Welcoem to posts!!
in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
If you prefer to listen to the updates all together, Iāve made a video here: https://youtu.be/U0fhyRIsaV0
The last week has been an emotional journey. It started with the sudden news of demonetisation that annoyed me at first as I had to make another appeal video. Then it left me despairing when that appeal was rejected. At that point, I thought the whole Stories From the Sky project was dead. All that workā¦
Not long after I shared the situation here, I was overwhelmed by the messages of support for me and outrage at the system. I was enheartened by those who offered their support and reminded me how the stories I narrate have become a positive part of your lives.
That led to a few days of intense research and planning to come up with a way of continuing. I knew the road would be tough, but I didnāt want to give up. In part for myself as I enjoy this, and it helps me live a little better, in part to resist stubbornly and refuse to let YouTube win, but in most part because I didnāt want to let you all down.
I was all set to go ahead with the move to Substack, knowing it would be tough, when I learned one of the viewers/listeners of the channel had gone above and beyond to help get the channel monetised again. That was a strange feeling. Obviously, it was amazing news, and I was delighted to have the income back and the channel appreciated, and Iām eternally grateful to that person. At the same time, Iād already moved past it, Iād envisioned something new.
I canāt go back to how it was before. Not only because thereās the fear of the whole charade happening again, but because Iāve learned more about myself as a creator and about you as a community. And I want to do more.
Thatās why Iām committing to four videos a week (3 of which are freely available) instead of the previous 2. Iām committed to making Substack an amazing place for you to enjoy my stories, while maintaining a presence on YouTube.
In this strange turn of events, the channel and the whole of Stories From the Sky has actually expanded and improved. Sometimes itās that jolt of reality and danger that prompts us to move forward.
I invite you to join me as we head into the future. I encourage you to join the Substack email list and engage with the platform. storiesfromtheskysff.substack.com/
If you canāt afford to become a paid subscriber, thatās completely fine. Although $5 a month doesnāt seem like a huge amount, itās one of those cumulative subscriptions that we all have with so many services these days. I want everyone to be able to enjoy the stories, paid or not. You will not miss out on anything as a result of this change.
However, if you can afford to contribute, and value the stories I narrate, I would deeply appreciate it. In the future I would very much like to transition away from dependence on YouTube, instead being rewarded for my work by fantastic viewers/listeners.
Iāve tried to make the paid content good value for money, but the paid subscription is more than just buying content. Itās supporting a creator to continue improving, expanding and sharing a craft. You are the ones who will keep Stories From the Sky going. I cannot be more grateful for that.
I will finish by attempting to express my sincerest gratitude for everyone who has reached out with words of support, advice and understanding. Those who have commented their love of the stories and desire for me to keep going. Those who have simply commented on stories, liked videos, or just enjoyed watching them.
You are the heroes of this modern-day sci-fi adventure. You are the ones who have resisted the dystopian corporate overlords, and you are the ones Iām delighted to share the future with.
Thank you all so very much.
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If you prefer to listen to the updates all together, Iāve made a video here: https://youtu.be/U0fhyRIsaV0
Thank you all for understanding why I am moving the bulk of my content from YouTube to Substack.
Here I will lay out my plans for the move. If youāre a Patreon backer, Iāll contact you directly there to let you know how to proceed and to answer any questions.
First of all, I want to make clear, the YouTube channel will not be removed, nor will any of the videos posted here. Everything that is freely available now will continue to be freely available, assuming YouTube doesnāt want to take all that away too.
In fact, I will continue to post a video every Friday on YouTube. Regardless of its monetisation practices, itās still a good place to find new viewers and spread, and I hope those videos will encourage some people to discover more on Substack. These Friday stories will stay free forever. Every fourth week will be a compilation.
I have always posted on Mondays and Fridays, and I will continue to do so on Substack. The Friday posts will be the same as the YouTube videos. However, the Monday stories will only appear on Substack, and will be available for free for a month. After that month, they will become part of the archive, which is only accessible by paid members. That means if you keep up to date, you can continue to enjoy the two stories every week without spending a cent.
