One More Storefront
Mar. 20th, 2025 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saxbrightwellLike most non-sociopaths, I've been pretty worried about the American situation. I can't say I trust anyone trying to say "it won't get that bad" anymore, when every single time they've said that since last November they've been dead wrong. I still hope for a miracle where some group has both enough power to matter and enough integrity to use that power for good instead of to protect itself through appeasement or increase itself through collaboration. But as they say, "hope for the best, prepare for the worst." So it's time for our own little acts of resistance, within our own little scopes of power.
I worry for the world at large, of course, and also for many specific groups and concerns, among them the fate of queer fiction and explicit romance. Will the nascent Christofascist dictatorship pressure the mega-corporate platforms to identify and purge this sort of content? Will the corporations push back, not because they care about right and wrong but because it would diminish their profits? And what about less enormous companies who can't afford lobbyists or federal-level lawyers, like Draft2Digital - which is based in Oklahoma? Whether they surrender, or resist and get annihilated, either way a focused attack probably won't leave it a place from which my books can go forth into the world.
Which has led me to consider my alternatives.
My backline is Archive Of Our Own. I'm making a go of keeping my fandom and original pseudonyms separate in public, but behind closed doors most of my closer fandom friends already know I'm Sax Brightwell. Some days the only thing stopping me from linking openly on my AO3 profile has been the hit count on my fics set in tiny fandoms; those hit counts remind me that it's not my name pulling in readers on my most popular fics, but rather the fandom tags. Even before The Horrors, I've often considered pulling my books and just posting them on AO3 instead to enjoy comments instead of money, but see above. Right now I'm sticking to my existing plan, but if World War 3 and snivelling corporate cowardice make it completely impossible to peddle niche gay smut, AO3 will be the first place I go to gift it instead of peddling it.
The first place, but not the only place. The OTW could get shut down, its board disappeared or openly assassinated. I'm pretty sure AO3's servers are in the USA; they could get physically bombed or just unplugged. So my ultimate backline is finding a free webhost outside the USA, and uploading my books there as free downloads.
Those are my backlines. I haven't retreated to either of them yet, and I hope not to. I'm not complying in advance; these are battle plans.
I've also been investigating alternative frontlines. Some of my independent author acquaintances are enthusiastic about selling their ebooks directly. A few of them mentioned Gumroad, and when Gumroad purged all adult content (now that's complying in advance, pathetic) the new hotness became Payhip. I looked them up and they are based in the UK, so somewhat out of the line of fire (the UK has its own internet censorship problems, but at least their government isn't openly shitting on the rule of law). They're using Paypal and Stripe, but they let you flag your content as adult-only (implying, at least to my mind and at least for now, that adult content is welcome there). At first I only heard of people embedding Payhip into their own personal website, which is itself a subscription, but when I looked closer I found you don't have to do it that way; you can just build a storefront right on Payhip's own website.
So I did!
I actually really like how clean and simple the page turned out. And, at least in theory, I pocket more of the royalties than using the D2D --> platform pipeline. The payment processors take $0.30 per transaction, which is 10% of my cheapest books, and then a 3% fee, and then Payhip pockets 5%, for a total cut of 18%. Compared to the platforms taking 30% and D2D taking 10% for a total cut of 40% (85% for print-on-demand), that's pretty good!
I've updated my sticky posts for Low Dusk (as the most recent release), and the master list of all my ebooks and audiobooks, to put the Payhip link first. In the process I made the blog look a little better on mobile, and made the master list look a lot better.
I'm not expecting to make a lot of sales this way; most people are very attached to whatever store platform connects directly to their ereader or ereader app. But it feels good to have it set up, as an additional way for folks to buy my books and as a kind of - archive, almost. An archive people can buy copies from. A backup storefront separated from a supply chain that's looking uncomfortably vulnerable these days.
(Don't worry, I also have other backups that aren't stores! 3 devices of my own and a Nextcloud in Denmark. The great thing about text is it's so data-light I can fit tiny stashes anywhere and everywhere. I also have one print-on-demand omnibus and will acquire another when it exists.)
I know this isn't very important or meaningful in the broad scheme of things. Maintaining reader access to 4 (for now) self-published smutty novels is about as impactful as turning a single box of cereal upside-down in the grocery store to signal to other shoppers that it's made in the USA. But it's still something I can do. It has more impact than not turning the box. My own little act of resistance, within my own little scope of power. So, I persist.
