Hey, readers and listeners!
What a ride it’s been. As you probably saw from the Year 1 Sampler Issue – and newbies, you can download that for free right now to try us out – in our inaugural year, we started, continued, or completed twelve different series, not including our one-shots (both comics and prose), our many Member Exclusives, and the Cherry Bomb imprint. We ran several rounds of open submissions and partnered up with a bunch of other fantastic creators in the Sparkler Distro program. Our goal was never just to publish great stories – it was to inject more fem-positive fiction into the industry, to offer jobs (and advances) to talented creators both seasoned and brand-new, and to help foster a community of inclusive creativity.
But beyond those ideals, we wanted to make a place where everyone could have fun. Taking cues from shojo magazines in Japan with their seasonal delights, talent contests, and waves of new content wrapped up in a neat package, our digital format let us play with different mediums and interactivity while plucking talent from all over the globe. We get to scout creators from our favorite fanfiction communities and Tumblr, for crying out loud. And we’ve been taking the opportunity to embrace our fujoshi ways and listen to your requests and just…offer you a ton of weird, wild, wonderful stuff.
The good news is, all of this was designed around a single goal: if we sold memberships at $5/month, this entire magazine and the rest of the company could comfortably operate on 2,000 subscriptions. We only need 2,000 people on the planet to give us $5 a month to sustain this magazine and keep those jobs open, those books and CDs coming, the community thriving.
The bad news is: on our best month of Year 1, we barely broke 100 members.
If we can’t get at least 1,000 people to dedicate that $5/month to us by the end of Year 2 – July 2015 – there will be no Year 3. We know we can do it, but we need your help!
To sweeten the deal, we’ve restructured a few things:
Monthly Memberships
These are still at the price of $5/month, even though a 1-month alone is now $7. Get your constant, all-you-can read pass to all of our series and Exclusives, plus a download of the current issue. Buy now!
Year+ Memberships
These will now be $50 for 12 months (instead of $60), plus a free ebook from our shop (not including Sparkler Distro titles). If you’re already a Year+ Member from before now, you’re also getting that free ebook as thanks for supporting us in our first year. Buy now!
V.I.P. Memberships
For those of you who want convenient downloads of our current series and all archived Member Exclusives, and all our Cherry Bomb titles at no extra cost! (See all downloads here.) Series files will be updated every month with the new chapters, so you can just delete your old version and replace it with the bigger version to keep your e-reader neat. This membership costs $15 for the first month, and $10 for each additional month – or $125 up-front for the year. And since you’re paying the VIP rate instead of the standard rate, you’ll count as two people in our tally toward 2,000 members. Buy now!
And right now we’re running a Membership Drive (see below) with new bonuses and prizes for every goal we reach. So you’re not just keeping this magazine running – you’re also unlocking new goodies along the way.
*One-month “Trial” memberships (now $7) are a great way to explore our magazine, but are not included into the totals and promotions below – because although we’re grateful for any sale, it’s the committed memberships that will keep this magazine afloat. But every Monthly and Year+ members will count in the tally below, and VIP Members will count twice!
Membership Levels
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Year 2 Membership Drive
Current active members count:
**174**
Feb 24, 2015
Congratulations to caporushes, the winner of our first Prize Pack raffle!
200 Members – When we reach this milestone, all members (except caporushes) will have their names thrown into a raffle, and VIP members will have their names thrown in twice. Five lucky winners will be sent a Sparkler Prize package in the mail: which includes a selection of our paperbacks, zines, merch, sparkly things, and candy. Because you should be eating candy while digging through that. See sample pic below!
(The pocket sketchbook in the bottom right is a new Sparkler product; winner may receive a different design.)
300 Members – The incredible rem is going to design a sexy Tokyo Demons bishonen dakimakura (NSFW link) for ages 16 and up. Yes, we’re doing a sexy body pillow case, because fujoshi. You’ll also get to vote which dude from Tokyo Demons is going on there and what outfit he’ll be falling out of, within good taste. Maybe that police cosplay from the jewelry store heist in Book 2.
500 Members – Off*Beat comes back…with an all-new short story in audio drama format. YOU HEARD ME. Jen Lee Quick will be working with our audio department to write the story and help cast the actors. YOU WANT THIS.
1000 Members – For Year 2, the magazine has 5 chapter slots for each issue, and most of them are already filled up with our current series, shorts, and other upcoming works we have from the last submission rounds. We’re opening submissions again soon, but it will be very limited, since so few jobs are left. But if we hit 1,000 members, we’re opening up a 6th slot in the magazine so we can run more content. That means more stories and more jobs. We really want to do this, because we’ve seen such incredible work submitted and we want to publish more of you.
1,500 Members – We go from 6 slots to 7 slots. Every issue of Sparkler will run 7 chapters. More jobs, more series, more shorts. More excellence.
2,000 Members – We’ve been quietly working on Sparkler video games for over a year. (Mostly visual novels with a romantic bent, like the stuff from Date Nighto.) But until the magazine is self-sustaining, we can’t dedicate the time to making those games happen, even though we already have an extended staff waiting in the wings. If we hit 2,000 Members, the magazine can keep running…and the Sparkler Video Game department opens up to fulfill your fujoshi gamer needs. Don’t forget that lijakaca is on our staff. She’s an expert on these things.
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We’ll be updating this page weekly with the tally of our active members. Please be one of them and help us reach these goals.
We’re extremely proud of our creators and support staff – their hard work has resulted in a great magazine and a ton of great books and audio dramas over the last year. Now we need you to keep this going and to make Sparkler even more awesome.