Additionally, I will post a third free story every week exclusively on Substack. This will be a different genre, mostly fantasy, but may stray into action-adventure or even horror. Itās my chance to branch out without the pressure of an algorithm. These stories will also go into the paid archive after a month.
Finally, there will be a fourth story every week, exclusively for paid subscribers. In the last year or so, Patreon backers have enjoyed a longer story every month, now that is going to be every week for Substack paid subscribers.
I wonāt be doing full novels. They take so long to produce and are rarely worth the time. However, if thereās enough interest, I may publish full novel audiobooks in serialised form over the space of a couple of months on Substack only.
In total, for free Substack subscribers, there will be three videos a week, and for paid subscribers an exclusive longer story and permanent access to the archive.
The way Substack typically works is subscribers get emailed every time a post is published. However, with four posts a week, this will quickly get annoying. I know I wouldnāt want my inbox clogged up that way.
Instead, when I publish the stories, you will not get an email notification, but can watch them on Substack using a browser or the app. Then, on Saturdays I will send a newsletter email to everyone, including all the stories from the week, plus some comments of my own about my thoughts on narrating them.
If thereās interest, I may also write some articles with recommendations, deeper dives into particular stories, and author spotlights. Iām not committing to that yet, but if itās something youād like to see, let me know.
What do you need to do to support me on Substack and continue enjoying the stories? Go to storiesfromtheskysff.substack.com/ and enter your email. I recommend making an account there, but I donāt believe itās strictly necessary.
When you sign up, there will be a few subscription tiers. The first is free subscriber. You pay nothing, no credit cards required or anything. The second is monthly paid subscriber. Itās $5 a month (the lowest the platform allows me to charge). The third is annual paid subscriber. This is $50 a year, so a discount in exchange for commitment. The final one is Founding Member. This is like the annual subscriber but a higher cost. Itās just for those who want to contribute more money, so Iām not expecting anyone to do that!
This transition will take place over the next few weeks. Things might not appear to change at first. The first stories will appear on Substack in concurrence with YouTube, all freely available. That will continue until 21st October, a Monday, which will have the first Substack exclusive short story and mark the beginning of the Substack schedule of 4 stories a week. So, until 21st October everything will be normal ā a grace period in which you can go over to Substack and get used to watching and listening to the stories there.
During the transition period, I will also be uploading Patreon exclusive stories to Substack, to go into the archive, accessible for paid subscribers.
Along the way, there will be hiccups. Iām just getting to know the new platform, so please forgive any technical issues and weirdness early on. Iāll try my best to make it as smooth a transition as possible for you all. At some point, Iāll work on publishing the stories as a podcast, too.
In the next post Iāll talk about how you, the community have inspired me, and how the future is positive.
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If you prefer to listen to the updates all together, Iāve made a video here: https://youtu.be/U0fhyRIsaV0
Hi everyone, first of all Iād like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the wonderful supportive comments over the last week since the news of the channel being demonetised. It means a lot. Your words have motivated me to keep narrating and sharing these stories.
With the aid of a viewer of the channel, some human divine intervention has taken place to allow the channel to be remonetised. Of course, I am delighted by this outcome. However, I have been burned twice now and still live in fear of it all being snatched away at some unknown point in the future. The first time it happened back in February was a warning I did not heed. I wonāt make that mistake again.
So, despite the good news, things will not continue as before. Over the weekend I spent a lot of time researching, listening to advice and mulling things over. There are no easy solutions, but I have come to the decision to move the majority of Stories From the Sky SFF to Substack. There are many benefits to this, but also some downsides, which I will explain here so you understand my decision.
For those who donāt know, Substack is a platform primarily for writers and bloggers to host and monetise their work online and as an email newsletter. Recently it has expanded to include more content types (video & audio). The idea would be to upload my stories to the site, which can be accessed there (and on the app), as well as sending an email every week to subscribers with all of the weekās stories.
