Twisty thinking

Have you seen the Twist Collective? It’s a fabulous new online magazine – and by new, I mean really new; groundbreaking. As the name suggests, it’s published by a group of designers, editors etc, and functions largely as a showcase and shopfront for their talents: most of the patterns are for individual sale, not for free. You can browse the magazine, read the excellent articles, take inspiration from the beautifully photographed designs, and not pay a cent; but if you want to knit a project, you have to shell out around $6 to $7 apiece.
I think this is not only fair, but the future (or perhaps, one future model) of online publishing. In fact, more than a year ago, I was daydreaming about my fantasy future knitting magazine (oh, you know you do the same!), and this was a major feature of it: patterns for sale. (My model was quite different in many ways, including pricing structure, but this idea was part of it.) It just made sense to me that for a professional publication, all-free patterns would not enable the magazine to deliver suitable quality to the readers, nor to pay the designers appropriately. So, create a catalogue (as some are calling it) that offers plenty of fantastic free content, and provides an opportunity for readers to pay only for what they really want to knit – not for a whole issue of perhaps not-my-style filler. Eminently reasonable, right? After all, nobody’s making anybody pay anything. There are plenty of sources of great free patterns for those who want them. And many of us get just as much joy from simply looking at interesting design concepts and details, mentally bookmarking them for future use in our own projects. So frankly, it’s a win all round; especially if the magazine is really well produced – as the Twist Collective most certainly is.
But of course it’s a new model, and it requires some adjustment, and some people are quite het up about that. I understand they might be disappointed that it’s not free, when we’re so used to online magazines providing free content. (Lucky, lucky, spoilt us.) But really I am amazed at the strength of feeling that’s coming out. Some quotes from Ravelry (and please understand, I don’t mean to attack anyone behind these words; I just find the sentiments expressed fascinating because they are so alien to me):
“I know that 100 dollars isn’t enough to actually compensate a designer for all the work put into a pattern, but I sort of took that as a given… doing what you love to do rarely makes people rich.”
Isn’t that weird? The idea that it’s somehow *wrong* to make a living from doing what you love, and therefore it’s okay to effectively exploit their passion by paying below-cost rates?
“They may call it a business model, but I call it deception… It is greed and I don’t like it.”
This person was arguing that it was unfair to make readers pay for what “the magazine” should be paying for; she also claimed that Twist was offering “NOTHING” to the readers! Again, I’m thoroughly flummoxed by this point of view. Apart from the lack of understanding of economics (how, exactly, should a magazine pay its designers if not with money gained from readers, eg via the cover price?), and the assumption that everything except the actual pattern instructions constituted no reader value whatsoever… I am amazed at the accusation of deception and greed. How is it deceptive to put a product out there and ask for payment? How is it greed to want the end user to pay for (some of!) what they get?
The greed point is the bit that really rankles. Because surely, the most greedy thing is to expect to get patterns for free – when patterns take many, many, many hours of hard work to write. When did knitters get so entitled? When did we start to feel we were owed the fruits of others’ labours for nothing?