The Workaround
Greetings and salutations, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome one again to The Storyteller’s Corner. This isn’t going to be an overly lengthy post, but it’s a necessary one to update folks on some upcoming changes, particularly as regards the Substack version of The Corner and my content. A few years back, when confronted with the news that Patreon had taken to assessing who could or could not be on their platform as Creators based on their off-platform activity, I, like many other artistic folks online, decided that perhaps it would behoove me to find an alternative to the subscription-based space. Thanks in no small part to the recommendation of a YouTuber by the name of The Quartering, I was directed to Subscribestar.
So, I made an account on there, and promptly, as so often happens with me, forgot about it. It’s a shame, really, because I could have been using that platform consistently in an effort to garner financial support for my efforts with minimal headache. It’s streamlined, effective, and though a much lesser-known space, offers exactly the kind of opportunity that places like Patreon and even Substack do. The biggest upside- no dealing with Stripe and its bizarre hiccups, which has been the primary problem I’ve had in getting things rolling with establishing a subscription-style set of materials.
Now, don’t worry about the following: “5ive and Dime” will finish out on Substack as a free, once-a-month posting until the story is complete. That isn’t going to change in the slightest. Likewise, “Family Lives”, the audiobook presentation of a 4th Age Tamalarian Tale, will conclude in its entirety as a free tale on the Byronofsidius Bitchute channel. Matter of fact, I have to upload the next chapter tomorrow, so this serves as a good reminder to me, gaffer that I can be.
However, moving forward, I will likely be providing one or two free chapters of future works, but then moving the remainder of the materials to my Byronofsidius Subscribestar page. This gets me around the weirdness of Stripe and their seeming inability to work in conjunction with my credit union, and helps me avoid PayPal for the time being as well, since they also have taken to the unpleasant tactic of determining who is or isn’t worthy of receiving and sending funds via their service for socio-political reasons.
Artistic freedom, like citizen freedom, isn’t free; there is a cost in all things. For too long, I have sold myself short, thinking that perhaps it would be best to just give up on the idea of trying to earn tangible fiscal rewards for my narrative, creative efforts. Thanks to Subscribestar, that hopefully will become a thing of the past. I will always be forever grateful to those of you who have come around and listened to/read my works to this point, and it is my genuine hope that some of you will opt to continue your support via the Subscribestar page.
And for those of you who don’t want to spend that money, or who genuinely cannot afford the $5/month, you won’t be abandoned entirely; there will still be free material coming down the pike. Not as much as there has been up to now, but I will not abandon the people who have lent me their time and attention so far just because they can’t pay. I’m a capitalist, yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m heartless. I think if you spend just a little time with most capitalists, you’ll find that they aren’t heartless either, but rather, they’re just like everyone else here, trying to make sure they can put food on the table, and keep a roof over their heads.
The latest entry is a couple of years old, but if you want to get a head start on making sure you can keep up to date with everything that will be coming down the road over there, here’s the link to the Byronofsidius Subscribestar page:
Byronofsidius on SubscribeStar
Cheers!