I have a few comments and a proposed solution

As word spreads that an author can set up here, fund a campaign, and then leave, (all for FREE) this option will become attractive to more and more people. Imo, Inkshares should consider nipping this trend in the bud.

There are a few reasons why this behavior is detrimental to the company and to the growing community of authors and readers who are highly committed to seeing this platform succeed.

Inkshares has burned through a lot of VC capital to build this company and acquire customers. So accounts that employ their platform to build their customer base and then leave - allows them to do so at no cost, while Inkshares gets no benefit even after having incurred the costs,

The behavior in question hurts the company, authors and readers that remain and it hurts them in different ways.

One way is that many of them spend a lot of energy promoting these writers and helping them succeed here. Most do so to help the writer, but also to strengthen the overall platform. So when these accounts leave, it weakens the company and the platform and many authors and readers who supported those projects would have rather spent that valuable time and energy on projects that stayed for the duration and saw the project through to the production and release of the title on Inkshares.

Credits are a scarce and valuable commodity here. I am told that some pre-ordered these titles with Inkshares credits and that by the time the projects were withdrawn, the refunded credits had expired. Not sure if Inkshares readjusts the expiration date or not, or even if they should.

Either way, many supporters here who used their credits on successfully funded projects that left Inkshares would rather have used them on other deserving projects that stayed.

I’ve taken some flack (and perhaps deservedly so) for making these comments on individual project pages. That was an emotional reaction and it does not do much good to criticize any individual behavior because the reasons for any individual leaving can be complicated.

However, i believe it is still very important to address the larger issue and deal with the threat it presents. Here is my proposal for minimizing the potential damage.

One Big reason that makes the option to leave (after funding a successful campaign) attractive, is that Inkshares gives us the private email address of every supporter who pre-orders our book! I thought from the beginning that this was a strategic mistake on their part.

When author X successfully funds a project at the 250 or 750 pre-order level, the money from those sales goes into the production, editing and marketing costs of the book. The author gets no royalties on those sales (nor should they).

Some authors might look at that and say to themselves "hmmm, I have the private email addresses of ALL of those supporters - if I leave now and self-pub the book, I will get ALL of the profits from those sales!"

At the 750 level, that could be three to four thousand or more dollars. That is a significant motivation. To me, it is a morally and ethically challenged one, but many won’t see it that way.

So one solution to consider is for Inkshares to STOP giving us the private email account address from every pre-order! 

Inkshares could adjust their software so that we only communicate with our readers through their platform and once we cancel a project, we should lose that connection to the people who pre-ordered our book.

This would remove one of the primary motivations for someone to leave after they have taken Full Advantage of this platform to build a large base.

Of course the supporters we personally know can and will be able stay in communication after we leave and that is perfectly  fine.

But for accounts that have gathered hundreds of followers that were Only made possible because Inkshares  made them available to us - well those customer lists are valuable and Inkshares should retain exclusive access to those lists, as a matter of self-preservation.

Just my opinion; feel free to disagree. That is OK too.