The Endless Sea of Subscription Services
Why I'm no longer offering paid subscriptions to my writings through Substack.
My struggle with having a set of “paid subscription” posts and emails that go out is something that has continued to haunt me ever since I started using Substack for this purpose. I was preparing to another round of overhauls to the benefits of the paid subscriptions… and I stopped.
While I am always looking for ways in which I can make the sharing of my writings financially sustainable, I was attempting all of these changes and adjustments while ignoring the fact that the whole concept of paid subscriptions just wasn’t working for me. There was something fundamental that I was missing.
In thinking on this further, the course of action became clear. As of this post, I have cancelled all paid subscriptions and refunded all of the outstanding months that my paid subscribers had left.
Everyone reading this in their emails is now a free subscriber, and that’ll be how things continue for the foreseeable future.
Here’s a few reasons why I did this:
1) A desire to be more offline
Put frankly, I don’t enjoy being online so much. I want to be offline and doing things in-person as much as possible. Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than in my highly-underused “Chat” for paid subscribers. As someone who has no desire to engage in group chats even with close friends and family (other than to coordinate an in-person meeting!), it’s perhaps no surprise that I had little incentive to use it.
I know a lot of other Substack users really hone in on this to help build community. As for me, I want to build my communities in-person—and encourage others to do the same—more than anything else. I want the sharing of poetry and writing to occur live in the presence of real human beings, which is where I believe it can be most magical. Trying to have this as a paid “benefit” was silly considering it really feels like more of a burden for me to use.
As such, my “Chat” is now completely disabled. I encourage those who want to have a discussion with me and other readers about the posts that I put out to leave a comment instead:
2) How I work is not conducive to consistent benefits
Like other highly creative types, I generally have multiple projects on-the-go at any one time, and will cycle between them depending on my motivation. Sometimes I can go days without writing a single word, other days I write pages and pages in one sitting. It balances out for material I put out for free as the poems I write during high creative output can be saved and scheduled for times of low output.
This is absolutely not the case for live workshops and events, especially those online. I travel a lot and live and work where I go, and often the places I end up are not conducive for me running online workshops or calls, or I end up being too fatigued and I have to cancel at short notice. Because this becomes inherently unreliable for me to provide, I shouldn’t be expecting someone to pay for the privilege of accessing those spaces.
3) Doubling down on the best bits
By freeing myself from having to consider these additional paid subscriber benefits, I can focus all my efforts on the most important aspect: the writings.
For me, writing is medicine. It is how I come to make sense of the world, and through my own explorations, things arise that others may also find helpful. Having a paid subscription took a therapeutic effect of writing (joy and relief) out of it. That doesn’t make it sustainable long-term, and also dilutes my ability to ensure a high quality of each piece. As such, I’ll be focusing mostly on a poem or reflection each week, and the occasional live video & recording, all of which will be free to access.
4) Jumping off the bandwagon
I’ve been coming increasingly conscious of the push everywhere in the world to go to subscription-based models, and how difficult that is for a platform like Substack where there are so many great independent writers. Readers are being encouraged to fork out for so many different paid subscriptions for writers, even when they’re objectively “good” writers, with no guarantee if subsequent pieces will resonate with us (or even if we’ll get time to read them!) This doesn’t even consider how every other aspect of life and service is trying to lock people in to long-term subscriptions.
I’m the kind of person who would much rather pay as-I-go for the things I use and enjoy, and so providing a paid “subscription service” of my own has been feeling increasingly out of alignment for me. Gift economies feel far more in-alignment with me, which I’ll be looking to encourage more going forward, even if means my own “income” isn’t nearly as “predictable”.
5) Pushing me out of my comfort zone
This leads in nicely to my final reason: I want my works to stand out based on their individual merit, without falling into a false sense of security that people will continue to be paid subscribers to me regardless of what I put out. I like the thrill and challenge of having each piece needing to be the best piece so far, on the basis that in doing so it’ll encourage people to support my work financially.
To that effect, here’s some ways you can support my work going forward:
I highly encourage you to “leave a tip” on individual poems and posts that resonate with you. Keep an eye out for green buttons that look like this:
You can also support me financially and get more poetry from me by picking up some books (physical and digital) or merchandise from my store:
If you’re not in a position to support me financially, you can still help me out a ton by referring people to my work, and I’ll send you some of my poetry books or even do a private reading for you in return based on the number of referrals. Use the button below to give it a go:
With that, I thank you for continuing to support my work. I look forward to bringing you more poems and writings—completely free to read—in the future. I’ll leave you with this slightly silly little haiku to sum it all up:
Money for nothing,
when the poetry is free,
is worse than TV.
…and there’s very good reasons not to watch TV.
With gratitude,
Tom
Well said Tom.
And well motivated.
Be well young fellow.
CS
This is pretty close to why I stopped my paid sub program.