On the importance of Subscription
I would like to tell you a little story to begin. Don't worry, it's not long.
About fifteen years ago I got my real first apartment. A friend of mine and I rented a little place in a city called Royal Oak. We hadn't been there a full twenty-four hours before I came home to find my roommate talking to a man by the door to our building.
The man had a stack of papers in his hand and as I approached I saw what they were: order forms.
The man was going door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions and my roommate had been caught while trying to get the mail.
Now I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember this, but people selling subscriptions in this way used to be commonplace.
The largest magazines even ran commercials on television to tout the advantages of subscriptions. They would offer big discounts (sixty-percent off the retail price) for calling to order a year subscription. They would throw in special gifts, like a football shaped phone for an order of Sports Illustrated.
This doesn't happen anymore. Magazines are dying on the vine as the internet has made them almost obsolete.
But there is a new trend in the subscription game and it has to do with ebooks.
Sites like Oyster and Scribd have been around for awhile and even Amazon has recently gotten into the practice with their Kindle Unlimited.
These companies know the power of a subscription. Once you have someone it's harder for them to let go. They just continue to send their money in every month (or, more likely, have it directly taken out of their account) regardless as to whether they use it or not.
It's the same principle behind a gym club membership. How many people have signed long-term contacts with a gym only to stop going?
For writers, these services can be a good thing, leading to more discovery, or they can be a bad thing, people downloading your books and never reading them.
Some people think that subscription services like this could be the future of the publishing world. Of course, it could also wither and die away, never to be heard from again. Just like those men and women who once traveled from house to house looking for people to subscribe to their magazines.
Only time will tell which one bares out.
About fifteen years ago I got my real first apartment. A friend of mine and I rented a little place in a city called Royal Oak. We hadn't been there a full twenty-four hours before I came home to find my roommate talking to a man by the door to our building.
The man had a stack of papers in his hand and as I approached I saw what they were: order forms.
The man was going door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions and my roommate had been caught while trying to get the mail.
Now I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember this, but people selling subscriptions in this way used to be commonplace.
The largest magazines even ran commercials on television to tout the advantages of subscriptions. They would offer big discounts (sixty-percent off the retail price) for calling to order a year subscription. They would throw in special gifts, like a football shaped phone for an order of Sports Illustrated.
This doesn't happen anymore. Magazines are dying on the vine as the internet has made them almost obsolete.
But there is a new trend in the subscription game and it has to do with ebooks.
Sites like Oyster and Scribd have been around for awhile and even Amazon has recently gotten into the practice with their Kindle Unlimited.
These companies know the power of a subscription. Once you have someone it's harder for them to let go. They just continue to send their money in every month (or, more likely, have it directly taken out of their account) regardless as to whether they use it or not.
It's the same principle behind a gym club membership. How many people have signed long-term contacts with a gym only to stop going?
For writers, these services can be a good thing, leading to more discovery, or they can be a bad thing, people downloading your books and never reading them.
Some people think that subscription services like this could be the future of the publishing world. Of course, it could also wither and die away, never to be heard from again. Just like those men and women who once traveled from house to house looking for people to subscribe to their magazines.
Only time will tell which one bares out.
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