Leaving aside those unfathomable creatures whose steady stream of purchases begins on December 26, thoughts are starting to turn at this time of year to subscription gifts and Christmas presents.
ALLi News Editor, Dan Holloway
For many of us, the best gift is a good book—certainly a good read. And those of us who are writers especially welcome the giving of books, hoping that many of those gifted will be our own. As reading comes to signify more things to different groups, the opportunities to have our words appear in the world’s stockings (and that’s before we consider print-on-demand clothing that can help our words appear on stockings) grow accordingly.
Patreon Introduces Gifting Feature
Recently, two of the most popular subscription platforms for writers have embraced the gifting trend. First up is Patreon. All creators with a Patreon account now benefit from a feature that has just come out of beta. You can give the gift of creativity for Christmas (or any other time, for that matter) by purchasing a subscription to your favorite creator(s). Think of it as never-ending book tokens.
Substack’s App Boosts Subscriptions
Newsletter and journalism platform Substack has also joined the giving game. Their approach is slightly different: they’re offering users money to spend on subscriptions if they install the mobile app. Interestingly, this move has resulted in a more than twofold increase in daily app installations.
Another fascinating factoid from TechCrunch is that since Substack introduced the ability for writers to recommend other newsletters to their subscribers, more than 34 million subscriptions have been taken out through those recommendations. That speaks to the power of trusted referrals! Even more noteworthy, the app appears to be driving subscriptions at an impressive rate of three million per month. App users are also more likely to subscribe and share than those who access newsletters via the web.
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