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Big Closet is true to its mission to be A friendly place to read, write and discuss Transgender Fiction. However, in order to execute that mission, Big Closet must fiscally sound.
Every month Erin sounds the alarm – and every month the same small group gives financial support. Relying on so few for so much is a recipe for disaster.
Nothing is going to change, unless change is provoked.
I know how crazy this is going to sound, but maybe it’s time to start charging people to post their fiction.
(((I’m already ducking . . . assuming the tomatoes that will be tossed my way for suggesting such heresy.)))
Content is a life-blood of a website.
Yet – BC needs money one heckuva lot more than it needs “excess” content.
I use the term “excess” because I doubt that anyone reads more than fifteen to twenty percent of the current posted new content.
Writers need readers. Authors will almost universally state that they write for themselves, but many of them would be lost without the appreciation that comes from kudos and comments on their work.
Writers need public exposure to force them to improve their writing. BC is one big writer’s clinic offering a community of people who readily help new authors.
Many BC writers are using BC for self-promotion to sell their books. They might be willing to pay to place their writing as an advertisement for their commercial offerings.
BC could offer to place three free stories for new authors and then charge $25 thereafter for each additional story -- $10 for each part of a saga. I estimated annual revenue of about $10,000 to $15,000 with maybe a 25% drop in new content.
Just a thought.
Jill
Comments
You point out
A very serious consideration. Even charging a membership fee for premium content and services would probably open Erin up to legal issues that I don't understand. However, that is the only thing that I can think of off the top of my head that will possibly give a consistent income stream. That is 'subscription' to the premium content. I'm hoping to be working more regularly in the near future, but don't have any firm promises....
Thanks
The stories I've donated to Hatbox have been released to Erin under the assumption that she would be charging a premium subscription.
Going forward this site could have a "terms of service" that would cover this issue.
Most people would be shocked by what's commonly in those terms of service that we blithely agree to, such as Ubers, which precludes you from seeking damages them if you get hurt riding in their vehicles.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
The most frequently told lie
The most frequently told lie is on the internet. It's the one when people check the box that says, "I have read and agree to the terms of service."
I know that many times, I check that box after only skimming the first few paragraphs and often without even opening the page. The only time I make the effort to actually read them is a site where I'm going to be moving a lot of funds, such as my banks site and my mortgage site. Everything else get the lie.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
It will kill BCTS.
It is a solution. It will reduce servers load to 0.00001% of the current load and will reduce bills to around zero.
I see here 5 to 7 authors of TG fiction who are not struggling to meet their bills every month. Even "best selling" or "very greedy" authors here are not "rolling in the dosh". If they were, any 2 of them would have been able to cover all of the expences BCTS have now...
My estimate is that all of the authors will leave "for other greener pastures". Maybe 1 or 2 will remain... But, without the rest of them there will remain like 5 readers...
For example. Me. I read almost everything not containing magic, and some well written stories with magic. If there will be 2 authors posting here, and 1 of them will post only things like a year old, which I already purchased and read through three times... And if another one will be posting magic or soul transfer stories... BCTS will die for me. I will be visiting like once per year to see if anything changed, like I check ehayes site and Storysite every once in a while... But. BCTS will be one of these "dead" never updated sites...
A lot has been said about it...
A lot has been said about it, but I am still giving my two cents to it.
I think switching to a paid model for authors or viewers would spill any sites doom. As long as there are free alternatives then people will flock there. That is a simple truth. I think people underestimate how many will jump ship. Wouldn't be surprised if the remaining people were a little more than those that currently donate money already.
I also find it quite offensive that it is being said that only authors profit from posting stories on BC. I am one of the more unknown authors here and my stories aren't the most popular. Most getting about 1000 to 2000 reads. That means advertisement revenue. I counted (besides the ads for doppler press books) one large banner beneath the story and four small picture ads by Amazon. So each posting of a story brings money to BC. The question is if this income is large enough to offset the hosting cost of the file stored on the server and the bandwidth it takes to push to readers (as well as the share for personal wages). If not then BC has a fundamental problem.
But there are other problems. Namely in your math. Charging 25$ and only expecting a 25% drop in content? Seriously? That leaves the realm of being realistic far behind. I would say the drop would be 95% or higher. You also expect the annual income around 10.000 to 15.000$ annually. But that is still a drop in the bucket as BC needs 60.000$ annually. It would help, but it wouldn't save BC. (In fact, I still think it would doom BC). With lower content, the ad revenue would sink drastically too. This would also offset the balance gained by your suggestion.
