to think that; neither I suspect, could anyone else.
Clearly there would be ramifications if a fee was expected but it’s impossible to predict for certain what those ramifications would be. A drop in numbers – probably. A rise in quality – possibly.
What worries me most would be a drop in numbers to the point where the site becomes unattractive to its members and ultimately not viable in any case. Basing the level of fee on pure guesswork is likely therefore to prove counter-productive.
I hesitate to suggest this but I do think that some kind of ‘business case’ has to be devised. It has to deal with at least two main points… 1) How much income is necessary to ensure continued operation for a reasonable period of time (say 5 years) and 2) how many members are expected to contribute and at what rate. The two sides of that equation then have to balance in financial terms.
I can see no alternative but that ABC conducts an internal survey of members in order to gauge how many will contribute and how much they are willing to pay. It doesn’t need to be very complicated but it has to be sufficiently rigorous to provide a firm foundation for the ‘5 Year Plan’. Yes, OK, I know. But if you’ll forgive the mischievous and misquoted allusion, I’ve seen the future and it may just work.

Helvigo Jenkins

Just to let you all know that this is the beginning of a major re-think and, as always, we want to take in as many views as possible. We will be running focus groups and we will be sending out a series of questions to you all in a newsletter.

Many of you ask how much it takes to run the site - the answer should be around £60,000 a year and then I could get paid, the hosting would be covered, FTSE and the editors could get a bit and I would even be able to organise a number of ABCtales evenings around the country. But it could survive on £20,000 - but I would still have to do some outside work, we'd rely on the goodwill of FTSE and the Eds and it would continue to be the bit of a bodge that it is at present! I look forward to more debate from you all.

As for my magical publishing powers - I have been acting as agent for three of our authors over the past year and am taking on a couple more. I do have the contacts in the publishing world to be able to do this but it is slow going - and very difficult to get the previously unpublished a deal in a recession. In the very long term it might solve the problem but it's going to be a long haul.

As for authonomy, they are only marginally ahead of us in terms of traffic at the moment and they seem to be slipping each month whilst, after The Big Issue boost, we are going up and up. And one final point to bukharin - we are just about back at our all time high in terms of traffic at the moment - over 6,000 pages a day.

All good news Tony. I only mentioned Authonomy because it seems to have some of the functions IPFNH was looking for. I'm not surprised Authonomy's traffic is on the way down: it was inevitable really.

Tony, focus groups is a game you play when somebody else is paying you a salary and you have to fill in the pointless hours of your pointless days with some kind of pointless activity. God knows, you don't do it when you have real problems and your back is against the wall.

We haven't got the full answers yet; with middle management flim-flam all we'll ever get is talk and we'll still be looking for answers in 2020; but right now we do have enough to make a start.

"And one final point to bukharin - we are just about back at our all time high in terms of traffic at the moment - over 6,000 pages a day."

There is a growing number of pages of content on the site, so more pages are clicked on. You have no means of turning (or proposal to turn) clicks on pages into meaningful income so this is not relevant to the discussion.

How many people are using the site each week/month/year to post their work?

To make £60,000 a year, you'd need 3000 people to pay £20 a year to use ABC. My guess is that 300 would be a phenomenal achievement based on current usage.

I don't agree that focus groups are necessarily a bad thing - used selectively for a clear purpose they're very effective - but I do agree that it's a mistake to think they can provide the answers to a problem by themselves.

You need to have a hypothesis to start with. Then focus groups can help to tell you whether it's correct.

Having a plan that would make actually ABCtales sustainable if it worked is the first step.

The options being mooted seem to threaten the fundamental nature of ABCtales. It is presently a site that prides itself on being inclusive and abjures its members to 'tread softly' on each other's dreams. Introducing a compulsory fee or an elitist structure could therefore be self defeating. Or maybe it's just Darwinism in action: adapt or perish.

I've been a member of other writing sites that folded. That's how I ended up here. And I'm currently a member of 3 further sites, each with their own unique characteristics, from which I gain different insights into my writing ability.

(I recommend it, as it can get a bit 'cosy' here and it is easy to delude yourself about your own importance and relative ability.)

To be honest, I have no incentive to pay a fee - apart from sheer sentimentality, which cannot be relied upon. (UKAuthors encourages payment of an annual £10 sub and I didn't cough-up this year.)

So, how can ABCtales maintain and develop brand loyalty in the face of its 'competitors'?

Don't ask me. I dunno.

