A few days after the start of 2024, after working on it in stolen moments either in my head or on machines for about a hundred days, I released the latest version of my website.
It’s a big deal for me; the end result of a lot of thought and consideration around how I want to structure my creative and professional life, and how to achieve that.
I’ll talk more about the emotional / philosophical side of all of this in episode 096 of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick.  That episode will be available in the second half of January, 2024, anywhere you get your podcasts, so you might as well subscribe now!
Here, let’s go over the design / user experience / technical features and functionality. Some of the “why” will accompany that.
Stripping Down to Offer More
The header, the home page, my services page, the way I directly sell my e-books, audiobooks, and soon, other digital products… I’ve tried to simplify everywhere.
The Header
Rather than a horizonal list of pages across the header, the menu is the familiar “hamburger” three-line icon regardless of the device on which it’s viewed. Click it, and you’ll see the whole menu as an overlay. Don’t click it, and it’s not a distraction.
The Home Page
The home page presents a quick bit about me, my face because my site is my proxy on the web and you should see, right away, who it is you’re meeting, and three choices for the user:
That’s it.
I want you to do one of those three things.
Sure, you can go deeper in the site and check out the hundred and fifty-plus Scribtotum articles and the ninety-five (and counting) Sonitotum podcast episodes, but those all, one way or another, support and enhance the creative work I do for myself and for others.
Services
In my quarter century as an independent creator and freelance creative services provider for authors and other creators, I’ve done everything to bring creative endeavors to fruition, to market, and to an audience.
Coaching and developmental editing for authors. Building websites, setting up social media and mailing lists, and managing it all. Designing and creating e-books, paperbacks, hardcovers, and children’s books. Recording and producing audiobooks. Promoting and marketing. Coaching and consulting with podcasters, including engineering and producing their shows and managing their content and distribution.
My skills pool is deep and wide. However, over the last couple of years, most of my client work has involved designing books (digital or print), designing new or customizing existing websites, and producing and managing podcasts. My current roster of retainer clients is almost entirely not just podcasters and authors, they’re authors / writers who podcast.
So rather than try and mention every single thing I could possibly do for my creative clients, my new services page emphasizes those two often-overlapping client services, with everything else implied.
Similarly, rather than the previous conditionally mutable client inquiry form that would change based on the responses entered by a potential client, my new client services contact form is as straightforward as can be. “Who are you, what do you need, and how can I reach you?”
My Written Works
I started self-publishing a few years before the Amazon Kindle was a thing. There were other e-readers and their associated marketplaces, but they were very small, and not open to independent creators.
So I’ve also sold my e-books and audiobooks directly for nearly twenty years, albeit with the assistance of a third party (most often and until recently, Gumroad).
Now, when you purchase an e-book or audiobook (or, for the best deal anywhere: as a bundle of both when available) directly from me, it’s truly coming directly from me: downloaded from my site, with no third party getting your e-mail address or a share of the revenue.
Only my secure, encrypted payment processor, Stripe, takes a cut (2.9% of each successful charge plus $0.30) so you don’t have to trust me with your payment information (not that I’d want that particular responsibility…)
This means when you buy something directly from me, I’ll receive as much as 95% of what you pay… and I’ll receive that money within seven days. Compare that to earning 30% ~ 70% when you buy from Amazon (and waiting two months).
Also, I’ve added samples to all of my written works, visible as a pop-up overlay with just a click on each book’s dedicated page.
So! Please buy my books and audiobooks, and please do it directly from me!
If you’d really rather still use one of the monolithic online marketplaces, you’ll find a way to still do that on every book’s dedicated page. In the interest of simplicity, I no longer have links to every single marketplace, though — just one link that takes you to a page of links, hosted by a third-party service offered by one of my distributors.
I want folks to buy my stuff, from me, and I want folks to read my stuff, because I believe a creative endeavor isn’t really “art” until it’s experienced by someone other than the person who made it. Me and my readers, we’re peers. We’re a community.
Which brings me to the next thing.
The Multiversalists Member Community
I’ve been a proponent for, and beneficiary of, neo-patronage almost since I began publishing on the Internet in the late 1990s. Earlier, if you count accepting postage stamps as a “subscription fee” for a subscription-based print lit-zine I produced in the mid-1990s..!
