This is one of those complicated issues that I think too many people try to oversimplify. There's a tendency among the public to view all creative fields as not worth it or not real work - as if putting in hours upon hours to learn well how to write, draw, paint, sculpt, carve, or whatever else somehow doesn't constitute work. Outside of my stack I also write my own webcomic and work with a friend from England who provides the artwork for it. Standing with a foot in both of these worlds has allowed me to build connections with some wonderfully creative people, which is the upside.
The downside is it has shown me there's a massive number of people out there who are stuck in one of two worlds with this. As a whole, they're happy to read something for free. (And, in truth, I'm happy to have them reading.) Payment is where you see the division, which comes in three flavors from what I've seen:
-Those who can and will pay, which are the smallest group by far. This is the idealized loyal audience we're all hoping to one day find.
-Those who are willing to pay, but often can't afford to or struggle to justify the expense. Sadly, this is the world I tend to live in, much as I'd love to support my friends and fellow artists financially. My bills won't pay themselves, after all.
-Those who don't value our time or work and seek to take advantage. We've all probably run into this type at least once in our creative lives. These are the people who ask to use an illustrator's work for free so they can "get more exposure." They're the types who'll try to convince a skilled writers that we should do free work for them because we already post free stuff on our personal pages, what's the difference? (The difference is that's usually a passion project and/or an attempt to build a portfolio and following.)
The work of skilled creatives is frequently undervalued and has been for arguably the whole of human history. This isn't a new challenge we face by any means. The upside is that we do have articulate people, such as yourself, who are able to shine a light on some of the problems with this and, equally important, provide some reasonable methods for those of us facing this same conundrum to give the folks willing to pay that little extra incentive while not leaving those who can't (or won't, in some cases) out in the cold.
At the end of the day, the way I see it, what I'm putting out is work I would be producing with or without financial remuneration. Keeping that in mind, it makes the fact that I am not putting about half of it behind a paywall less of a sting on my part. The benefit of reading it is for the consumer and takes away nothing from the benefit I get of writing it.
Your wisdom and transparency is much appreciated. Thank you for explaining not only for yourself but also on behalf of all writers here on Substack that have the "paid" option turned on.
In truth, I wrote this MONTHS ago, but was truly nervous about sharing it and took every opportunity to push it back another week till finally I found myself just letting it go out into the world today. Fingers crossed that it wouldn't be taken the wrong way...so far I've been too distracted by work and home to even check if I've lost subscribers because of it...
I stand the risk of losing subscribers today too, due to a comment I made on someone else's post (I hate fear-mongering based on unverified rumor!), but if we lose 'em, we lose 'em. Nothing we can do but acknowledge they weren't the ones for us and move on.
I thank you for the offer. I'm wondering if a "meeting of the minds" with other Substack fiction writers who have paid turned on and are actively doing so for the purpose of earning income from their work, wouldn't want to come together in a small gathering to share war wounds and ideas...
Well, I write nonfiction, but I also think there's a lot of value in working together like that. I'll support something like that, should you be interested in having me involved! Just let me know; I'm happy to be very limited and just offer support, or do a little bit more. Either way, I feel it's up to us to make this place what we want it to be, and, fortunately, folks are listening.
I have to carefully consider everything I spend because I don’t have a full time job and I have few subscribers. I appreciate those who publish here for the love of it (most of us, I suspect.)
I love that you treat your paid subscribers with perks that don’t punish the rest of us.
I never even considered how or if my perks would punish others. I take it to mean in the context of putting it all behind a paywall so those who cannot afford to pay to read are still able to enjoy my work in some capacity?
I promised when I started that my 100 word stories would never go behind a paywall initially. And I'm keeping that promise. I do, however, put them behind a paywall the following month. This gives newcomers a full month's worth of my stories to read whenever they should sign on but my free subscribers who get my emails and keep them in their inbox will have them to read for life. I think it's the lesser of all the evils to do it this way.
If only this process were easily automated so I didn't have to manually change 30 stories from free to paid only on a monthly basis.
I appreciate the way you do it. I get frustrated by some of the almost click bait sites that give you a headline and put the rest behind a paywall. I think moving things behind a paywall for subscribers after a time is fair (if not easy.)
