Randy Cassingham's Blog

Wow! I wonder what my mail would have looked like if I had explicitly asked for comments on the question of whether to put advertising in This is True!

As it was, nearly 1,100 of your have sent in your thoughts (so far!), and the tally is more than 200 to one in favor of advertising to help support keeping True online.

Obviously, I was able to answer very little of the mail this week, so I'll take this opportunity to thank you for all your input. Some of the comments: Beth notes "No one should have to work if they can avoid it imaginatively. I'll take two books." (heh!) Tim says "I for one would certainly not mind reading a few small advertisements in exchange for such good clean humour." Kevin says "readers should be willing to withstand a little advertising in order to get a top-quality FREE product. In fact, anyone who has a problem with it is a first-class whiner." Vincent says "Those who would find the ads intolerable should be invited to drop their subscription if they cannot bear to see commerce raise its filthy head."

Indeed, another Kevin, one of the five nays, says "If there are ads in This-is-True I will immediately sign off. The Internet is a place for the free exchange of ideas. ...Don't you have any assistants?" (When I asked him how to pay for assistants when I'm not making any money, he retorted that he wasn't suggesting that I actually PAY them anything. Exploitation is not my style, Kevin.)

Carol says she is blind, "and therefore do not have access to your book, even if I bought it. ...I wouldn't mind [ads] if they didn't take up more space than the column itself." She brings up a good point: I had some policies in mind about how ads would look, but I didn't have space last week to discuss them. Here's what I plan: first, yes, I'm going to pursue ads for insertion in the text. They will be marked top and bottom (with a border) so you can easily tell what's an ad and what's a story. I plan to have a maximum of two inserts per issue -- I suspect many weeks will have only one, or none.

As I expected, book sales picked up a bit this week -- to a level we'd need every week to sustain True. I doubt they'll stay that high; I guess, then, I have to agree with several who said that it just won't be enough, which makes the ads a certainty. A lot of people said they'd truly welcome ads: they want to see if they can compete with the stories for their attention; if so, they say they'll enjoy them. So now it's up to the "sponsors". I know a lot of entrepreneurs and other professionals read True: if you want info on ads, see this page. Thanks again to everyone for your feedback; it is very gratifying to know how much support there is out there for True on the net. Enjoy!