It's been suggested in the auctions folder that maybe we could run another auction - some people didn't get to offer items, or didn't have a chance to bid, or would like another chance to bid. Although we're more than halfway to our fundraising goal, and the T-shirt planning is still ongoing, if there's interest in another auction, then why not?

So, we'd like some feedback. Is there interest? Would people participate? How should we change things from last time, if at all? Can we do it better? Did the start/finish times work for people (and, yes, I know we had to change the finish time due to the boards being offline, and the actual finish time was not ideal at all for people in different time-zones).

What do you think?


Wendy

Okay. It's put me down as Yes! I'll bid! when I chose Yes! I'll donate a fanwork and I'll bid.

Then it wouldn't let me choose an option on the 3rd question.

Although, I've got to work and now I CAN do Q3, yay.

The only change I would suggest to an auction would be to stagger the end times. My understanding was that the reason that that had not been done this time around was to cut down on people swooping in at the last second to make a final bid so close to the deadline that they couldn't be outbid. It turned out that everyone was well behaved here and that didn't happen for any auctions. I think that by staggering the end times, people could plan better how they wished to allocate their money and this would result in higher final bids overall.

I suggested having a subsequent auction in three months so that if someone is on a tight budget but wished to participate, they would have some time to build up their discretionary funds.

Joy,
Lynn

I think should this occur I may not bid (who knows? It depends on other factors) but I do have a plan on what I would offer (something near finished at this time but has more than one version of it from two different POVs). I think three months time is good enough to get the stories to a finished state.

I don't know about other people, but I had a set budget and the boards would have gotten the same amount whether or not I won any auctions. People with more discretionary funds, though, might spend more.

I agree, I used all of my funds up this time (with a little hung back for the upcoming T-shirt). Also, a mid-summer auction would allow all those college students dealing with finals right now, who vacation at the boards during the summer, to become involved. It would also allow (as Christina said) for writers and artists to prep auction ideas. Maybe we can get a vidder to step up this time.

I personally LOVE my Swag. Totally happy bidder, here!

What I meant was this: Suppose I had $X to spend and there were two auctions I were interested in. If both ended at the same time, I would only bid, on average $X/2 per auction. If, however, the end times were staggered, I might be willing to go higher than $X/2 for the first auction. If I won that auction, I would then have a lower maximum bid for the second auction. If, however, I lost the first auction, then I could wager up to $X on the second auction.

Joy,
Lynn

I like the idea of waiting a couple months, just to give people time to wrap up their current auction responses and to see how far we end up away from our goal.

But I also wanted to point people to Female Hawk's recent suggestion in the "Donations Thermometer" thread in the Fanworks Auction folder.

She suggested we might try a "reverse auction" where readers offer to pay a certain amount for a certain type of story, then writers offer to take them up on it. We might have to figure out the details, but especially if we kept the requests short (not too many words, ficlets or scenes rather than full length stories), I could see it being a lot of fun to see what authors come up with.

Or what about (just brainstorming here) challenge offers like "I will pay $10 for each ficlet of 500+ words posted during the month of May that has Lois choosing Clark over Dan Scardino (up to 5 stories total)." That could be a lot of fun, seeing what different authors come up with.

Kathy

Good idea, Kathy. A lot of smaller fics has the potential to raise money, flood the boards, and satisfy the archives for months!

I'm seeing my suggestion as more 'auction' (one winner) and your suggestion as more 'swag' in that the person suggesting the story will probably end up paying up to the amount they offer.

Something that might be interesting to writers - they could post a very loose description of a story that has been languishing on their drives almost finished for years (or an upcoming story, or a story they've always wanted to write.)

Something like this:


I think some writers might worry that someone will write a story just like theirs, but my experience on these boards is that it's much more likely we'll get vastly different stories.

Corrina.

BTW - the scenario outlines the first LnC fic I ever wrote. I've never posted it.

I know that if we go with the "I'll pay for X" route I have an idea for artwork in the same vein.