I like Susie Bright: she is witty, irreverant, and interesting.
What she is not is kind to readers of her RSS feed - she publishes a partial feed and then you have to go to her site to read the rest of the article. Which means waiting for a heap of ads to load. This is not so much of a problem for desktop readers - to them it is merely annoying. Portable readers (like myself using Opera Mini) get to wait while a whole page (as far as we can scroll down) loads every ad in her left sidebar, then go to the bottom of that page, then click on “Next” before we get to the actual content we’re interested in. It is needlessly unpleasant.
When you’re famous, you can get away with this sort of thing because people will read what you have to write anyhow. Well, most people. I’m voting with my feet and like John Chow, Susie is off my reading list. She won’t miss me, and if I miss her, there is always the occasional session on Google Reader on the laptop to catch up.
Of course I’m going to miss you, how can you say that! (Wrends garments).
This kind of criticism works me into a tizzy. I need traffic to my site, yes. That’s why I only approve partial excerpts. It’s not because I’m “famous,” (as in hidden cult famous?) but rather because I need the eyeballs to pay the rent. It’s like an author needing readers to buy books. There really is no free lunch. I’ve made my living in publishing for 20 years, and I really am no good at anything else. I used to wait tables and clean people’s bathrooms, but now I’m too old and creaky and slow.
I usually have three paying advertisers, so that can’t be the heaps you describe. It must be the javascripts and photos that take so much time.
However, I don’t know the first thing about portable readers. Can you turn images off? I’d like to get a feed for my blog that is just text, nothing else. I’ve heard there are such things. I was thinking of dial-up users in that sense.
I wish you would give the witty, irreverant, interesting, working writers a break! We’re not making these decisions to be unkind or indifferent. We’re trying to stay afloat.
Hi Susie,
thank you for your comment.
Let me start by saying that you are an amazing writer and that I probably can’t really abandon your blog - I will continue to read it via a desktop reader.
Hopefully portable RSS reader software will get better soon - to the stage that users can turn images off.
Different blog themes present differently to portable readers - the reason I love the K2 theme for WordPress is that apart from anything else, it doesn’t make the left sidebar load first in small format (including portable) readers.
Please have ads, please write in order that you can eat, and continue to write stuff that I (and many others) can enjoy. My issue isn’t with the ads - it is with them getting in the way.
One thing that works for me as a reader (and it might be worth looking at as an author from your perspective) is to do what Daring Fireball does - have a full RSS feed and put a weekly sponsor post in.
Hope this helps
Best regards, Andrew
Thanks, I’m going to look at those links right now!
Susie
Hi Facibus,
I came here to say that your move is fantastic - that bloggers who write in unfriendly formats should be abandoned. But then I saw Susie respond, and I think that’s even MORE fantastic.
That’s what blog-land is about - writers and readers interacting, rather than an entirely one-way thing.
- Aurelius
Hi Aurelius,
thank you for your comment.
It was indeed fantastic, and it is all about the interaction. If my blog is inaccessible I want to know - it is about being of service to the readers.
Best regards, Andrew