Buondì.
A super-quick and very commercial article today – sorry about that, but we have people to keep in their jobs, and it hasn’t been an easy period…
Next Monday, so Dec. 27th 2021, our January Sale begins. For the week between Christmas and New Year, and the week after that, you’ll be able to save a fifth on online lessons and ebooks. The sale ends on Jan 9th, which makes it rather a long one, but that’s just because of the way that the Mondays and Sundays fall this year.
When I say ‘our’, by the way, I’ll mention again that we’ve been reorganising, so that the club, the ebooks shop, and the online lessons are now all separate businesses – the idea being that it isn’t just me working from my kitchen table any longer.
OnlineItalianClub.com stays where it is, legally-speaking, so continues to be published by the ltd. company. Most of our other ‘free materials for language-learning’ remain there with it, except EasyItalianNews.com which, because it’s the one that’s most likely to get me sued, has moved to a new home, Easy News LLP. LLP stands for Limited Liability Partnership, by the way, which means that responsibility is, well, ‘limited’, which is the point – to separate things into their own boxes.
Our ‘old’ shop, EasyReaders.org now specialises ONLY in ebooks, which makes sense given the site name and the friendly little ebook reader logo. The legal entity behind it is Easy Readers LLP. For the moment, payments for ebook sales are still directed through the Ltd, but that will end, some time in January, hopefully.
And then there’s the ‘new’ shop, with a more suitable name and logo, especially designed for online lessons. Do take a look: NativeSpeakerTeachers.com. Since Dec. 1st, the online teaching operation is being run through Native Speaker Teachers LLP, though by the same fantastic team (Lucia and Stefi) and with the same bunch of popular teachers as always. Prices and details of the lessons are unvaried and there are no plans that that will change.
Why bother with all the extra legal and accounting expenses of four legal ‘boxes’ rather than just one, as before? (And it HAS required both work and investment…)
Well, the club started as a ‘passatempo’, back in 2012 I think it was, and various bits and pieces kept getting added on, which worked well for a while but became unmanageable.
Personally, I’d prefer to concentrate on teaching, language-learning, and writing, of course. By breaking things up and delegating them, I’ll hopefully be able to do that.
Also, the various components will be able to go their separate ways, in the sense that ‘easy news’ can sink or swim on its own, and the marketing of ebooks and online lessons can, if desired, diverge. With different mailing lists, for example.
Amazingly, not everyone is interested in half-price ‘easy readers’, so people who just want to carry on taking lessons with their favourite ‘native speaker teacher’, will be able to do that without being bombarded with ebook marketing. You get the idea.
Takeaways from this?
The January Sale starts on Monday 27th of December, so hold off spending your Christmas gift money this week and you’ll get more for your money during the fortnight from Dec. 27th (with the exception of the ‘half price ebook of the week’, obviously…)
And don’t be surprised when, if you’re looking to buy online lesson credits, you end up on the new website, the one with the groovy new logo, NativeSpeakerTeachers.com.
Whereas if you’re planning to stock up on the reading/listening materials you’ll need to progress in 2022, you’ll do that through the ‘ormai’ familiar EasyReaders.org.
N.b. Amazon Pay has been a very popular option for payments through the ‘old’ shop (it seems like just about everyone has an Amazon account), so I was keen to add it to the ‘new’ shop (for the lessons, remember?)
And yet, no. Amazon Pay requires a different phone number for each business, so as it’s currently just me doing the behind-the-scenes technical bits and pieces, that would mean carrying three or four separate mobile phones around, which isn’t going to happen.
At some point, I’ll find a solution, but for the moment, be aware that your choice of payment processor will vary from one shop to another.
It’s complicated, but the gist is that Paypal (you CAN use a credit card, you DON’T HAVE TO open an account) is an option on all of the sites, whether you’re donating to EasyItalianNews.com, buying ebooks from EasyReaders.org or stocking up with online lesson credits at NativeSpeakerTeachers.com.
The two shops also both have Stripe, an industry-leading, non-Paypal debit/credit card processor.
But only the ebooks shop has Amazon…
Imagine the fun I’ve had with all this stuff!
I’m SO looking forward to getting to some sort of ‘new normal’, then having time for my own language-learning!
A mercoledì, allora.
P.S.
Here are a few other things to remember, this busy pre-holiday week:
1.) There are just a couple of days to grab yourself a copy of this year’s final, half-price ‘eBook of the Week’, Giallo a Capodanno, the offer on which ends Tuesday night.
It’s New Year 1970 and Martina’s all dressed up for the party, determined to enjoy it! Her roommate is more cynical and would rather read detective thrillers than pretend to have fun with just six fellow students. But who knows? Perhaps something interesting will happen?
Buy Giallo a Capodanno, just £3.99! | Free sample chapter (.pdf) | Catalog
2.) Our Italian school in Bologna is having it’s ‘Best Offer of the Year’ promotion, meaning a saving of 20% on group courses OF ANY LENGTH starting at any time in 2022. If you’re not on their mailing list, here are the articles you’ve missed, in the order they came out:
- 2022 Italian Course Offer: Save 20% From Today!
- 2022 Italian Course Offer: Why learn Italian?
- 2022 Italian Course Offer: Why Study Italian in Bologna?
- 2022 Italian Course Offer: Why Study Italian at Madrelingua?
3.) And last, but not least, here’s the usual reminder to listen to and read Saturday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, which is totally free, as it’s funded by donations…
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OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | EasyReaders.org (ebooks) | NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (1-1 lessons)