A new financial year, and lots of exciting updates for AllTheseRoadworks.com!
Personal update
I feel like I’m finally getting over the bad times. *hastily touches wood*
Australia is *mostly* doing well with COVID-19. Most states are reopening. Unfortunately Victoria (one of our most populated states) has slid into a second wave of infections, resulting in hard lockdowns. That doesn’t directly affect me but it means we all still need to be on our guard here.
I’m writing more – more details on that below – and exercising more and generally feeling healthier.
I don’t think 2020 is quite done with us yet, but for now, at least, things are a little less awful.
What did members get in June?
Early Access
There were 25 new stories posted in Early Access in May.
Story Collections
All members received four new collections in May:
- Yes – Stories of Submission (3rd edition) (view in shop)
- Star Potential – Stories From The Casting Couch (3rd edition)(view in shop)
- Sluts In Training – Stories of Educating Slaves and Other Pets (all new!) (view in shop)
- Diana Tells The Truth (member exclusive!)
Other content
Premium Members received four chapters of Hailey’s Training, an unfinished novel-length story themed around watersports, incest and humiliation.
I published a Reality Check: On Gender (link), affirming that trans men, trans women, intersex and non-binary people are welcome and loved in the ATR readership.
Premium Members continue to have access to an extended e-book library.
Premium Member library schedule
As noted in my earlier post (link), there are changes to membership benefits starting in July. The main change is that Premium Members will have access to an exclusive library of 18 e-books, plus the books offered to Stories Members. Six books in that library will refresh each month. Previously they had access to the entire library of almost 30 books at all times. The change makes Premium Memberships more sustainable for me as the library continues to grow, while still offering great value for money.
The following table shows which books will be available to Premium Members in July, August and September. In addition, they will have access to all books made available to Stories Members in those months (which includes all new releases and substantive updates).
How is the site doing?
June profits were down about 30% from May. That’s not great, but May was my best month ever, so it’s a high peak, and I didn’t run a sale, add a premium collection to the shop, or do much marketing in June, which are all things I know drive high sales. July is so far looking better.
The total profits of the site are still averaging somewhere around the Australian minimum wage. I’m working my day job part-time at the moment, so when those sources of income are put together I’m doing okay.
Key referrers to the site continue to be search engines, BDSMLR and MCStories, with small streams from Reddit and CHYOA.
New Early Access features!
Starting 1 July, there have been some cool new improvements to Early Access (which is a perk of ATR membership).
Firstly, all the new Early Access PDFS are now getting an attractive cover page. This makes the folder more appealing when viewed in “icons” view in Dropbox, gives you more information about what’s new at a glance, and gives you something nicer to keep if you’re the sort of member who assiduously downloads and archives everything I release.
Updated stories and reblogs (see below) are marked with a flag so you can clearly see what’s new. It looks like this:
The second change is that I am now including reblogs in the Early Access folder. As readers will be aware, a month has 30+ days, and I publish 20-ish new stories a month, so that means that one in three daily posts on BDSMLR is a reblog.
Previously I hadn’t included these reblogs in the Early Access program because they weren’t new – but it doesn’t really cost me much effort to PDF them and upload them, and it gives you more value for your membership, so going forward I intend to include all reblogs in the Early Access folder. This means you can expect to see 30-ish stories a month in Early Access rather than 20-ish. It’s the same volume of content as previous months, PLUS the reblogs.
Reblogs are clearly marked with a red tag on the cover so you’ll know what’s new and what’s not.
The move to Dropbox
As noted in my earlier post (link) all membership rewards are now delivered exclusively through Dropbox. Google Drive permissions have been universally revoked. If you’re a member and you haven’t received your Dropbox links, please get in touch with me at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com.
While Dropbox has met my targets over Google Drive in regards to its clearer policies, better security, and capability to expand to larger numbers of users, it unfortunately did not deliver one of my expectations. Unfortunately users of a shared folder on Dropbox can see the account names and emails of other users.
This is exactly the same as the situation under Google Drive, so nothing has changed, but it is disappointing. I urge readers who are conscious of their privacy to use dedicated or throwaway email addresses for accessing Dropbox content. If anyone needs help changing the address they’re accessing their membership content from, please contact me at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com and I’ll help you sort it out.
The only way to fix this on Dropbox is to use links rather than invites – which would mean I couldn’t restrict folders to members only – so there’s no way to correct this while using Dropbox.
I’m reluctant to move content hosting again after having only just done it, but I *will* keep my eyes out for better solutions to hosting this content. The site *can* afford a commercial solution now, if it turns out to be necessary. If you have recommendations, let me know, but DO check their content policies first – they need to be 100% comfortable with hosting the content I produce, which is to say erotic stories with soft-porn images attached that deal with topics including misogyny, incest, and non-consent.