Benefit 1: an email list instead of an audience owned by YouTube or any other platform. Substack does not own the email list, so if I decided to move away from Substack, I would still be able to contact subscribers independent of any big tech overlords.
Benefit 2: Less emphasis on gaming algorithms and depending on metrics for success. As a YouTuber, Iām limited in what risks I can take because if a few stories donāt find an audience, the channel will suffer. For a long time, I have wanted to share old fantasy and mythology stories (yes, there are two Fās in SFF) but Iāve held off, because much of the audience is only interested in Sci-Fi, so initial views would be lower and YouTube would stop spreading my videos. The same is true of sharing works from current indie authors, which Iād also like to do. On Substack, I am much less limited in this regard. It is not an attention economy, rather a place where quality is allowed to shine.
Benefit 3: stable monetisation. There are no ads on Substack. The only source of income is from paid subscribers. Income is more predictable and less dependent on the performance of individual posts. Also, Iām paid by the audience, not by YouTube; Iām not going to be randomly demonetised overnight!
Downside 1: not everyone can pay for a subscription. The minimum subscription level is $5 a month. However, most subscribers will be free subscribers. You donāt have to pay. In fact, the majority wonāt, and thatās completely fine. Most of my content will remain freely available.
Downside 2: moving is hard. Not everyone will make the jump. In the short term, I will lose out. But, over time, more people will join and the audience base will recover. This is mitigated by the YouTube channel being remonetised so the transition can be smoother.
Downside 3: Substack, like all platforms, has had a few issues with monetisation of extreme political views, racists and spreaders of disinformation. Their attitude seems to be one of free speech for all, but not everyone is comfortable with that. From my point of view, to censor or not is a problem all platforms have at some point (X now, Facebook back in the day) so Iām not too worried.
Personally, I like the way Substack is set up for creators instead of advertisers, and it has functions for growth and multimedia that set it apart from other platforms.
Ultimately, for Stories from the Sky SFF to continue, I need a stable place where I donāt need to worry every six months about whether I can continue. Substack seems to be the best place to do that.
All the while, I can make sure you, the fantastic viewers and listeners continue to enjoy the stories whether youāre a free subscriber or if youāre able to contribute financially.
You may ask: what about Patreon? I already have a Patreon set up, with some brilliant backers there, so a possibility was just moving everything there. However, Patreon is not built for growing an audience. There are no recommendations, no connections to other creators, and no ways of new people finding my work.
To avoid conflict between Substack and Patreon subscriptions, I will be moving away from Patreon, with backers there having the option of continuing as paid subscribers on Substack, or to become free subscribers if they no longer wish to pay.
In the next post, I will outline what content you can expect as a free subscriber and paid subscriber on Substack, what the YouTube channel will look like, and talk about how the move will happen.
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This channel is being strangled to death. Iām going to share whatās happened in depth, but for those who want a TLDR: The channel has been demonetised (again) for repetitive content. My appeal was rejected. I cannot make another appeal for 90 days. I am out of pocket for 3 months and considering whether or not to continue creating content on YouTube (spoiler, probably not).
And the long version, for those who care:
Yesterday I was happily uploading another video that Iād just produced when I noticed in the end screen editing section, the link to my Patreon page was causing an error. The reason? The channel has been demonetised. This happened in real time in front of me.
Great. This again. It happened back in February, but within a day I was able to get it resolved by sending an appeal video explaining how I make my videos and why the channel should be remonetised. This time, the reason for demonetisation was slightly different: repetitive content. I can see why this might have been flagged as I use a similar format for all my videos (same style thumbnail, text on black background, loop video in the same location. But I was confident of making my points in the appeal video, got it made and sent it off after getting back from work. Annoying, sure. No issue in the long-term, right?
Wrong. This morning, I received the news that the appeal had been rejected. The specific reason was āAppeal didn't show substantial differences between each videoā. Clearly the reviewers were not paying attention, otherwise they would have realised that each video has an entirely different story and narration performance. Could you argue the compilations that include previous stories are repetitive? I donāt buy it ā itās not like each story gets repeated dozens of times. Most stories only ever go into one compilation. One or two might have been included in three, spread out over years.