Similar situation with the day job - being nudged from all sides toward management. Have resisted for all the reasons you note. Like yours, my day job is excellent. But part of it is brutal and no one would ever do it for free. So, they pay me to endure it. With our creative work, we do it anyway. Because we are driven to it. And our culture is used to us doing it for free. A very hard thing to undo. Your transparency is a contribution to the retraining needed.
Continuing to be transparent. I currently have 3 paid subscribers. That's 3 more than I've ever had in my lifetime of writing and having the option. It's definitely not lost on me that I am a part of the problem we all find ourselves in. Unwilling to stand up and be counted with the rest of the "traditionally published" society who have no issues with charging for the hard work and labor they put into their writing.
Allow me to step off my soap box and just say thank you for your kind words. It was not easy to write down and then share but I am glad I did based on the warm responses I have been getting.
I feel your pain - really- in a similar situation here with a real job and commitments on top of creating the work I love - for me, the solution is to keep going in the hope that at some point I will get the attention which will allow me an opportunity to give up the day job and focus on what I love.
As much as I love Substack I just don’t see going down the paid subscriber route for me will ever work - like you the figures don’t add up - in fact I’m more worried that it will hamper my creativity by feeling I have to create for people who are giving me their hard-earned ...
That is why I'm drawing the proverbial line in the sand with what I will do and nothing more. The last thing I want to do is over promise or over perform. That is an easy way to set oneself up for failure. Instead, I want to set expectations fairly low and maintain that level of consistency for as long as I possibly can (indefinitely preferably?) and hope those efforts on my part will be rewarded by the passerby.
In a positive or negative way? I had/have Patreon for a while now. There was a time when I used it often and attempted to make it where I put my work behind a paywall. But, unlike Substack, I found it less user friendly to writers. It is more for the creative who illustrates or produces video content. Not to say that writers haven't been able to make it by just using Patreon. Similar to Substack, I have a "fiction writers on patreon" list where I tracked how many patrons, how much they were earning, etc.
I'm not sure. It sounds like you have more experience with it than I do. It just seems like folks are able to make Patreon work well, but maybe I'm only cherrypicking examples in my mind. And I see how the format of offerings could make a difference. I'm trying to use both, but neither to any great effect.
This is one of those complicated issues that I think too many people try to oversimplify. There's a tendency among the public to view all creative fields as not worth it or not real work - as if putting in hours upon hours to learn well how to write, draw, paint, sculpt, carve, or whatever else somehow doesn't constitute work. Outside of my stack I also write my own webcomic and work with a friend from England who provides the artwork for it. Standing with a foot in both of these worlds has allowed me to build connections with some wonderfully creative people, which is the upside.
The downside is it has shown me there's a massive number of people out there who are stuck in one of two worlds with this. As a whole, they're happy to read something for free. (And, in truth, I'm happy to have them reading.) Payment is where you see the division, which comes in three flavors from what I've seen:
-Those who can and will pay, which are the smallest group by far. This is the idealized loyal audience we're all hoping to one day find.
-Those who are willing to pay, but often can't afford to or struggle to justify the expense. Sadly, this is the world I tend to live in, much as I'd love to support my friends and fellow artists financially. My bills won't pay themselves, after all.
-Those who don't value our time or work and seek to take advantage. We've all probably run into this type at least once in our creative lives. These are the people who ask to use an illustrator's work for free so they can "get more exposure." They're the types who'll try to convince a skilled writers that we should do free work for them because we already post free stuff on our personal pages, what's the difference? (The difference is that's usually a passion project and/or an attempt to build a portfolio and following.)
The work of skilled creatives is frequently undervalued and has been for arguably the whole of human history. This isn't a new challenge we face by any means. The upside is that we do have articulate people, such as yourself, who are able to shine a light on some of the problems with this and, equally important, provide some reasonable methods for those of us facing this same conundrum to give the folks willing to pay that little extra incentive while not leaving those who can't (or won't, in some cases) out in the cold.
At the end of the day, the way I see it, what I'm putting out is work I would be producing with or without financial remuneration. Keeping that in mind, it makes the fact that I am not putting about half of it behind a paywall less of a sting on my part. The benefit of reading it is for the consumer and takes away nothing from the benefit I get of writing it.
Your wisdom and transparency is much appreciated. Thank you for explaining not only for yourself but also on behalf of all writers here on Substack that have the "paid" option turned on.
