Stupid marketing tricks

[andrewducker]

I subscribe to Daily Science Fiction, who handily email me a short story once a day. They vary in quality, but there are enough good ones to keep me going.

A week or so back they had one that I wanted to share, so I went to the website to see what the URL for it was so I could share it on.

And discovered that you can't do that - because the email subscribers get the stories a month ahead of the website. And, of course, the chances of me remembering after a month is near zero.

Why on earth would anyone do this? You're taking the people that care the most about SF short stories - the people that you want out there actively promoting your site, and making it extra hard for them to tell people about your product.

And as they don't actually send ads to the email subscribers, they don't get anything out of this barking state of affairs.

Comments

[gominokouhai]

I have to deal with shit like this all the time: people still thinking Old Media while using New Media tools. Somebody in an office somewhere has decided to apply a crippleware revenue model without spending too long working out whether or not they actually should.

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

Kind of implies that they don't understand the web. I think there's still a place for a kind of Salon.com for fiction - a web-only space that's incredibly high quality, with email subscriptions and a real understanding of how the Internet works.

[andrewducker]

I think this could be great - and I think that allowing people to subscribe via email, web, and Kindle are all great ideas. I just can't think of a good reason to delay the web version. If I was paying money to get the email early then fair enough. I just can't imagine what they were thinking.

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

It's actively dumb. I think they probably want to make their email list high value so they can stick ads on it at some point?

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I'm a fan of 365tomorrows.com; I don't know if they email out anything, but they offer a new piece of sci-fi short fiction daily (going in their third year now, I believe), and RSS it out as well. (I follow it at 365tomorrowsrss.)

[elmyra.livejournal.com]

Um, have you asked them why they do this? They may simply need someone to clue them in. (I understand the chances are that they won't listen, but once in a while people surprise you, so once in a while I try to give people useful feedback.)

[andrewducker]

I just got an email back from them. Apparently they can qualify for the Science Fiction Writers Of America if they have "subscribers", and so they encourage people towards the mailing list by doing this.

I think I need to email Scalzi and find out if he know the effect this has...

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Apparently they can qualify for the Science Fiction Writers Of America if they have "subscribers"

The rules for qualifying markets are here -- they have to demonstrate they have at least 1000 downloads of a story (which they have apparently done, since they're in the list of approved markets now). I don't see why this would prevent them from putting the story on the website as well.

[andrewducker]

Apparently they worry that nobody would subscribe to their mailing list if it was all available over RSS/web, and then they wouldn't be able to prove their numbers, and then they wouldn't qualify.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Huh. I had not expected simply asking to work effectively, but I'm very glad it did! :)