There are small marketing opportunities that could be developed (but wouldn't generate anything like £20k):

If you've bought an ABCtales mug, then how about other branded merchandise? T-shirts, caps, badges, pens, notebooks, mouse mats, etc. There are sites where these products can be made available at no set-up cost to the vendor.

Would you pay to see your name in print? I could make the Magazine (or similar anthology) available in hard copy through a P.O.D. service.

Have more competitions and pocket a reasonable percentage of the entry fees.

Have more ABCtales 'evenings' and charge for tickets or entry at the door.

But if Tony decides to cut his losses, I wouldn't be heartbroken. I'm not sure what he gets from his investment in any case.

Competitions are good - lots of people enjoy entering them. But there has to be a prize of some sort. Maybe that's why we don't have more?

It's extremely frustrating trying to get anything done. I put the idea of other ABC-branded merchandise to the boss at least six months ago. An e-mail of great enthusiasm, followed by ... nothing.

I'll be very surprised if anybody comes up with a sure-fire scheme to generate £20k+ a year from a single source, specially if one requirement is that the character of the site should remain unchanged. A lot of small revenue streams seems the only answer. Subs won't make everything tickety-boo, but they will certainly lift ABC from the floor.

My current plan is that we get started on collecting subs/donations from whoever will give them, give those who pay 'paid-up member' status (I've already made the machinery to do this, it can be done this second - site administrators just have to tick a box) and decide later what, if any, extra benefits should be received by paying members. At the moment paid-up members have exactly the same privileges as un-paid members, so it doesn't make any assumptions about what decisions will eventually be made.

Anybody see any objection to this? With the green light from the boss, we could begin now.

That's fine - but I do not want to stop anyone using the service yet. Sure, we want to encourage people to pay but there's no point in rushing into this. Focus groups will help us discover what it is really is that people want from the site - and it may well be that it is not what they think they want!

Don't rush me here, FTSE, I do appreciate your enthusiasm but this is 10 years of hard work and a great deal of my cash that's on the line and I'm not inclined to rush into things without thinking hard and long about the implications.

So, yes, let's set up a membership system but for the moment you will get nothing more from being a member than from not being a member. We will introduce 'member benefits' but they will be extras and not removals from what is here now.

Well, on that basis 300 people paying £20 would be an even more phenomenal achievement than I'd previously thought.

It's true that any of the suggested changes would challenge the fundamental nature of Abctales because currently it's not a business.

There's no guarantee that any plan to make it into a business will work well (or at all) but it's 100% certain that the site can't generate any meaningful turnover - profitably or otherwise - without either charging a membership fee and/or offering some products or services.

Sorry, wrote that before seeing your e-mail...

"Focus groups will help us discover what it is really is that people want from the site - and it may well be that it is not what they think they want!"

Before that's any use, you need to have a clear idea of what ABCtales can provide and how it could be delivered profitably.

Most people don't actively want anything.

I expect everyone could come up with a 'wouldn't it be nice if...', but probably the things they'd suggest aren't really essential. I think this is a long route to discovering that people want:

1) Somewhere to publish their stories
2) People to read their stories
3) People to comment on their stories
4) Other stories to read and comment on

In other words, they come to a site like ABC because it's a site like ABC.

But I'm just a cynic, or so buk tells me.

I agree that people who are already regular users of the site probably would say that.

And that doesn't tell us anything that we couldn't have worked out already or that has any commercial use.

The sort of questions worth asking to existing members are the ones you asked at the beginning of this thread but in more detail.

But there's also a need to talk to some people in the general ABCtales target market (writers) who don't currently use ABCtales but might be interested in doing so in the future (and paying for it and/or some services provided through it.)

And another thing...

I'm pleased we haven't had too much use of the word 'elite' here, the exception being the post from h jenkins. If you pay money and get something in exchange for it, that's got bugger all to do with elitism. There won't be a two tier membership, there will be those who actually are members, and those who aren't members but we allow to use the site anyway.

As far as writing is concerned, of course there's an elite! Being published is elitism - why him and not me? He ain't no better ner me. I want my book published too!

The elitism we should abhor is the sort that says X is a better person than Y for some entirely arbitrary reason, such as his caste. X being a better writer than Y is simply a fact (yes, yes, yes, with elements of judgement and fitness for purpose etc. Better in a given context, let's say), and to acknowledge it is just plain common sense.

Elitism becomes bad again when you say that X deserves to dine on champagne and caviar because he's the better writer, whereas Y will have to make do with beer and cigarettes. No, X deserves to have his work promoted and read because he's the better writer. Nothing more.

Here endeth Footsie's political pamphlet.

