Greetings, early adopters!

Welcome to our new Patreon! Exciting, isn't it?

This is, as I'm sure you're all aware, a significant shift in funding model for SH: away from once-a-year lump-sum donations, towards recurring donations. We've always resisted subscriptions as such, because (rightly or wrongly) they felt like they might obscure the not-for-profit nature of the magazine. Patreon's emphasis on per-thing donations feels like a better fit for us.

It's also an experiment, since we don't know what the magazine's natural level of support for this model will be. One thing to be clear about is that, at the moment, we see it as a substitute for fund-drive funds, not an addition to them: your donations here are being counted towards our 2015 fund drive total, and as you'll see from the Patreon goal I just added, in the long term the notion is that Patreon will allow us to substantially reduce the amount we need to raise in a fund drive, and perhaps even replace it entirely when it comes to the day-to-day running of the magazine. I doubt we'll achieve that in one year (although you never know), but it feels achievable in principle, and if we make it we'll have a more solid base for expanding the magazine in the future.

Another thing I want to be sure about is that everyone is clear what they're signing up for. We've road-tested the page on a few people, but because it's a little different to how the other online magazines are doing it, I just want to check that everyone understands:

* We are asking for weekly (per-issue) support

* We are planning to provide ebooks monthly

We talked a lot about whether small weekly ebooks or bigger monthly ebooks was the way to go, and monthly is where we ended up; if you think that's the wrong call, or the right call but not sufficiently clear from the current page, do let us know.

The other thing to note is that, at least for now, the ebooks will be released towards the end of the month. We are working towards a model of having all of a month's material ready at the start of the month, but at the moment the reality is that a fair bit of it -- particularly in slightly more topical departments like reviews and columns -- is only finalised a couple of weeks ahead of publication. So for now the plan is you'll probably get your ebook on the last Monday of the month (two weeks today!), but that we'll send you notifications every time a new issue is published.

I think that's enough for a first update! Thanks for supporting, and fire away with any questions or suggestions.

-- Niall