Long story short: Five out of Ten is moving to Patreon. Please help us create a sustainable future for our magazine and secure a home for outstanding independent videogame writing.
Making a magazine is difficult. Making a digital, commercial magazine in the age of unlimited free ‘content’ is even more so. When I founded Five out of Ten, friends and colleagues – one of whom is now our design editor – expressed healthy skepticism that it could be a success. Over two years later, I certainly wouldn’t call Five out of Ten a failure. We love working on every issue, and still get a rush of excitement as we release them into the wild.
Great things are made of hard work and passion, and the work we do is what makes our hearts sing. We fight for every word on the page, every pixel of the design. Can this writing change how you see the world? Can it move you? Can we delight and enlighten the reader through design as well as words? What makes Five out of Ten different from any other publication is an obsessive dedication to detail, and the luxury of time to see it through. Unbeholden to deadlines, advertising and traffic metrics, or external investors, we are free to create the best magazine we can. I’ve never been more proud of what we are creating and I feel honoured to work with such a talented team of staff and freelance contributors.
Yet for all our creative success, let’s be frank: we haven’t been very commercially successful because our magazine is behind a paywall, which makes it difficult to gain new readers. Paywalls create a barrier between reader and writing: even when you want to get paid, that’s the last thing you want to do. Readers can download a limited preview of Five out of Ten, but it’s not the same as leafing through a print magazine in a newsagent. You can’t share articles you love through Twitter or Facebook. Some potential readers simply can’t afford to buy a copy, and they should’t feel they have to apologise for that.
Besides the difficulties of creating a beautiful thing few people can see, like many small business we fell victim to recent EU digital VAT law changes. Overnight, we changed from falling under the UK tax threshold to being liable for income tax in twenty eight countries with twenty eight different rates, having to incorporate and submit quarterly tax returns. With this massive bureaucratic burden, continuing the magazine felt more trouble than it was worth. We had been planning subscriptions to Five out of Ten for a long time, but the tax law changes forced our hand. We needed a more radical solution: one that would generate the revenues we need to pay our writers a fair wage, while avoiding all of the tax liabilities and paperwork. Enter Patreon.
Patreon has an unfair reputation as a tool for the modern bohemian beggar, the equivalent of an open guitar case in the street while you strum mercilessly through a shoddy cover of Wonderwall. But let’s be clear: this isn’t about rattling a tin and asking for a handout. Besides, I hate Wonderwall. This is a new business model for Five out of Ten: a way for you to support our publication, but also a way to free us from the capitalist shackles of selling a commercial product every month. Your money is a ‘subscription’ in a loose sense, but we see it more as supporting our slightly modified mission statement: videogames are worth writing about, good writing is worth paying for, and if we can make good paid writing available to everyone without barriers, all the better. It’s the same magazine with the same standards – unique, fair, diverse, meticulously edited – just a more transparent and sustainable business model. Each writer will get roughly 14% of the Patreon earnings at present, and roughly 11% once we reach the $1500 milestone. If you’ve done the calculations and think that sounds a little low, that’s why your support is so important!
Our Patreon page has all the details on our campaign, including a transparent breakdown of how much we will pay our writers. If we reach our milestone goal of $2000 per issue, we’ll release the whole magazine for free through our website. ‘Future’ is our first Patreon backed issue, and we believe it’s the beginning of a bright new future for Five out of Ten. To those of you who have already backed our Patreon, I am more grateful than I can express in this short space. Whether you pledged a dollar or twenty, thank you.
The future is always coming, whether you’re ready for it or not. This is our vision for the future of Five out of Ten: to create a sustainable future for our magazine that everyone can enjoy. Please help us continue to make the outstanding independent videogame writing that we love and treasure.
Five out of Ten #12 is out this week – back our Patreon and you’ll get a copy when it is released.