I have a lot more to say about all of this, but I am too lazy to get into all the finer details. Let's leave this rather short and simple. 

If you randomly leave the link to your story on my wall and ask me to read it, I just delete the message. And yes, there is a difference between asking me to read it for my opinion as a reviewer and asking me to read it because of views. I doesn’t happen that frequently to me because I don’t give people the opportunity, but to others who are social and out there, I know many of them often get these links.

It’s annoying. I don’t know about others, but you telling me to do something makes me not want to do it. With a passion. On the other hand, there have been a good bunch of people who have asked for my professional opinion about their story and I have read their fics and followed up.

I get it, you want more readers. Calm down, your time will come. You’re not going to gain a real readership by soliciting those views. You know, the real way to get people interested in your story is by actually letting them read your story. Let it speak for itself. If you deny readers the ability to actually read your words, they will never know if they want to read your fic or not and probably won’t subscribe. Personally, I am the type of reader who won’t subscribe until I have read all the chapters available. If I can’t read until the end of even chapter 1, I am definitely not subscribing.

This is a mindset that I have developed in particular over the past year (though I always acted in this way to an extent). For Christmas in 2014 my parents gifted me with a Kindle from Amazon. That basically means that I have nearly unlimited access to books all around the world. Especially because I have Kindle Unlimited. The books that aren’t on Kindle Unlimited, and therefore not free, I have to pay for using my own credit card. I’m not made of money; I can’t afford to waste money on books that aren’t up to par with my expectations.

In the beginning, I made a few impulse buys that I ended up regretting. Now I have cemented in the practice of making sure any book I buy is worth my time and money. To ensure this, I usually download the Kindle preview that is available for all books. This gives me the chance to read the first 10% of any book to see if I am enticed enough to buy it. If by the end of that 10% I want to continue reading and know what happens, then generally I will buy the book.

What happens if I can’t find a preview of the book? All is not lost. Amazon actually doesn’t host all the books in the world. There are other locations that I have had to purchase the usually self-published works. In those cases, I have had to heavily consider the trustworthy reviews for the book. Nonetheless, I don’t simply buy the book on faith alone.

Now can you understand why I hate subscriber-only fics? If not for the fact that you have to buy before previewing, then because I see it as a dumb advertising scheme.

I see subscriber-only fics to be for two reasons. The first is to ensure subscribers. Once someone has subscribed to a story so they can at least read the full first chapter, they are unlikely to unsubscribe after they realize the story is not for them. I would unsubscribe, but I also never would subscribe in the first place. But many people still do unsubscribe. If you see a story updating and you aren’t reading it, you will eventually get annoyed by the update notifications and unsubscribe from it. It happens to me when I see channels put up videos I know longer care about. I’m sure it happens to readers of WPHYS. Why else would my sub count always go down first before rising after every update?

The second reason is to counter plagiarism. If your story is plagiarized and only certain people have access to your story, then you know that only those people could have plagiarized your story. Or, if you are trying to prevent a certain person from reading your fic, you can do so by blocking access to your story. There are plenty of reasons to use any of the various privacy settings, but for a general story, you shouldn't mess with the viewing options.

If you need to do anything, I can understand Member-only. In my case, I put my stories on that setting because my family (primarily mother and sister) had a habit of looking up my fics. Not to read in full but to admire. Any supportive family would want to admire their child’s work, but to me, it was just embarrassing. Even back then I knew my writing was flawed  and I didn’t want to read something so personal. I also wouldn’t want someone who isn’t actually a kpop fan stumbling across my stories and making bad assumptions about me or kpop. I only want my stories to be read by people who would actually appreciate it.

You can’t have the same mentality for member-only and subscriber-only access. Anyone who is a member of AFF is likely to appreciate your fic to some extent. A subscriber is someone who already likes your story and wants to keep up with it, but if they don’t know if they like your story, the only way to find out is by subscribing. It is counterintuitive. If we really wanted a fully developed system for allowing only interested readers, AFF would have to implement a system similar to livejournal's community member access and friend only access. That's a ridiculous change to make and wouldn't happen anytime soon. 

People like me who automatically delete advertisements off my wall will also automatically close out of a subscriber-only fic. Just like a book doesn’t deserve my money if I won’t read it, a fic doesn’t deserve my sub if I won’t continue reading it. This is all I have to say at the moment. I might have a chapter about previews and forewords again in the future. I hate advertisements on my wall (or in PMs) and I never look at subscriber only stories. 

Now that you have gotten to this point. Go ahead an subscribe to this. It's only fitting.