Simon Jaeger on Nostr: No, the subscription is not the issue (to me at least). It's the communication from ...

No, the subscription is not the issue (to me at least). It's the communication from the company. They didn't engage with us at all until someone called them out on AppleVis for quietly switching to subscription last year. Then, they said the app would remain free for people who had purchased it. Now, they're changing their mind. They also increased the price by $20 since then, and gave a "discount" that brings it back to the original price. And, think of it from the perspective of someone who genuinely can't afford $60 to $80/year. That's lots of us. Suddenly, the thing you've been using to read your books for over 10 years is just gone, unless you pay money you don't have. That's frustrating. Of course the company needs to make money, but none of us asked for this. If it started as an app that charged a subscription, everyone would be comfortable paying that or using something else. But it didn't, and now people are just going to have to deal with it or find something new and migrate their library. Personally, if the company demonstrates they're doing actual work on the app, I'm happy to pay. But for the moment, it seems to have the same bugs it had for years before it was acquired by them. The company has had the last year to build up loyalty with long-time users, and instead they lied, released countless updates with "bug fixes" that didn't actually seem to fix anything, and took the app away from anyone who isn't willing to pay. So in a vacuum, of course a good reading app takes development time and server infrastructure and I don't think even $80 is such an unreasonable price. However, given all of the previous history and context, I think this was handled extremely poorly and I have 0 faith in the company to deliver a continuously-updated app. It could be a chicken and egg situation, where they need to get subscriptions from users so they have money to develop, and if they don't get enough of us, they can't maintain the app and then all the complainers get to proclaim how right they were. And that's why I'll probably pay for it. But I'll use the monthly option that support doesn't even seem to know about, so I can cancel after six months if we're still getting no new features or fixes. I hope this adds some perspective and doesn't just come across as needless complaining.