First downloadable subscriber eBook—Hunter on the Holidays: Right-Wing Seasonal Madness and Other Treats
Late last week I announced
our nag-a-thon:
Through the end of the year, we're going to be making a strong subscription drive. We need to continue staffing up to speed up development times and do the kind of cool things we want to do, like adding new verticals, bringing aboard more cartoonists, and directly supporting community projects like the Kos Katalog.
Subscriptions are cool -- they allow you to view an ad-free version of the site, which isn't just more attractive, but also downloads much quicker. It's a lifesaver if you're on dial-up.
We're also adding new benefits to subscribers. We'll be rolling out three new downloaded e-books for subscribers over the next three weeks.
And we're creating new subscriber features. The first such feature will be our image uploader and organizer, which will be ready by the end of Q1. It'll allow subscribers the ability to upload photos to Daily Kos and access photos uploaded by others (including the Daily Kos editorial team's). No more having to mess around with Photo Bucket or whatever.
Today, we have posted up the first of those downloadable ebooks, Hunter on the Holidays: Right-Wing Seasonal Madness and Other Treats. Just a tease:
Dispatch From the War on Christmas
Dear Aunt Mabel,
I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing you from the Christmas frontlines, currently in front of Cinnabon at Twin Oaks Mall. May Jesus and Santa forgive me, but I have to say that this is the worst I've ever seen it.
Subscribers can download this ebook (and the ones we'll be posting over the next two weeks) here. There's a link to that download page in your the user profiles of subscribers. The ebook is available in Kindle, PDF and epub (Nook) formats.
Now, today I was supposed to announce the official start of this subscription drive, but this thing has already been rolling along nicely. In short, you guys have already run with it. Diaries like this one, this one and this one have spurred an incredible amount of generosity and outpouring of community love. Meteor Blades asked a few people to write diaries in support of the effort, and the outpouring has been overwhelming, inspiring.
I mean, look at this from Onomastic's diary I linked above:
A year ago, someone bought me a life time subscription. It was an amazing gift. Like so many others, we had been struggling to keep food on the table, and pay the bills. Extra monies for a subscription, while we were helping keep grand babies and adult children going, was just not in the cards. And that was a problem.
Ever heard of an E-Machine? Yep. I was using a 2000 E-Machine with an operating system that was having increasing problems [...]
Yep, I was very familiar with teh "blue screen of death." It was obvious that I could not do the work I wanted to do. And it became terrifyingly clear that once dk4 went up, I would lose this community. Can you imagine? Not being able to do the work, contribute, learn, help, to be with people who had become crucial friends in all aspects of life, on-line and off?
Then two amazing things happened. A computer showed up on my birthday AND the ads disappeared. I was suddenly a lifetime subscriber. Both came from anonymous angels on this site. Without them, I would NOT be here. It's that simple.
Inspired by Onomastic's story, members of the community organized a drive to generate lifetime subscriptions to worthy recipients, and as of this post, 98 people had received lifetime subscriptions. That's INSANE!
This is the best community EVER. Darn it, my darn allergies are acting up again ...
There's lots of reasons we're making this subscription drive—we need to staff up to do all the cool things we want to do—add cartoonists, add developers, add new content verticals like our new Elections and Labor sections and expand our activism efforts. And the money raised will go a long way toward making those things happen.
But really, the only thing that matters is that we're a community—a big extended family—who look out for each other because we appreciate what each of us does to make this country the best place it can be.
You can subscribe for yourself or buy a gift subscription here.