Erin, if you read this I am sorry, but I think a big part of the problem is the internal makings of BC. Earlier this year I was cut off from my landline and had to use mobile. There I saw a big difference when I checked up on my stories on Fictionmania and Big Closet. Namely that FM used a lot less data. Fictionmania is leaner. Others might say it has fewer features and I would totally agree. Because Fictionmania and others like it are still in the realm of being amateur sites. Now BC tries to distance itself from the heap by trying to be professional. To offer more services and possibilities. I, as an author, value those features. Enough to pay 25$? I think we all know the answer to that. I hate to say it, but for some time I have my doubts that it is feasible for BC to have all these features. Such large data overhead. I'll probably get a lot of hate for saying this, but BC needs to slim down to save on server cost and bandwidth. And that can not come from reducing content. It has to come from the underlying architecture. And here the real problem lies. I think BC uses such an old system that cannot be modified in this direction.
For me, the only viable solution would be to have more ad revenue. That would mean to have more readers and more content. Not less.
Yeah... If BCTS will pay authors...
Like 10 bucks for the first posting (that could be waived for the right to read premium stories), and then like 5% of net ad revenue from the story... It will draw in authors and more authors will mean more readers...
Another thing, that some of the best short stories around here are under "a bit of fluff" tag, like my only posted anecdote like story. If I had to pay to post it... Just looking up my card details is too much work to post that bit of fluff, even not coming to the pay to have it posted...
But... Supporting BCTS is a good idea. But authors do support BCTS "above and beyond" just by posting their stories without asking for royalties. Us readers could contribute by donation. But again, TG community is not a community of billion dollar IPO startuppers! We do what we can. But... My consious says "you have to be on a diet and support BCTS, but my subconcious is like "you have to eat that double cheeseburger with fries and cola, and you need to have those heels in your closet..."
:-)
Bandwidth and Data storage
Neither are really a problem, if we buy enough hosting to support our database and processing needs, we always get enough bandwidth. We use between 2% and 6% of our allowed bandwidth in most months. And that is premium bandwidth at high speeds and near perfect uptime.
Data storage is cheap. We have a storage server with multiply redundant storage and an offsite backup server to handle that stuff.
Processing power, in the form of multiple servers, is necessary to maintain our large and complex database needs. This is an expense in the form of needing to buy new (actually almost always refurbed) machines every two or three years and in leasing enough space to get enough room for our servers. We have a few commercial clients that help out with these costs, but it is less than 20% of what we are paying.
As I remember the current configuration, we have two front ends, a database server, a caching server, a storage server, an offsite backup server, a slave/echo server that steps in if the database server glitches, and a utility infielder server that is ready to go online in whatever role we need it.
We also have a community server that supplies hosting to other sites, some of which we operate and some we don't.
Oh, and a chat server at a hosting service that allows chat servers because most don't.
Hugs,
Erin
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
So how do the costs stack up...
...with simply renting space on the cloud somewhere in the Far East?
I realise that when you’ve invested in equipment, you can’t just throw it away, but our needs can’t be that different from thousands of other organisations and I suspect few of those buy and maintain their own kit.
Power
The cloud offers no breaks in the price of computing power. If all we needed was space or bandwidth, we could save a lot of money. But power is not cheap on the cloud.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
You start charging users I
You start charging users I guarntee lawyers will become involved that will cause debt to bubble out. I guarntee I will not be visiting because I cannot afford to pay anything. I am in the same situation as a few others with little disposable income.
Soft is Hard. Hard is Soft.
As Erin has pointed out and is well aware of the issues as far as the back office operations of BCTS are concerned, while I am not an IT person, I have had observations about Big Closet for quite awhile. As with any major operation that deals with the volume of traffic and data that Top Shelf does, there is 75% going on that 99.9% of the people never see.
While Erin and her elves have kept up with the Hardware upgrades, I'm wondering about the aging software infrastructure of BCTS. I know that we have had brief periods of downtime and a couple of major design changes, however i don't recall any major changes in the basic structure in a very long time.
My question is to all the BCTS authors and readership. Would you be willing to have
the ACTIVE Top Closet website down for a period of time in order to allow Erin and Co. to rebuild and streamline the site if necessary and for how long?
