To Pledge or Not to Pledge?

Pledge was announced yesterday. Essentially, the premise is similar to Patreon. If you want all the details, the best source of info is here with the official press release.

I'll admit I knew of Pledge ahead of time because I was one of several contacted for the interview survey. My thoughts on the idea are and remain mixed. I love the premise, disagree with the price point (less so than the one I was first shown) and hope that it transforms into a transaction where I can hold back content, interact with my audience to build emotions and give them perks for their committed dollars.

Several of the admins of the major Facebook groups chat daily for both pleasure and business. We knew there would be mixed feelings on the matter, but I for one didn't expect the reactions to be quite so extreme or divided. However, I can completely understand the point one creator made to me:

"My dad would have considered asking for pledges or tips begging."

and the opposite,

"We deserve to be paid for our hard work."

The unanimous decision amongst the admins I chat with as of this morning with is:

Do not badger your fellow creators to pledge to you in your read requesting posts. Direct requests for pledges in FB posts will be removed from our groups. First offense response will be a polite, private note. Repeat offenders will be suspended. We are moving as one so that there is no competition as to what groups allow pledge requesting and which do not.

But that presents the question:

How do we ask for pledges? And from whom?

For many of us, our main audience IS the Facebook groups.

The Vocal Social Society is running information polls and looking to gather more opinions. As of now, some current feedback.

More polls and data will continue to be gathered in the coming weeks. The magazine will summarize the issue more thoroughly come the New Year when it resumes it's regular programming.

At this time, please do not directly request pledges from fellow creators in the following groups:

- The Vocal Creators Support Group

- Vocal Writers Sharing Community

- Vocal Social Society

- Great Incantations

-Vocal Café

This list is not exhaustive. There are many, many more groups and rules will need to be adhered to as those admins see fit. The best policy is to ask an admin ahead of time. This decision follows suit with not badgering for tips. As one admin suggested,

"I feel like having a post where you say, “Tips are appreciated but never demanded” is okay. Right? I personally don’t post that. With the new pledge thing, that door should only be unlocked by a willing party."

An announcement that you have them enabled may be alright provided the wording is very polite and it's not all the time. But even then, this did not receive unanimous support amongst admins. Personally, I'll be making an announcement on my author page and Instagram for my external readers only.

Etiquette matters. Clearly, the method of recruiting supporters needs ironing out and it falls back on the primary problem:

Where are our READERS? Those that don't also write?

Some additional feedback creators are looking for from Vocal:

• Can Vocal themselves direct us as to how we can best go about informing our audience?
• When can we expect tiers and gates? Should we let our readers know now they are coming?

Something I was pleased to see is thank you messages to those who tip and subscribe. Lack of thank-you notes is something that's bothered me for quite some time. I'd still like to be able to turn off "tip" on stories of a sensitive nature.

End of the day, Vocal will continue to evolve and they are listening to creators. One of my favourite aspects about publishing here is how much I feel I'm listened to and considered. I may not always agree with the decisions, but I do feel I have channels to be heard and I do trust in continued growth and development. When new changes are implemented, it then becomes our responsibility to politely inform Vocal how we feel about new features, what we need next and how we plan to use them.

If you have input you'd like showcased in the coming weeks, please reach out to either Vocal Social Society through our polls or to the magazine's inbox directly.

And reminder: It's not too late to be included in the 2021 Vocal Yearbook! Post information can be found in the Vocal Social Society.

Message your input here:

First published by Call Me Les for the Vocal Creators Chronicle December 17, 2021. Reads will be put towards Tom Bradbury's anthology.