In truth, I wrote this MONTHS ago, but was truly nervous about sharing it and took every opportunity to push it back another week till finally I found myself just letting it go out into the world today. Fingers crossed that it wouldn't be taken the wrong way...so far I've been too distracted by work and home to even check if I've lost subscribers because of it...
I stand the risk of losing subscribers today too, due to a comment I made on someone else's post (I hate fear-mongering based on unverified rumor!), but if we lose 'em, we lose 'em. Nothing we can do but acknowledge they weren't the ones for us and move on.
I have a lot of the same considerations, Erica. If you ever want to think through this stuff on any kind of personal basis, I'm down - just reach out.
I thank you for the offer. I'm wondering if a "meeting of the minds" with other Substack fiction writers who have paid turned on and are actively doing so for the purpose of earning income from their work, wouldn't want to come together in a small gathering to share war wounds and ideas...
Well, I write nonfiction, but I also think there's a lot of value in working together like that. I'll support something like that, should you be interested in having me involved! Just let me know; I'm happy to be very limited and just offer support, or do a little bit more. Either way, I feel it's up to us to make this place what we want it to be, and, fortunately, folks are listening.
I have to carefully consider everything I spend because I don’t have a full time job and I have few subscribers. I appreciate those who publish here for the love of it (most of us, I suspect.)
I love that you treat your paid subscribers with perks that don’t punish the rest of us.
I never even considered how or if my perks would punish others. I take it to mean in the context of putting it all behind a paywall so those who cannot afford to pay to read are still able to enjoy my work in some capacity?
I promised when I started that my 100 word stories would never go behind a paywall initially. And I'm keeping that promise. I do, however, put them behind a paywall the following month. This gives newcomers a full month's worth of my stories to read whenever they should sign on but my free subscribers who get my emails and keep them in their inbox will have them to read for life. I think it's the lesser of all the evils to do it this way.
If only this process were easily automated so I didn't have to manually change 30 stories from free to paid only on a monthly basis.
I appreciate the way you do it. I get frustrated by some of the almost click bait sites that give you a headline and put the rest behind a paywall. I think moving things behind a paywall for subscribers after a time is fair (if not easy.)
Similar situation with the day job - being nudged from all sides toward management. Have resisted for all the reasons you note. Like yours, my day job is excellent. But part of it is brutal and no one would ever do it for free. So, they pay me to endure it. With our creative work, we do it anyway. Because we are driven to it. And our culture is used to us doing it for free. A very hard thing to undo. Your transparency is a contribution to the retraining needed.
Continuing to be transparent. I currently have 3 paid subscribers. That's 3 more than I've ever had in my lifetime of writing and having the option. It's definitely not lost on me that I am a part of the problem we all find ourselves in. Unwilling to stand up and be counted with the rest of the "traditionally published" society who have no issues with charging for the hard work and labor they put into their writing.
Allow me to step off my soap box and just say thank you for your kind words. It was not easy to write down and then share but I am glad I did based on the warm responses I have been getting.
I feel your pain - really- in a similar situation here with a real job and commitments on top of creating the work I love - for me, the solution is to keep going in the hope that at some point I will get the attention which will allow me an opportunity to give up the day job and focus on what I love.
As much as I love Substack I just don’t see going down the paid subscriber route for me will ever work - like you the figures don’t add up - in fact I’m more worried that it will hamper my creativity by feeling I have to create for people who are giving me their hard-earned ...
That is why I'm drawing the proverbial line in the sand with what I will do and nothing more. The last thing I want to do is over promise or over perform. That is an easy way to set oneself up for failure. Instead, I want to set expectations fairly low and maintain that level of consistency for as long as I possibly can (indefinitely preferably?) and hope those efforts on my part will be rewarded by the passerby.
There's a lot of good in here. I'm wondering what works differently for folks on Patreon.
In a positive or negative way? I had/have Patreon for a while now. There was a time when I used it often and attempted to make it where I put my work behind a paywall. But, unlike Substack, I found it less user friendly to writers. It is more for the creative who illustrates or produces video content. Not to say that writers haven't been able to make it by just using Patreon. Similar to Substack, I have a "fiction writers on patreon" list where I tracked how many patrons, how much they were earning, etc.
I'm not sure. It sounds like you have more experience with it than I do. It just seems like folks are able to make Patreon work well, but maybe I'm only cherrypicking examples in my mind. And I see how the format of offerings could make a difference. I'm trying to use both, but neither to any great effect.