I’m proud of the books that we have published so far. There are also some exciting ones that we will be publishing soon. I even have a few proposals sitting in my inbox. For the past few months, I’ve been thinking about an idea, and I want to know what you think of it.
One of the goals that I had when I started the company was to provide better possibilities for Canadians to learn more about our proud and noble military history. The company is a small boutique publisher, which means we are limited as far as how many books a year we’re able to publish. It also depends on what proposals come in the front door, as it were. I’ve been trying to think of a way to create a forum that will allow for a more diverse discussion of Canada’s military history.
What I am considering is to set up something, either an area on the website or an email newsletter that would consist of short articles on different Canadian military history topics. This would be in a format that could be easily digested while drinking your morning coffee or getting through intermission at your child’s hockey game, a happy medium between something academic that’s 20% endnotes and pop culture website listicles. Articles like “Canada’s top 10 generals, they landed at Dieppe, and what happened will shock you” are nothing but clickbaitnonsense, generally ill-researched and factually inaccurate. For a small monthly fee, readers would have access to professionally researched, written, and edited articles that they can trust to give factual information without spectacle or misleading headlines.
Such a project would also generate steadier revenue for the company (Amazon’s revenue streams are… inconsistent at best), allowing for further expansion. I also hope that one day we will be able to start to provide advances to our book authors. They deserve money in their hands after all. As for the authors for the articles, payment will be upfront based upon the number of subscribers that we have, so the more subscribers the higher the payments.
This is what I need you to do. Here’s a survey asking some questions about the subscription service. Please fill it out. No, it’s not going to harvest your Facebook friends or collect your email address to send you spam. Though, of course, if you would like to subscribe to our email list, you can do so.
If I get enough positive feedback, then we will move on to the next stage, which will be a subscription drive, which will allow you to pre-order subscriptions. We will require a certain number of signups to go forward with the project, something that we will be transparent about.
Once again, please fill in the survey and please share with any family, friends, or colleagues that you believe might be interested. Thank you.