You agree to the terms of service below, and the Terms of Use for Substack, the technology provider.
Dear paid and potential subscribers,
I appreciate you from the bottom of my heart. I want to share my point of view about how my Substack publication differs from, say, The Atlantic, or Newsweek. These are large companies with big budgets, a staff of writers, office real estate, a separate department for finance, HR, legal, printing, web development, etc. They are large global publishing houses. You never know who is pulling the strings, or what the agenda is. You can engage a tiny bit online. Maybe. But you will never communicate directly with their writers and editors. You will never be invited to publish or asked for your ideas. You will never be answered by them. In short, they don’t care about you—you are just a number. If you cancel your annual subscription, they will probably refund the remaining months, eventually.
On the other hand, I am a one-person show, do everything, and don’t hard-sell anyone. I make it a point to be accessible personally to every subscriber, with paid subscribers always a priority. I deliver high quality work, on a deadline, consistently, and publish four times per week, or forty-eight times per year. I don’t make my living from writing (yet), so it’s work from the heart. Each of you matters to me and I care about what you think and say, and how you want to engage with others in this community. This is a high-quality, innovative, unique work of craft available nowhere else. That is worth a lot.
The point of this comparison is to say that, like other writers here who have given thought to this issue, please understand that annual subscriptions and founding member plans are not refundable, and are considered donations. Thank you. -KMR