We get to the big one: making money. Or, at least, it can be the big one, if you allow it. If you want it, there are levers to pull. You may want to simply write and not be sullied by the vagaries of capitalism. Perhaps there’s a happy place somewhere in the middle.
In part 5 we poke at what we’ve done to turn our writing into an income stream of sorts. You may have noticed that neither me nor S.E. Reid are livestreaming from a mega-yacht, so use that to calibrate expectations.
Some stuff that we do cover:
When to turn paid subscriptions on
Expectations around growth, time, free:paid ratios and so on
Why having a non-fiction element can really help
The unpleasant bits: refunds, chargebacks, strange people, obligations
The various paid models for newsletters:
Early access
Premium archive
All paywalled / part-paywalled
All free!
Pricing, and knowing what to charge
How all of this affects the sort of audience you are building
Other options and platforms: Patreon, Ko-Fi, Wattpad
Hints of ads and sponsorship on Substack
I use the ‘premium archive’ approach. Everything I send out on the newsletter is free for everyone to read. After six months, posts slip into the archive. Paid subscribers get full access to that back catalogue, which contains 5+ years of my witterings.
If you’d like to jump into that back catalogue, it’s easy to upgrade. Or if you’re perfectly happy on the free newsletter — then carry on. Thanks!
Thanks for watching! Any questions?
Meanwhile.
The launch of my next serial, The Mechanical Crown, draws nearer. A big part of the work so far has been working out how much of a rewrite it is going to be. This is the first time I’m serialising from a (theoretically) completed manuscript, which creates a very different process to my usual. I’m nearly there, though.
Some bits to read:
Emma Gannon’s piece on the awkward question of ‘how do you find time to write?’ seems pertinent to the theme of Write More.
Following on neatly, Chris Chen @ Substack has crunched the numbers on how long we tend to spend staring at ads instead of doing satisfying things. Reclaim your time! Avoid ad-first platforms, especially the overtly evil ones:
The silencing of Sarah Wynn-Williams by Meta is one of the clearest signs that Meta is nobody’s friend, is in fact a determinedly evil company, and that Zuckerberg is a terrible, terrible person. The freedom-of-speech brigade should be all over this, and yet. The inimitable Carole Cadwalladr breaks it all down in Silenced. Podcast The News Agents also had an excellent episode on this last week.