Patreon is probably the best-known neo-patronage platform for creators. Very nearly from their start, I have, off and on, maintained a Patreon page. Most recently, across the last year and a half or so.
During that time, I found myself having to jump through hoops to offer exactly what I wanted to offer my patrons, in the way I wanted… and then repeatedly discovering this or that cobbled-together solution, always depending on another third-party tool or service, frequently didn’t even work.
Also, perhaps under pressure from the thirty-eight investors and their four hundred and thirteen million dollars, Patreon seems more and more caught up in the features-and-services arms race with the likes of Substack, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and others. To me, at least, they no longer seem in service to all independent creators… rather, their focus seems to be on the variety of creator that’s going to earn their investors the best and fastest return.
Finally, while I recognize it’s often smart to utilize effective tools and services rather than try and roll your own, I’ve always been a little bit nervous about hosting creative content somewhere other than under my own roof.
And there’s the fact that Patreon, between their own cut and payment processing, takes at least 10% plus $0.55 of every payout.
Concurrent with the re-launch of mattselznick.com at the beginning of 2024, I’ve reinvented my patron member community to my own site.
My Creative Hub
The Multiversalists community is now my primary concern when it comes to creating and sharing my creative endeavors.
Yes, I’ll still release fiction and non-fiction on Amazon and elsewhere, and of course, as mentioned above, it’ll all be available to purchase à la carte directly from me.
But before I commercially release something? My Bronze and above Multiversalists will be able to read an annotated version online, and my Silver and above Multiversalists will receive their own digital copies. If there’s a print edition, my Gold Multiversalists get that, too.
Even before something is commercially released, all paying Multiversalists will have access to the works in progress, from notes and brainstorming through the first rough draft in incremental installments as they’re created.
Why?
Because I’m tired of chasing sales and sales rankings on Amazon and everywhere else. I’m tired of, despite knowing better, judging my creative success according to others’ successes.
As I often say: I make things for people who like the kinds of things I make.
So.
Let’s provide those things to those people, and do it in a way that helps sustain me while I do it, and, ideally, sustains me to the degree that I can focus more time and energy on doing more of the same until the day I die.
Also and again: this is meant to be a community. I want to give at least as much to the Multiversalists, in the form of camaraderie, mentorship, and substantive discounts on my own services and courses, as I receive from them. Communities are made up of relationships, and I’m committed to building those relationships to the extent each Multiversalists prefers.
My ultimate goal: a comfortable, sustainable standard of living with no more clients. No more fans. Just me and my Multiversalists community, making things together.
What Tool Powers my Direct Sales and Membership Platform?
One software tool has replaced Patreon for memberships and Gumroad for direct sales, and will soon facilitate the addition of online courses to this site, too.
That tool is MemberPress.
MemberPress is an add-on (“plugin”) available for self-hosted websites running the free, open-source WordPress content management system. Through integration with a payment processing service like Stripe or PayPal, MemberPress makes it possible to do everything I want, or plan to want, directly on my own website.
It’s not free. It is, however, thousands of dollars less expensive than hiring a developer to create something from whole cloth or spending the many years I’d have to invest to be able to create something similar myself.
It’s an investment, and by making that investment, I’m incentivized to maintain my commitment to growing and supporting a member community… which means I’m further incentivized to consistently create new things.
Worth every penny.
Next
As I write this, there’s a “beta” notice at the top of every page of the new site because I have some content to add before it’s truly complete. All the technical functionality is in place and, near as I can see, operational.
Through the rest of January, I’ll finish adding the online versions of everything I’ve commercially released so far, and begin sprinkling annotations throughout the text of each one. I also hope to add an installment to the online fiction serial available to all Multiversalists, even those at the free tier, Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights: “How It All Got Started.” Also, as mentioned above, I’ll record and release an episode of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick that goes deeper on the more personal reasons behind the site redesign and my professional and creative course correction.
Also, I’ll be promoting the new Multiversalists community in a variety of media and working on building this community. If you’d like to have me talk about taking neo-patronage into your own hands, I’m available for your podcast or other media outlet — let’s talk!
After all of that? It’s back to the reason for it all: writing new stuff, especially my next novel, Shadow of the Outsider. I miss it.
Meanwhile: let me know what you think of all of this! I look forward to your comments.