I had a few people indicate that they would be willing to support a paid Substack. I am thinking about the possibilities, but my initial reaction is that the easiest way for readers to support my writing is to buy lots of copies of my books. (The website Books2Read has links for all my books at all online bookstores: link to my page.) Most online stores have my books as e-books, but they are available in paperback at some large booksellers’ websites. (Most of my sales are via Amazon.)
The advantage of readers picking up my books is that sales increase visibility. For example, on Amazon, when readers buy a “related” book, they might see a “readers also bought” prompt with one of my books listed. I do not expect to be a best-selling author, but my books sell relatively well in an extremely niche category that sells very few books (for authors not named Stephanie Kelton). Slow, steady sales helps give my books remain somewhat visible.
Another advantage of selling books and making my online writings free is that customers are only paying for finished products (unless something messes up the files being distributed, which somehow happened recently). If I stop writing tomorrow, I do not owe any of my book customers anything.
The initial challenge with a paid Substack is that I do not want to go into the economic forecasting newsletter business. I was in that business earlier in my life, and firms in that business have been regular consulting clients. (I am making more from that consulting work than I am from writing, unless you people dig really deep into your wallets, or I successfully branch out into romantic fiction.1)
The other issue is: what content would be reserved for paid subscribers? If I were a top-selling author, I could reserve my book manuscript drafts for paid subscribers, as a “sneak peak” feature. The problem is that my model is that I want to get feedback before publication from as many people as possible.
One possibility is to open paid subscriptions without much in the way of expectations for exclusive content, payments would be essentially voluntary “tips.” This might be attractive to someone already forking over cash monthly to Substack for other writers. However, from a straight expenditure basis, the money is most useful to me in the form of book purchases (even though my royalty take is going to be lower than my take of any Substack earnings).
In any event, I welcome feedback on this topic.
The economics of publishing is somewhat interesting. Most non-fiction and fiction writers very much inhabit different worlds. If you look at the top-selling books, fiction sales generally dwarf non-fiction sales. Inventing a popular “intellectual property” can be even better than winning the lottery. The problem with fiction is that you are competing against a wide-ranging list of living and dead authors. Pushing your way into visibility in the field is extremely hard. Some areas of non-fiction are similar: e.g., cookbooks. But in niche non-fiction, you have the advantage of the possibility of readers searching for books in your subject area. Look at how many books you can find about “MMT” versus how many books you can find about “vampires.” If you want to make money writing, you either need to figure out how to crack your way into one of the many fiction genres like “Young Adult Greek God/Vampire Crossover Stories” or anything involving erotica. Or else, you need to find a good non-fiction niche, and line up a book with a solid hook so that the book cover is enough to drive sales. (You can also get good book sales by already being famous.) I doubt that I have the stamina for the fiction angle, but I could do my homework and focus on an “elevator pitch” book.
I subscribe to many newsletters here but I went for paid in only one. That one provides regular reporting directly relevant to my work and makes me better at my job - the subscription price is cheap compared to the value.
For most of the others, there is relatively little value in what they give me. I am happy using my time to mine them for the occasional nuggets of gold (new-to-me insight). Paying double digits euros per month per newsletter is just too expensive for that.
I was happy to buy and binge read your books. The one-time payment was quite reasonable compared to the value. I am skeptical I could justify an ongoing subscription charge unless it's present value is comparable to buying all your books - and I suspect that would not be worth your while.
Then again, I would be very interested in macro commentary from a MMT point of view - not at the detail required for consulting professional investors but at an educational level. With a sufficient level of regular insight, it might be worth a reasonable subscription fee.
It's ok to go with paid subs , but pls make it reasonable so that the average size trader can read and learn