Four Years
Four years ago I quit my job to write this newsletter full time. It was August 2020 — a month that, in hindsight, would become a major pivot point in my life. I know a lot of you also had pivot points during that year: moments of unprecedented, heartbreaking, and/or joyful clarity. Yes, I should leave this field; yes, I have to move; no, I can’t stay with this person — whatever it was, the gravity was strong.
In my case, I had resisted suggestions from Substack leadership to monetize the newsletter for several years. I had come of adult age on an internet where the understanding was that content should always be free; of course I was dubious that a subscription model would make any money, let alone enough money to become sustainable.
Today, that understanding feels almost hilariously antiquated. Nearly every site (and podcast!) that’s still standing from the 2010s now has a paywall or a subscription model or a Patreon or a robust affiliate-link program. Of course, we’ve always paid, in some way, for what we consume: by renting our eyeballs or straight-out selling our data to advertisers. But as the bottom has dropped out on that market (first in print, then in digital), the paradigm for making a living doing this sort of work changed in almost unimaginable ways. There are a vanishingly small number of full-time journalist jobs; stringing together freelance writing gigs will barely cover a month’s rent; only the very biggest writers can survive on a single book advance. You either have a different sort of full-time job (and that includes unpaid caregiving) and write on the side for what amounts to pocket money….or you figure out a direct funding model like this one.
There’s a lot to celebrate about this model: you largely cut out the intermediary that profits off your content (although, in this case, Substack and Stripe take a cut). You’re not forced to cater to the whims or ideologies of advertisers. Most importantly, especially for work like what I do here at Culture Study, you’re able to write about things that don’t have a “news peg,” that can’t be smooshed into a sexy hook of a headline, that refuse to come to neat conclusions. I get to publish so many interviews with authors about complicated ideas in complicated books! And you actually read those interviews! It’s a marvel!
And while I have a sense of what you, as readers, immediately gravitate towards — hilariously, it’s often just access to links and recommendations — I don’t feel beholden to replicate stories that have done well in the past. In other words: I’m not beholden to the Game of Thrones recap cycle that effectively addicts a publication to a certain sort of content. I can write about The Friendship Dip or Glen Powell or What Happened to People Magazine or anything else that grips my mind with confidence that I’ll still have a job the next week, and the week after that. You have made this sort of dynamic, curious work sustainable. The gratitude I feel is boundless. But so, too, is the relief: that I don’t have to dedicate so much of my brain to preparing for the other shoe to drop, for layoffs to arrive, for an entire publication to disappear.
There are obvious drawbacks to this model, too: I’ve talked with so many of you about the impossibility of subscribing to every writer and podcaster and creator you love. My friend Virginia Sole-Smith has written eloquently about this conundrum, and I’ll just add that even though I, too, can write off my subscriptions — I get it. And even though it’s ostensibly counter to Substack’s growth model, I’m still agitating for some model that allows for bundling, so you could subscribe to, say, three different writers for $9. (Yes, I realize that paying a single subscription fee to access the work of multiple writers sounds a lot like a magazine; the primary difference is that in this scenario the writers would get (nearly all) of those subscription dollars, not Conde Nast).
I am far less utopian about Substack’s capacity to “save journalism” than its founders; I find their refusal to seriously grapple with questions of platforming (white supremacists and transphobes in particular) indicative of general misunderstanding of how the internet (and the world at large) works. I don’t think Notes is the future — or a means of “solving” the problem of toxic discourse on the internet. Like so many writers I respect, I don’t think of Substack as a home. I think of it as a tool — one that would improve in ways that matter for both writers and readers if it conceived of itself in that way as well.
But I am also appreciative of the ways Substack’s fundamental format has made it possible to build a community that feels electric and inquisitive and generative — that feels, in other words, like one of the good places on the internet. I see it every week in the Tuesday and Friday threads, which have produced so much practical and whimsical and wise advice. I see it in the comments section, where readers give other readers the benefit of the doubt — and ask questions about meaning instead of assuming it.
Common guidance for writers on the internet for years has been: NEVER READ THE COMMENTS. That’s not true at Culture Study. I open each thread with wonder and amazement. I marvel at the way you engage with other writer’s thoughts, and I can’t tell you how many times writers I’ve interviewed have told me: I’ve never had such a thoughtful response to my work. That’s you! You did that! I honestly still can’t believe it: we’ve made this a place that we want to be on the internet.
Depending on when you first subscribed, you might be receiving a notification that your annual subscription is up for renewal. I know there are all sorts of reasons why people who want to be part of this community might no longer be able to pay, and if that’s the case for you, just email me, no explanation necessary, and I’ll extend your subscription. Crucially, if you do have the means to pay, your help makes that scenario possible.
In the year to come, my plan is to keep it just as wondrous and weird as the years before. I’m coming off a week off the internet and have that good sort of creative work energy pulsing through me. In the immediate future, we’ll have an interview with Chris La Tray about Becoming Little Shell and a run-down of the five books I just devoured — and this coming week, I’ll also be doing something totally new, publishing a newsletter a day in a series that draws on two years of reporting.
It seems appropriate that this culmination lands so close to the anniversary of when this experiment began. Maybe you’ve been a part of it from day one. Maybe you’ve been meaning to join for months. However long you’ve been here, what I said on the one year anniversary holds true and is worth repeating: You all help me see the stars as constellations, to continue to seek meaning and narrative amidst that vast, swallowing unknown. I am so grateful to be doing this work with you.
If you haven’t already become a subscriber — maybe today’s the day. It’s $5 a month or $50 a year, and you get all the glorious subscriber threads, the ability to participate in the comments, and full access to the weekly and monthly Things I’ve Read and Loved/Recs/Just Trust Me.
Oh, and fantastic news! Your Bookshop purchases have generated a stunning $2620.40 in affiliate dollars. All of that money is going to Books to Prisoners, which has been navigating the arduous process of getting requested books to incarcerated people for decades. I’ll be posting cashout and donation receipts in next week’s newsletter, but for now, thank you for being a community that really, really loves to buy books.
And just for fun, here are some of *my* favorite posts of the year — please feel free to share your own!
This is such a lovely reflection! I have to say though that your curiosity and guidance (plus comment moderation) sets the tone for the way readers interact with your work so thank you for leading by example.
Congratulations! Yours was my first paid substack sub. Whilst I would love to support many more writers, it's just not fundable personally. I do like the group sub idea.