I worry for the world at large, of course, and also for many specific groups and concerns, among them the fate of queer fiction and explicit romance. Will the nascent Christofascist dictatorship pressure the mega-corporate platforms to identify and purge this sort of content? Will the corporations push back, not because they care about right and wrong but because it would diminish their profits? And what about less enormous companies who can't afford lobbyists or federal-level lawyers, like Draft2Digital - which is based in Oklahoma? Whether they surrender, or resist and get annihilated, either way a focused attack probably won't leave it a place from which my books can go forth into the world.
Which has led me to consider my alternatives.
My backline is Archive Of Our Own. I'm making a go of keeping my fandom and original pseudonyms separate in public, but behind closed doors most of my closer fandom friends already know I'm Sax Brightwell. Some days the only thing stopping me from linking openly on my AO3 profile has been the hit count on my fics set in tiny fandoms; those hit counts remind me that it's not my name pulling in readers on my most popular fics, but rather the fandom tags. Even before The Horrors, I've often considered pulling my books and just posting them on AO3 instead to enjoy comments instead of money, but see above. Right now I'm sticking to my existing plan, but if World War 3 and snivelling corporate cowardice make it completely impossible to peddle niche gay smut, AO3 will be the first place I go to gift it instead of peddling it.
The first place, but not the only place. The OTW could get shut down, its board disappeared or openly assassinated. I'm pretty sure AO3's servers are in the USA; they could get physically bombed or just unplugged. So my ultimate backline is finding a free webhost outside the USA, and uploading my books there as free downloads.
Those are my backlines. I haven't retreated to either of them yet, and I hope not to. I'm not complying in advance; these are battle plans.
I've also been investigating alternative frontlines. Some of my independent author acquaintances are enthusiastic about selling their ebooks directly. A few of them mentioned Gumroad, and when Gumroad purged all adult content (now that's complying in advance, pathetic) the new hotness became Payhip. I looked them up and they are based in the UK, so somewhat out of the line of fire (the UK has its own internet censorship problems, but at least their government isn't openly shitting on the rule of law). They're using Paypal and Stripe, but they let you flag your content as adult-only (implying, at least to my mind and at least for now, that adult content is welcome there). At first I only heard of people embedding Payhip into their own personal website, which is itself a subscription, but when I looked closer I found you don't have to do it that way; you can just build a storefront right on Payhip's own website.
So I did!
I actually really like how clean and simple the page turned out. And, at least in theory, I pocket more of the royalties than using the D2D --> platform pipeline. The payment processors take $0.30 per transaction, which is 10% of my cheapest books, and then a 3% fee, and then Payhip pockets 5%, for a total cut of 18%. Compared to the platforms taking 30% and D2D taking 10% for a total cut of 40% (85% for print-on-demand), that's pretty good!
I've updated my sticky posts for Low Dusk (as the most recent release), and the master list of all my ebooks and audiobooks, to put the Payhip link first. In the process I made the blog look a little better on mobile, and made the master list look a lot better.
I'm not expecting to make a lot of sales this way; most people are very attached to whatever store platform connects directly to their ereader or ereader app. But it feels good to have it set up, as an additional way for folks to buy my books and as a kind of - archive, almost. An archive people can buy copies from. A backup storefront separated from a supply chain that's looking uncomfortably vulnerable these days.
(Don't worry, I also have other backups that aren't stores! 3 devices of my own and a Nextcloud in Denmark. The great thing about text is it's so data-light I can fit tiny stashes anywhere and everywhere. I also have one print-on-demand omnibus and will acquire another when it exists.)
I know this isn't very important or meaningful in the broad scheme of things. Maintaining reader access to 4 (for now) self-published smutty novels is about as impactful as turning a single box of cereal upside-down in the grocery store to signal to other shoppers that it's made in the USA. But it's still something I can do. It has more impact than not turning the box. My own little act of resistance, within my own little scope of power. So, I persist.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-02 08:05 pm (UTC)Ooh the Payhip site is pretty nice. Much more convenient than setting up your own store (and collecting and remitting all appropriate taxes for umpteen nationalities, ugh.)
no subject
Date: 2025-04-02 10:59 pm (UTC)Thank you! It was honestly really easy to set up; the most complicated part was getting accounts with Paypal and Stripe.
And yeah, I've never minded sharing a cut for a service that saves me significant labour, especially if it would require constant monitoring and updating. I'm still really happy with Draft2Digital for keeping my books organized on 17 different storefronts (13 show on the Books2Read pages but there are a few more that don't - I think the remainder sell direct to libraries or something). The only big one they don't have an arrangement with is Google Play Books and just that one separate set of upload chores is tedious enough to make me think 10% is a very fair exchange.