8.20.2024 (Daily Note)
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Quick summary: A look at the EP subscription landscape—plus (as it turns out) more about books.
The Subscription Landscape?
I launched this series of Daily Notes talking about the challenges of Substack. And now I’ll talk about another one: the subscription-based model.
In Substack lingo, there are two kinds of subscribers—”free” and “paid.” That seems pretty self-explanatory. But as always, the Devil card is in the detailed spread.
Basically, all Substacks are made up of three components:
Some frequency of email posts (from daily to once in a blue moon)
An archive of those email posts (and possibly some posts that were not emailed)
Other possible stuff (podcasts, chatting, perks, so on)
Let’s look at 1 and 2, which are pretty much a necessity, and can be completely free or partly free or never free.
The most popular structure for Substacks that offer a paid option is some combination of access to more/different posts, and/or access to the archive. On some Substacks almost everything is available to paid members only. At the other end of the spectrum, everything is available to everyone, and paid subscriptions are a way to support the publication, not a payment for extra stuff.
In the middle of that spectrum is the option to make all posts free at first, then put them behind a paywall as they get older. Which means paid subscribers have access to archived posts, but free subscribers don’t.
I don’t like the idea of writing for subsets of readers, and I didn’t want to be locked into a certain schedule of posts. (Tried that several different ways, but failed every time!) So I chose “archive access” as a gesture of gratitude to any folks who want to support EP with a paid subscription.
I’ve never really called attention to this before—and when I link to an older post in a new one, I unlock it for a while. But if you just want to look at an EP post from more than a month ago, you might see a little “locked” icon.
With all that said, I’m going to announce a bit of a course change.
There’s a lot of content now behind the paywall—nearly 300 posts. Of course subscribers who’ve been around a while have some of that if they chose to keep the emails. But new free subscribers will see previews of older content, not the whole texts.
I’m not sure how much this matters in practical terms, since I don’t think many people actually want to browse the archive—which is not categorized, tagged, or otherwise organized for anything other than a keyword search.
But that brings me to the next point. I don’t want to leave interesting content just languishing in a dusty archive, so I’ve begun the process of “withdrawing” (unpublishing) content from the archive in order to create a series of ebooks.
And . . . although I’ve been rather awkward at charging money for EP access—I have absolutely no qualms about selling content in the form of books!
The first one will be a revised and updated version of the first part of my first book, Tarot: History, Mystery, and Lore. I haven’t decided on naming yet, but that’s the gist.
The debut volume should be ready sometime in September, and the second part not too long after.
I’m already planning several more, but will save that for tomorrow’s Daily Note. For now, I want to loop out a bit, and address an important question.
Ebooks?#@!*?
I know for sure that some folks who like EP, and may also like my existing books, really (really) want books they can hold in their hands, stack on their nightstands, and decide where to put in their library shelves. They may be keen to write in them, or they might settle for Post-Its.
But they want a physical artifact, not a virtual download.
I’ve honestly delayed this project for a long time, thinking that I “ought to” produce another “real” book. I’ve only recently come to a firm decision—and I’ll take up a little more of your time to explain my book philosophy.
However handsome and papery History, Mystery, and Lore may seem to the appreciative eye, it was a HUGE undertaking to produce. Even lucky as I was to have a good agent and a good publisher, just getting to a deal took most of a year. Then more than a year to write, followed by seemingly endless rounds of editorial back-and-forth. It’s a little easier today, but actually, not that much.
An ordinary author has zero control over how their book is designed and promoted by a traditional publisher. Zero. Here again, I was lucky to have a beautifully designed first edition in hardcover. The soft cover edition of that book was charming in its own way as well. But my second book—which took just as long to write—was horribly designed, badly promoted, and never made back its advance. (I won’t get into the financial side of traditional publishing, which is not the main part of my equation, but it is a consideration.)
As a loftier matter, printing books uses up lots of trees, and the cost of moving books around the country makes up a significant amount of their cost to the consumer. To say nothing of various issues associated with all those trucks and trains. Although some publishers now have distributed printing, which lessens the impact, the traditional model remains inefficient and destructive.
Many (many) physical books end up getting remaindered, dumped, or pulped. Even some really good ones. And since no one knows which books will actually sell, there’s no reason for any author to think their book won’t meet the same fate.
It’s absurdly expensive to get color into a print book—which is why the beautifully illustrated Tarot books come from specialty publishers like Taschen and Lo Scarabeo, and are funded on Kickstarter. You have to have a big, identifiable audience to justify the production expenses.
One last thing: The above is not meant to throw shade at printed-book-lovers! I have 2000 books—and many wonderful people have multiples of my number. But that brings up another problem. What will become of them all? I wish I had a good answer for that question, just as a personal matter.
Okay. I’m off the hobby horse now, and on to a personal statement:
I want to design my own books, decide what goes in them, flood them with color, and share them affordably. Besides that—I want them to be searchable and updateable.
To be honest, I don’t even want my books to be text-heavy Kindle books. I want them to be at least a little spatial, not entirely linear. Expandable, modular, whatever presentation seems to fit a particular subject.
And I’m going to argue that my book vision is inspired by and aligned with the spirit of Tarot.
So I’ll close by hoping that even the most ardent print fans will make an exception in the case of Complexity Tarot—an imagined imprint of my imagined epublishing company. About which, more in tomorrow’s Note.
Whatever happened to—
Alert readers may have noticed that I wandered away from a discussion of EP’s subscription landscape, and into a long-ish discourse on book publishing. The two topics were related because content currently in the EP archives will be making its way into my Nine of Cups publishing fantasy.
And . . . assuming the books come to be, they will reconnect with EP in various ways, as sketched out in tomorrow’s Note.
Meanwhile: Another “whatever happened to” would be my promises of a virtual library tour and some cliffhanger resolutions. All still coming—just not today!
As it works out I have less bandwidth than anticipated this week, so I’ll be getting things out in shorter bursts. But all will be revealed, I promise. And tomorrow will definitely include my new “Serendipity Journeys” widget.
Can’t leave today without a deck, however. So I’ve reached into my Tarot spreadsheet and pulled out a 78-card ode to color: Cathy Nichols’ Synchronicity Oracle Deck.
Not only do I love the wildly saturated palette of this deck, I’m captivated by the card called “Finder of Lost Things.” Plus the inclusion of four extra cards representing the seasons, and a die that can be used for an extra level of fateful randomization.
As always, thanks for reading! More soon, C