So, the channel has had monetisation suspended for 90 days until I can make another appeal, although Iām not certain the result will be any different. Iām not sure thereās anything else I can do to convince YouTube to change their mind other than contact them directly, which I will do.
The next question is about how this affects me. First of all, donāt worry about me on a financial level. I have a job that earns me enough money to pay rent and not starve. In that sense Iām lucky ā I am not dependent on YouTube for anything. However, the money I got from YouTube ads was not insignificant. Nowhere near enough to live on, but a nice extra income. Full transparency, I earned between $200 and $400 in a typical month. Considering the number of hours going into making the videos, thatās nothing compared to what I could make doing other things.
However, it hurts especially because the last month has seen some impressive growth in the channel, with double the views of previous months, and hundreds of new subscribers. I saw a sizeable increase in ad revenue, too, which was really nice. When I started the channel, I knew it would take a long time for it to come even close to making decent money, but the last month was a step towards it becoming financially viable. Again, I donāt need it to live, but it was an investment I hoped would see some results down the line.
And, of course, I enjoy making the videos and sharing the stories. Do I enjoy it enough to do it for free with no prospect of increasing my income in the future? No. Itās a lot of time spent working. If thereās no tangible reward, there are plenty of other things I enjoy more that I could do ā spend more time with friends and family and pursuing exciting passions of mine.
Having 90 days of income taken away arbitrarily overnight (especially when that income was increasing nicely) is brutal. At the very least it would be about $600, at most close to $2,000. Itās hard to take on an emotional level, and Iām trying to restrain myself from making this a wild rant about YouTubeās policies and treatment of genuine creators.
However, if you will indulge me for a paragraph (or four), I will engage in some āconstructiveā criticism. First, my most popular video (3 H.G. Wells stories) has been getting a lot of views recently, and is probably the main source of growth. But I am also getting about 5 comments a day from bot accounts posting five or six random names. I delete and report every one of them, yet YouTube does nothing about the clear abuse of their platform (from what I understand, these accounts comment a lot to make the algorithm think they have history so havenāt just been started to troll people or flood political channels).
Second, I understand that YouTube has an AI problem. Iām sure many of my viewers/listeners have come across channels with a LOT more views than mine that are just AI slop and auto-generated content. I guess my channel can appear a little like that given the visuals are mostly the same, but anybody listening for more than five seconds can tell Iām not AI. Seriously, why should I get taken down while AI channels continue to operate?
Third, the demonetisation and appeal process on YouTube is fundamentally flawed. They can take away your money immediately. No warning, no prior communication. It just happens. Then itās up to you to plead your case. Fine. But if the reviewers actually spent any time listening to the videos (not just superficially looking at them), they would know it isnāt repetitious content. Theyāve messed up, and I have to suffer the consequences.
Fourth, and going back to the moment I found out I was demonetised, YouTube has now blocked the link to my Patreon page on the end screen. Really? Youāre going to take away all my ad revenue and block off other methods of financially supporting the channel? I get that YouTube has advertisers to please and standards to uphold, so some channels arenāt appropriate to monetise, but surely, they have to allow creators to make ends meet somehow? This is what has infuriated me the most.
Now, youāre probably expecting me to smoothly shift to asking for support on Patreon to keep the channel going. And it is tempting to plead for that. But you shouldnāt have to. Itās not on you as viewers to give up your hard-earned money on another platform in order to continue enjoying the content you previously got for free (and will almost certainly have adverts on anyway). Those who do contribute on Patreon are wonderful, brilliant people who have the money to share and I appreciate them valuing my work enough to back me as a creator. If youād like to show your support financially, one-off donations on Patreon would be appreciated, but please donāt feel any obligation. You donāt owe me anything.
And I might not be on YouTube much longer. I canāt justify the hours spent producing videos when there is zero prospect of income from the platform now or any time in the future.