Story Requests
Around the start of the month, I finally delivered the last story request from before I suspended story requests. This felt greatly liberating.
As per what I’d previously discussed, I then went out to members who had previously backed ongoing stories and who would have received further requests had I not suspended them, and offered them the ability to request new chapters in ongoing stories.
I’m working through those requests – and you will have seen a lot of new updates to the ongoings in Early Access – but I’d like to also now extend that offer to other members who would have accrued story requests in April, May or June had I not suspended them.
If you were a Premium Member in April, May or June, and you would like to see a new chapter in one of the stories listed below, please email me at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com and let me know which story. If multiple people request chapters of the same story, that just means I’ll write more new chapters! I like all of these stories but I’d prefer to be writing stuff that people are excited to read.
- Abby’s Identity
- Arth-Keros
- Amy and the Feed
- Ariana’s Song
- Ask Dr Degradation
- Average Availability
- The Bonuses
- Brea Comes Home From College
- Bridgitte’s Choices
- Candy Girls
- Decisive
- Destiny Stories
- Elle’s Stepmother
- Emma’s Policy
- Etrebor Stories (general)
- The Etreborian Exchange
- The Great Council
- Hellfire
- Nicole Says Yes
- Persephone Nine
- Pop World: Sisterhood
- Small Town Values
- White Pineapple
- Wife Review / Essential Nightly News
If you’re not keen on these stories, then hold on. Once I’ve caught all requests for ongoings up to the current month – or close enough – I’ll come back and offer member a chance to spend their suspended requests on new stories or sequels to things that aren’t ongoings yet. No promises on when that will be, although I’m certain it won’t be in July.
What platforms am I on?
In June I started an official presence on CHYOA.com, a Patreon-funded site for branching choose-your-own-adventure style erotic fiction. I’m not posting anything new there, just some of my older multi-part stories, and they’re still linear, I’m afraid. People following me on BDSMLR won’t see anything there they haven’t already read. You can find my official profile here (link).
I am active (posting new content) on the following platforms. Note that BDSMLR gets everything – there is nothing on non-BDSMLR platforms that hasn’t posted to BDSMLR.
I am inactive on the following platforms. (I have an account and content available, but I’m not posting new material, largely because of their linking, monetisation or moderation policies.)
If you see me on any other public site right now, it’s not me, and it’s not an authorised posting of my work. Please don’t repost my work to new sites without asking me – although please do link to it and tell others about it!
I am keen to find new subreddits, Discords or similar spaces that might be interested in my work. To meet my criteria they must be:
* active;
* with a reasonably large membership (ideally over 500 people);
* clear content policies that accept my work and allow me to link to my shop;
* NOT filled with real (non-fantasy) misogyny or racism;
* zero tolerance on posting of child porn, illegal material, and revenge porn.
Let me know if you’ve got somewhere that might like me to post some stories!
Donation
As part of the process of writing gender-degradation and non-consent erotica in a responsible way, I have committed to donating at least 5% of the site profits each month to a women’s charity combating domestic violence, unsafe housing and/or sexual assault. (See this post for more info.)
This month I donated an amount of $120 AUD (about $84 USD) to a registered charity providing free legal advice, advocacy and representation to women in crisis.
COVID-19 lockdown is putting a lot of pressure on domestic violence services right now, due to new stresses in relationships, and increased impacts on victims in abusive relationships having to spend more time with their partners. Now is a great time to make a donation to a domestic violence charity in your area if you have the ability to do so.
Conclusion
Thank you to all members, book purchasers and readers for your continuing enthusiasm and support for my work. You are all amazing.
I continue to be committed to offer you a good product and genuine value for money. There are far too many dodgy porn sites out there. I want everyone who spends money at my site to feel like they got their money’s worth, and I am happy to offer refunds on request rather than have anyone leave feeling cheated.
I wasn’t a graphic designer before starting this, or a website designer, or a retailer, and I’m learning to do a lot of things on the job. I think that I’ve succeeded in making the e-books, the early access stories, and the site generally look more attractive and more professional with every passing month, and I hope you do too. I look forward to how the All These Roadworks brand might continue to grow in the future.
Remember – buying my products is great, but you can also support me by:
* reblogging my content on BDSMLR;
* upvoting and commenting on Reddit;
* talking about and linking to my stories or website in communities of consenting kinky adults;
* spotting typos in published stories or e-books and reporting them to me by email or on BDSMLR.
Plus if you have a professional skillset that could help me or improve the ATR experience, I’d always love to hear from you.
Thanks again! And keep enjoying!
– All These Roadworks
July 2020