Welcome to Barter Toast!

Welcome to Barter Toast! We're a platform designed to help readers and writers get what they need through—surprise, surprise—barter! In this post, I break down how Barter Toast works and what we're trying to accomplish.

A Brief History

Barter Toast originates from a small writing community I started in 2022 called Vault of Scrolls (VoS). The goal of VoS was to match writers with beta readers, critique partners, and writing buddies so they could get feedback and improve their work. We have our own Discord and a web app which I've always pitched as "Tinder for writing buddies".

The "Butter" Experiment

As VoS grew, I became more aware of the challenges facing readers and writers. I wanted to experiment with a new system to address these concerns.

Barter Toast was designed with three key objectives in mind:

1. Perfect the matching system
2. Encourage people to reciprocate and take initiative
3. Establish greater accountability and trust

The Barter Model

Barter Toast uses a list-and-offer model.

A lister creates a listing and specifies what they want to trade. An offerer offers on the listing if interested. In a successful barter, both parties get what they need. A win-win for everyone. But how do we avoid the situation where everyone makes their own listing while no one takes the time to offer?

It is free to trade on Barter Toast, but it is not free to list. However, instead of paying the listing fee, you can also earn listings by offering on existing listings and completing barters. My goal is to keep the platform accessible while nurturing a lively, symbiotic ecosystem.

Reviews and "Liaison" Service

Barter Toast introduces a review system to help our community recognize trustworthy people. We also want to do our part to protect our members by testing an (optional) "liaison service".

"Liaison" is just our fancy name for a neutral third party (me!) who helps faciliate barters. Where possible, you can send your barter "deliverables" to your liaison, and they will only release the items when both parties have completed their end of the trade.

More Categories

I believe the barter system can solve problems beyond writing feedback exchanges and want to try opening the platform to new use cases including;

• Exchanging beta reading for art, marketing help, and more
• Newsletter swaps
• ARC readers and book reviewers

Join Our Pilot

Although VoS started as a passion project, my dream is for Barter Toast to become a sustainable startup which benefits writers, readers, and other creatives. If you would like to participate in our development or just stay in the loop, sign ups are now open!

Thank you to everyone who has followed our journey up until now. We hope you will join us as we embark on our next adventure!