When we first set up Ignite, one of our major goals was to put money in the pockets of our writers. All too often, the people who should be at the heart of things end up – after agents and publishers have taken their cut – with a derisory percentage of the money made. We wanted to make sure we rewarded their creativity and the hard graft they put into writing and editing and producing their work. Without that there are no stories, nothing for you to read, and nothing for us to sell.
We’re proud to say we’ve done exactly that. Ignite runs on a not-for-profit basis. Every penny is re-invested in fresh work, or paid out to writers. But choosing to follow this model of business means – obviously – that we exist on something of a shoestring, which means we lean more toward low-cost or free ways of telling the world what we’re up to, and rely rather less on full-page ads in magazines.
For a long time, facebook was the ideal medium for us to use. It put us in contact with people who liked what we were doing, let us keep them informed about what we were up to, and felt – in some loose, indefinable way – like some kind of cyber-community. Not any more. Over the last couple of years, facebook has become more and more interested in maximising revenue, and less and less interested in letting people keep in touch. Posts disappear from timelines in the blink of an eye, and are seen by a mere fraction of the people we want to get them to. We could pay, of course, although there’s increasing evidence that this doesn’t work, and the irony of a multi-billion dollar corporation trying to squeeze cash out of a small not-for-profit business hasn’t escaped us either.
So we’re saying goodbye to facebook. The page will still be there, and we’ll doubtless drop by from time to time, but our main focus will now be elsewhere. We’d very much like to keep in contact with as many people as possible, so we’d love you to sign up to our monthly newsletter – the next one will come out later this week. You can do thathere. And if you’re on Twitter, you’ll find ushere. Pop by and say hello. And if you like what we’re doing, and have enjoyed any of the books we’ve published, do please tell your friends.
You can even do it on facebook if you like. *winks knowingly and walks away*