Going Free-to-Play
Stripe is not my friend.
I got a gut punch a couple weeks ago
After early success with Fablehaven and looking like I was on a burnout-free, curiosity-led path — Stripe pulled the rug from underneath me.
My Stripe account suddenly demanded verifications I couldn’t give.
Now, I must be honest, with South Africa not being part of the 46 blessed countries directly supported by Stripe, I tried a workaround.
A loop hole.
Which has now been closed.
Which means your support monies are going into a hole I cannot access.
I’m not happy about that for multiple reasons
I hate wasting money, so I cannot waste yours.
I cannot access the money, which means it never really reaches me.
I cannot fix this, so I’m being forced to pivot away from premium.
I had hoped to go full time
Both as a writer and a supporter of writers. But it’s not going to happen with Stripe unless I move to the UK or somewhere else in the first world.
Yes, that’s thinly veiled anger.
Stripe is not very accommodating, and neither is Substack for that matter, of writers outside these chosen lands.
But what is lemons for me might be lemonade for you
We must solider on.
I will be making the Reader Experience free-to-play.
To lean on a concept from the gaming world, all my content is going to go free. In gaming, when a game does this they’re trying to open up their experience to as many people as possible.
And I want to do the same and help the most writers I can.
And well, Stripe be damned.
I’m done moping and sulking now
So what I will be doing is refocusing. Shifting focus back to fiction and make all the content here free-to-play (available for free — no paywalls).
Because having taken a few days to mope, deep dive every possible solution, escape into books and stress-eat almonds, I've come to the conclusion that the money was probably a distraction.
I got early traction on Substack, more than I did on Patreon. And so inevitably, I spent more time talking about writing than actually writing.
Or at least it felt like it at times (I did still finish that novel. 😇 )
A Free Previously Paid Publication
Making this a free publication should help nudge me back to a proper balance where what I'm doing most of the time, every day, is writing fiction.
Or promoting fiction.
That still gives me the willies, but I’ve gotta get over that, and to learn how to do it. Growth doesn’t happen from wishing alone.
And then I can document what I have done on my own fiction business and share that with you, just because I want to.
Because saving someone else time and frustration gives more meaning to my muddling. To make the world a slightly easier place for likeminded writers.
And so the Reader Experience and Fablehaven is going free-to-play.
Everyone can enjoy it, and share it.
What about a Tip Jar?
As we know with free-to-pay games, sometimes there's micro-transactions.
Those can be both loved or hated.
So I’ll approach anything like that with caution. I have a few ideas, and to be fair some of what I plan to do needs to be supported somehow given that’s it’s basically software. And will represent hundreds of hours of work.
So maybe I'll add a tip jar or something like that.
But we'll figure that out down the line.
Being Zen About It
Mainly, I’m going to be zen about this all and just focus on creating the best cool shit fun stuff for my fiction readers, and then showing you how I did it.
I think that’s win-win in the end.
Lastly and most importantly
Thank you all for your support, especially my paid subscribers who have stuck by me from early on and through many many pivots.
I truly and deeply appreciate your support. And I’ll still be sharing all the prompts and tutorials you subscribed for in the first place.
It’s all going to be here. It’s all going to be free.
If you’re at all pissed frustrated about this, both at me or Stripe, please hit reply to this email and let me know. We can try figure something out. Or just rant together in a quiet corner of the internet.
If you’re a little sad, it’s ok, we’ll keep soldiering on and I hope you enjoy the free content going forward.
Until next time,
Keep writing and keep building.
Zane
Let me know what you think about all this in the comments. I read and reply to every single one. It takes like 3 minutes so… why not.