As far as publishing goes, blogging is cheap.
I had a guy offer to print a book for me a long time ago. No problem, he said, just about $7,000 for a short-run paperback. I screamed so loud I scared the ferrets.
Blogging is cheap, but it still isn’t free.
Your contributions will help us with hosting costs. We’ll stay live while Blogger’s imploding or eating posts or barfing up Haloscan comments left and right.
Your contributions will help us travel to bring you better stories. We want to go back to New Orleans next spring and continue reporting and working from there, so that the biggest government failure in American history doesn’t just slip into the memory hole. I want to take our kickass politics message (unofficial motto: Get Back Up) to anyplace that’ll have me. Thanks to our network of awesome readers we can find couches to crash on, but unless there’s a First Drafter out there with a plane, getting there is still a challenge.
Most of all, your contributions will help us with tech. Scout just got hooked up with a decent Internet provider for the first time in her life, but when her computer goes down, I can’t just say to her, go get it fixed and the blog will cover it.
I have a five-year-old laptop that’s on its last legs. The space bar hasn’t worked right in a year, it’s making a strange screeching noise at random moments like it’s protesting all the use I give it, and I am on this thing from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. most days. I have quite literally worn the finish off the edges of the casingwith my wrists. That is a LOT of writing, most of it for here.
Your contributions will feed Holden’s ponies. Apples are expensive.
So if you like what you see, help us make it possible. You don’t have to give a lot. If we get 100 people kicking in $10 each, that’ll go a long way towards making this blog a better, shinier, faster version of the crack-den-annex it already is.
If you’ve already kicked in, thank you! If you haven’t, please give if you can.
First-Draft.com
P.O. Box 4042
Oak Park, IL 60301
A.
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“Blogging is cheap, but it still isn’t free.”
Bullshit. Blogger is free. Haloscan is free. Your decision to use your own server shouldn’t penalize your readers.
It’s a friggin’ HOBBY. None of us is getting paid to blog. None of us has the right to ask our readers to subsidize our hobby.
I’m wondering why the free-bloggin’ commenter above has chosen to remain anonymous? Really drives the point home…all credible and such. Hmmph. Just sayin’.
I have every right to ask. You and the rest of the readers have every right to decide not to give. This post simply lays out where the money goes. That’s all.
I don’t want anyone to give if he or she doesn’t want to. We’re not going to start charging for content if X amount of people don’t give. We’re not penalizing anyone.
The fundraising drive will end at the end of the week, so if these posts offend you, feel free to come back a week from today, when they’ll be gone.
A.
And you’re apparently an asshole.
Bloggers have the right to ask for anything they want. It’s called free speech. And readers have the right to respond or not.
Just because the two people that read your blog wouldn’t pay two cents for the pleasure doesn’t mean that those of use who spend our time reading *good* writing feel the same.
Hey!
didn’t I ask you to make sure Holden didn’t spend it all on apples?
didn’t I?
I did give money to feed chinchillas, but I have an idea for laptops: check out the freecycle groups in your area (Chicago’s is huge, but OakPark has one too)
It’s a wonderful way to recycle stuff you don’t want and to pick up stuff you do need. That includes laptops and couches and potential toys for ferrets.
I used to run a discussion board privately in the old days before blogs, and I know how much it takes to feed them. I’m sorry I can’t help more.
I think that was the rarely seen, and with good reason, “Philistine Troll,” last spotted with a dazed look on his face and a rather large and fatal lump on his forehead!
Duckman GR
P.S.-Donation of $50 to be sent from home tonight, just so folks know that it is okay to support those things you enjoy and appreciate.
Someone has to feed the ponies!~
Hey, I’ll gladly pay for the research and effort that goes into the quality work presented here at the f-draft. I must have read hundreds of postings here over the past few years — 10 bucks sound like a pretty good deal to me.
It may well be a hobby for the bloggers involved, but as far as I’m concerned it really boils down to an old-fashion free market thing: they’re offering me something, and they’re simply asking to be paid (but they’re allowing me to set the price, which is pretty cool). Let’s put it this way: if a kick-ass band shows up to play a gig in town, you like their stuff, but then you find out some of the members still have day jobs, would you then insist on getting access to the concert for free because “they’re really just amateurs?”
Anonymous can of course still continue to mooch (ah, the generosity of the mere hobbyist), or (s)he can ante up and join the real world where there is no such thing as a free lunch. Oh, or of course just FOAD… that’s free, too, I hear.
I’ll check on ’em. I’ve bought good stuff used off Ebay before, too. It doesn’t need to launch cruise missiles, but I’d like to be assured it won’t go black and then refuse to restart, as it did a week ago after I finished spellchecking a 350-page manuscript.
You all rock the free world, and thank you.
A.
I’m just glad to know that the $10 I can afford to give will mean something. I don’t doubt that there are at least another 99 people out there who feel pretty much the same way.
Peace, V.
Was happy to throw $20 in the hat – for Athena’s writing and holden’s obsession and Scout’s persistence. And comedic trolls.