I'm not trying to start any arguements, however with the topic flow atm, this seemed a valid question to me.
**********
I am a leaf on the wind, but someone turned the fan off.
Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
When I can scrounge up the odd shekel or three I make a donation to Erin/BC. This usually means skipping meals or skipping meds for awhile. Should something like charging to post ever come about I'd have to fold my tent and steal away into the night.
Honestly I'm spending most of my reading time on the oldies but goodies. No offense intended to the new authors, but what is being posted these days isn't my cuppa joe. If all of us had to go back and pay for our older work then that would eliminate any real desire to remain active. Too much of the stuff I like would likely be gone.
This post represents my purely personal opinion. As such, I don't expect people to agree with me; what I do expect is polite responses even if you don't like what I said.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Angela there HAS to be a better way!
Angela, I could afford it. I imagine we both are donating to keep BC open but the bottom line for me is what is the limit for the donation I'm willing to send? When it is more than some of my own utilities I'm not going there and what am I willing to forfeit to make that donation?
Hon, I'm a published novelist. I kinda expect to be paid for what I write, not pay to have my writing read. To pay BC to publish my stories will never happen. I can't imagine anything that would cause authors to jump ship faster than telling them they must pay to get a story in print. Girl, they can go to Amazon and put out everything they write and possibly get paid. Several years back I was invited to BCTS. I don't see it happening but if I did leave I'd ask Erin to scrub me and every story from BCTS. I love all the people at BC and the authors who drop stories here. Erin, bless her heart has been more than forgiving for some of the things I have done. It would take a lot to push me off my roost here.
This years wheat crop was a total bust. Drought decimated the wheat. I didn't have a drop of rain for four months after I put the seed down. Some sprouted, most didn't, what made it died before it ever got started. I'm not saying what it cost me but I believe a family of three could live for a year on what I lost.
BC aren't the only ones in a financial crunch. Where I'm headed with this story is if they start charging for posting there are hundreds (thousands) of sites out there who don't charge for posting stories.. I'm paying for an inactive web site. (BarbieLee.com) I'd move over to my own site, which I should do anyway. Would BC lose me? At this point in time I'm not sure but it's a possibility, especially if I have another catastrophic crop loss. I'm sucking red ink myself and the truth is I might have to go back into the "trades" to make a living. At my age that would suck big time! I carried a license for everything I did where it was required. Need a heavy equipment operator? Mechanical Contractor? Contractor Plumber? Commercial HAVAC? Electrician? CDL licensed to haul any thing? I've helped build hospitals, research labs, medical labs, banks, commercial offices, homes, dams, conservation levies, dairy barns, metal buildings, etc, from Detroit to Corpus Christi and a hundred places in between. Can and have drove or operated almost everything with wheels or tracks, including trucks and most all farm equipment, And signed on as a Kelly Girl. I DO NOT want to go on the road again!
I was thirty feet up in the air working on a billboard when one of my friends stopped to watch. He had another guy with him. He told me the story later as the guy asked. "What does she do?"
Chuck, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
At the moment I'm playing like a farmer. WHICH I haven't a clue even though I grew up on this farm and was with daddy every day milking cows, hauling hay, driving farm equipment. Momma called me "daddy's shadow". For every step he took I had to take two or three but I was by his side every day.
Hugs hon, try and remember the rest of us who are out there still fighting for every dollar we make and sometimes it doesn't work.
Life is a gift. Treasure it until it's time to return it.
always,
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
There is like sixty posts not going to read them all...
However bc is already becoming something of a pain to read. Go ahead try and read on a mobile phone getting to a story is a pain as its almost all advertisements.
If Erin were to start charging authors to post I can almost guarantee that the site would die an instant death and people would move to another free site and start again.
Really Angela... (shakes head)
I have a different suggestion or two
I have a different suggestion or two
I have only ever posted stories for free. I know that some of my stories are okay, some are good, some are better, and maybe one is great. But, I can't tell until after a few days and I see comments from readers.
What would be great to see is if a story I am about to publish could be evaluated by a panel first and see if it would be a good one to put in the Premium site with a teaser published on the free side.
Or, maybe, just half of my story is published and won't be free to read until one month after publication unless one is a premium member in which case, you get to read it right away.
Just some thoughts ...
AuP
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