This would give writers a much more powerful way to manage what is essentially bond debt against writing future. At 500 subscribers/$6,875 it’s already at my limit for sudden cash flow dip. At say 5000 subscribers you’d have to suddenly come up with $68,750. That’s…not trivial.
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I’m currently at ~700 subscribers for ribbonfarm studio btw so this is already a non-trivial concern. I’m effectively carrying a rolling $10k debt. Possibly higher. Which is more than I want to.
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Subscription newsletters are a bond market, just as income-share agreements are a stock market. They can be designed better to manage leverage risks.
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Incidentally I mainly manage commitment risk by messing with time. I frequently use the pause button to take breaks, effectively interpolating zero-interest weeks and unilaterally tweaking the term of the loan. I could just pause-abuse by taking off for a year without refunding.
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The principled way to do this would be to pay interest on breaks. Like if I take 6 months off, everybody gets a free month added to their subscription as compensation for renting me their capital.
There’s no mechanism for this though.
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And don’t expect reader goodwill to forgive the debt in an emergency. If you’re suddenly disabled, even if half the readers decide to forgive the debt or think of it as a recovery GoFundMe donation, it’s a big hit to refund the rest.
And there’s no mechanism for this either btw.
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I’m personally highly temperamentally averse to carrying *any* unsecured debt. I strongly prefer being paid *after* I’ve done work. I avoid taking advances on consulting gigs unless I’m forced to due to client budgets. I definitely don’t want unmanaged newsletter debt bondage.
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Anyhow, tldr the creator economy stack is acquiring all the complexity of Wall Street. Expect to see analogs of QE, yield curve inversion, etc etc. As the amounts in play go up, so will the seriousness and rationality. Right now, we’re still in the goodwill/gift economy.
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And yes, crypto (but not Bitcoin) can solve all this very elegantly if we let it. It’s still solvable but harder with tradfi payment models.
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Replying to
Do you think it’d ever be worth it to just offer « lifetime » credits to your work? Buy one token, access all your stuff forever. Can sell/buy on a secondary market if you want.
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