'...(UKAuthors encourages payment of an annual £10 sub and I didn't cough-up this year.)...'

That's you buggered then :-)

http://www.ukauthors.com
http://www.ukapress.com

I’m really not sure why FTSE felt it necessary to indulge in a rant aimed at me but as he’s done so, I feel I have to respond.

I think my use of the words ‘two-tier’ was appropriate. How is it that differential privilege within a service cannot be termed as such? That those in the ‘upper tier’ have paid does not render it any less ‘two-tiered’. It provides a justification for the ‘layering’, I’ll admit, but it’s still ‘two-tiered’. It is so in the same way that those who pay extra for private medicine help to create a ‘two-tiered’ National Health Service. The politics of it aside, paying for extra privileges within a service inevitably has the effect of creating more than one tier.

I also think my use of the word ‘elite’ was reasonable in the circumstances. In another post FTSE said, “I also had the idea that authors could be graded (e.g. on the basis of cherries received, competitions won, SOW/POW awarded). ABCers could select on their home page to only see stories by authors above a certain grade. Only paid-up authors would be graded, and would get more readers.” That certainly looks a great deal like an elite to me. Whether or not it’s justified by extra skill or by buying power, it’s still an elite. One of my objections is that such elites usually find a way of becoming self-perpetuating ones.

I could write a great deal more but I’ll leave it at that. What I find strange though, is that someone might profess to be celebrating the general avoidance of a word when they spend an entire posting writing about that very word.

I propose a truce.
I’ll let it go if you will.

Helvigo Jenkins

Why let it go? We could discuss it in another thread if you have anything more to say. I'm not angry with you, not even mildly miffed.

There already are two tiers - users and guests. Then there are editors and administrators, and above all these is the superuser account which has more privileges than Tony himself!

What about that?

It's true. I ran a competition last week, didn't let anybody else know about it, entered it and - I won! It's great being elite, and if you imagine I'm going to surrender any of my privileges to you, FTSE100, think again!

----
Idi Admin

I heard, through mysterious channels, that you don't even have to look at the Google ads, Mr. Administrator, sir. And that nothing whatsoever on the site is barred from you. What a glorious life you must lead!

It's not all ice cream and zuckertort, you know. With great power comes great responsibility. At least, that's what I tell the plebs. I could draw spectacles and mustaches on all your posts. Can you comprehend the willpower it takes to refrain?

----
Idi Admin

I can indeed, sir. I don't think I'm cut out to be an elite. It must be very lonely with nobody to talk to but yourself.

I am in favour of subscription fees. If one buys a new book in the bookshop it costs you R150 a book (a few pounds). One should be willing to pay the same for reading other users work on abctales. How much use you derive from this benefit is entirely up to you, as you can read as much or as little as you like in a year.

All subscriptions would do is to seperate the wheat from the chaff...

www.jacquesbrown.writernetwork.com

I do not have a problem with paying money, but being from overseas I have a problem with ‘method of payment’ (currently I use someone else’s credit card for such transactions). I would like other options available such as paying by postal order, for instance.

Jacques, you can certainly send postal orders (or cheques or cash for that matter). I'll e-mail you the postal address for ABCtales.

If anybody else would like to send Tony a Christmas card and a small contribution, please say and I'll mail you the address too.

Thank you Jacques, the angels will smile most kindly upon you.

It's a difficult one, isn't it?

I think that a freemium model could work.

But I don't think any benefits should include something that makes your work appear better than it is. I don't like the parachute idea on the recently added list.

Social networking features might be an idea though. Perhaps the ability to have favoured authors or pieces, a notification if someone you 'follow' posts a new piece (may well generate hits - although how hits becomes cash is another thing entirely) possibly a public 'like' feature in the style of facebook ... that kind of thing.

One suggestion, although I don't really like it that much, is that subscriptions enable comments on your piece. No subscription = comments locked.

Incidentally, NaNoWriMo users who donate get a little halo by their username. It sounds stupid, but there's a definite guilt/peer pressure thing there.

It's a good discussion to be having. Hats of to Tony for his work thus far, I hope ABCtales carries on indefinitely!

Ben

PS Tony - Been Nano'ing all month, hence the lack of editing activity. Will be back on it with enthusiasm from 1 Dec.

I'd pay for anything local and free range. Does anyone know if this is a local site? How local? Is it organic? These things are very important to me.

A small nominal subscription fee seems fair.

www.jacquesbrown.writernetwork.com

The halo's a good idea. I was thinking of a gold star but it's a bit infant school.

I agree with lisallinde though- it should be a local halo. Could you do that FTSE? xx