I have about a month of content produced and scheduled, so that will all come out as normal. There are also a couple of novels set to come out in a few months which I may expedite, depending on what I do with the Patreon. And I will not delete the channel or anything ā all the stories online now will be available for as long as YouTube allows them to be. But I will not be producing any more videos unless the channel becomes monetised again. That may happen in 90 days (mid-December) if Iām lucky, or the channel may be done forever.
In terms of Patreon, depending on how things go in 90 daysā time, I may close that. If Iām not creating new content for YouTube, Iāll find it hard to do any Patreon exclusive content, and I canāt justify people financially backing me for doing nothing. I may make all the exclusive content freely available after some timeā¦ Iām not sure yet.
It feels like over two years of work has been wasted. But thatās not true. Iāve come a long way as a reader, narrator, voice actor, whatever you want to call it. My first video, A Little Journey by Ray Bradbury was a big moment for me, and while Iām proud of it, itās hardly the highest quality both in terms of audio production and performance. I had no previous experience narrating stories, and you can tell.
Now I have over 250+ stories under my belt, including several novels. Am I the best narrator? No. Am I better than I was? Absolutely. And that gives me some motivation for the future. Iāve already been part of a couple of audiobook projects outside of YouTube, and Iām considering going into voiceover for documentaries, e-learning, commercials, that kind of thing. Itās a different world to what I do on YouTube, but there are more prospects there.
However, that does mean leaving my wonderful YouTube audience behind. Those who post kind and thoughtful comments on my stories, sharing your reactions, showing your thanks and generally making me feel warm inside. You are wonderful. Iām furious at the idea that you might not be able to continue enjoying these old stories we get to share.
For now, enjoy the stories that come out in the next month, and Iāll keep you posted on how things are going. Thank you for reading this (if you made it to the end), thank you for continuing to support the channel, and thank you for being wonderful people.
Will
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Hi everyone, just a quick message to say that I will be away on holiday for the next 3 weeks. Donāt worry, stories will continue to come out on the usual schedule as I have got them all programmed and ready to go. But I will not be responding to comments or anything like that while Iām away!
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Channel update. Well, that all blew over very quickly. Yesterday I was able to appeal by video, explaining my production process and how it does not break YouTube's policies. Within 18 hours the channel was re-monetised, so everything is back to normal. As a result, the original schedule of posting will return, with the next story coming out tomorrow.
I would like to thank everyone who posted kind and supportive comments in response to the news yesterday. You are all wonderful and I appreciate you very much. I am fortunate that I do not rely on the income from this channel to live, because I learned yesterday that nothing on YouTube is permanent. Everything can be stopped at the push of a button, as if we were in some kind of prescient short story from 70 years ago.
For those who care about the behind the scenes, the channel was demonetised for "Reused content". As far as I can tell, nothing to do with the nature of the content itself, so no shutting down of freedom of speech or anything like that. It probably got flagged because all the videos have a very similar thumbnail and format.
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Channel announcement. Today I received the news that this channel has been demonetised by YouTube. I have, of course, appealed the decision and expect a positive result within the next 14 days. However, to avoid disturbing the review process, no new stories will be posted until the situation is resolved. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience and the disruption of the regular schedule.
However, the stories that should be posted will be freely available for everyone on my Patreon page at the normal days/times, so you can still watch them without cost (or ads). www.patreon.com/StoriesFromtheSkySFF
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Saturday Book vs. Movie Showdown: The War of the Worlds
One of the greatest sci-fi stories of all time, The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells was first published as a novel in 1898. It has been made into several films, the most notable in 2005 with Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg.
But which do you prefer?
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Which of Isaac Asimov's series do you think is the best?
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Which is the coolest space vessel?
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Welcome to Stories from the Sky SFF! This channel is all about sharing the best science-fiction and fantasy stories from the magical past, digital present and intergalactic future. All stories are narrated by me, William Sky. Each video comes with accompanying text for those who like to read along and some interesting visuals if that's your thing.
So whether you're listening to the stories during your commute, while exercising, before bed, or any other situation, I hope you not only take enjoyment from the stories, but also a little spark of inspiration (magic?) to carry around with you.