I started this blog, substack, or, best suggestion, column because, in Bob Dylan’s words, I had a head full of ideas that were driving me insane. (Note: must write about that man one day). Making money wasn’t on my mind except as the excuse that bought off resistance to the idea. My hope is still to get a book deal that gives me permission to improve the best of these essays, all of which obviously would have benefited from changes and additions as soon as they were published, rewrite them in a way that removes the need for links (or, God forbid, URLs), and write some overarching essays on their main themes, even, God also forbid, a bit more autobiography.
I need more paid subscribers.
Have you noticed, everyone who publishes on Substack sends out one of these “housekeeping” begging letters eventually? Even the successful writers do it, to justify to themselves the terms of their success. It’s because we’re our own agents and publicists here. Not a job a writer wants, but then most blogs on Substack are pure sales and marketing devoid of creative content and either people really want that or desperation is driving a kind of mad memetic push where everyone sells to everyone else the useless secrets of their would-be success. Certainly, trying to use the terrible Substack search engine only exposes the vastness of this effort in a bleak, end-of-days vista. But that’s not my problem, my problem is affording the Microsoft Word subscription, the YouTube subscription, Soundcloud subscription and a handful of Bandcamp downloads (don’t even have a Spotify sub) on the bennie.
The answer, I’m told, is to start paywalling my columns, but this is hard, in part because I egotistically write to be read and connect with you lot, in part because much of the music I write about deserves a lot more publicity and critical respect than it gets, which I’m altruistically keen to give it for free. So I guess I could paywall the posts about rich and famous artists with a clear conscience. If I find any such worth writing about.
And as I do have a small number of people to thank for supporting me financially; paywalling posts with a velvet rope gives me a way of thanking these stalwarts, and anyone else with the goodness to join the happy few. Subscriptions sell for $8 a month or $80 a year. My goal is around $200 a week because that’s what Newsroom or The Spinoff would pay me for a similar effort when I had the opportunity. Currently I’m sitting at around 5% of that. $200 an article is a shit hourly rate, but then, I write what I want to write, completely unasked so I have no-one to blame but myself. I’m grateful to be read, you’re all brilliant, there’s no judgement here, and sharing is also a kind of contribution.
Here, I’ve republished, for paying readers, an article I wrote for Bill Direen’s Percutio magazine in 2011, about my inspirations as a musician, songwriter and writer. It’s not available online afaik. And I’ll stick a little commentary with it and a couple of curios.
Below the paywall, that is.
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