The Dread Machine
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The Indie Mag Struggle: Navigating Financial Challenges and Platform Switches
🕑 Added 2023-04-21 18:50:38 +0000 UTCThis week, we've had to deal with some rough news.
Moksha Price Increase: Remember last week, when I told you Moksha's annual subscription increased to $750 per year? I can't justify the expense anymore. (I'd rather pay that money to writers.) So this weekend, we're switching to a free, self-hosted submission management system simply called Submission Manager.
WooCommerce Price Increase: Our ecommerce and subscription management solution increased prices by $40 per year. We don't have a free alternative for this one, and we can only manage one crisis at a time, so we're just going to have to deal with it.
Paypal Processing Increases: Not a "this week" thing, but last year, Paypal decided it deserved 3% of its customers' revenue on all sales it processes. This has been a major annoyance to me, given that Paypal offers us nothing in terms of customer support and almost always sides with customers who file blatantly fraudulent refund claims. I would looooove to never use Paypal ever again. Compared to Stripe, they offer considerably less to merchants, and both their documentation and their user interface are a mess.
Thankfully, we have the technical expertise to pull off a major switch like this, but other indie mags aren't anywhere near as fortunate. Even a mere $150 in increased costs could sink a small litmag like ours.
Switching to a new submission management platform is no small task. In addition to installing the system, it has to be configured and customized to suit our needs and preferences. I'll have to create the documentation and training materials for Tim, Monica, and our slush readers, and I'll have to onboard them to the system.
...if the system can be secured. (I won't go into details here, but Submission Manager is pretty exploitable, so we'll have to do a fair deal of customization to close up those security holes.)
Rather than renewing our Moksha subscription annually, I downgraded us to a monthly plan. Unfortunately, the monthly plan costs $75/month. The clock is ticking, so we're moving as fast as we can to divorce ourselves from the platform.
In other news...
Darkness Blooms is done! Not just "done" but done-done! The second round of proofs had the same issue the first round did—the colors were muted, printed far too dark overall. This is an issue with the way KDP converts the cover file from one colorspace to another, rather than having the user upload their file in that colorspace to begin with. I plan to complain to their support, but this has been a problem for as long as KDP has offered POD (print-on-demand) services, so nobody anticipates this changing.
To make up for the title printing too dark, our cover designer, Yorgos, increased the contrast. It's not an ideal solution, but it's the only one we've got.
Every summer, I spend a few weeks researching other printers. Usually, we end up stuck with KDP for one or more of the following reasons:
- Printer requires a high MOQ (minimum order quantity): This bars almost all indies from using commercial printers and getting access to those badass upgrades, like cover embossing, foiling, and slipcovers.
- Printer's software lacks features or consistent functionality: As a technology user and a web administrator, I cannot believe these POD companies (KDP included) have such sloppy web applications. I've been holding out for Draft2Digital to polish theirs a bit. (To be entirely fair, they're barely out of beta.)
- Prices are too high: Many POD companies are essentially DIY vanity presses, designed for customers who want to self-publish their novels or memoirs for their family and friends, so their prices are geared to serve the consumer market, rather than the commercial market. Others (like Ingram's LightningSource) charge ridiculous fees.
Indie pubs exist in this really weird gray space. We can't meet large MOQ's and we can't afford inflated POD costs. The two most viable options I've found (as of last summer), were KDP and D2D, but D2D didn't offer print at that time, and their software was still a bit ramshackle when they were in beta. Hopefully, this year, things will be a bit more polished and functional.
For now, we're waiting on our first shipment of Darkness Blooms. We'll update you when we get them!
