It's my birthday!
So you should definitely open this email. ;)
A couple of things have happened in the last few days:
I hit a nice round milestone number of subscribers to this newsletter! Hello and hi to all the new folks! I’m so happy you’re here!
It’s my birthday. Today! It also is a nice round number. A new decade!
I didn’t actually expect these things to happen at the same time, but this seems like a good point to do the thing I’ve been thinking about doing for a while:
Open a paid tier to this newsletter.
Wait! Before you delete this email — remember that it is my birthday.
Okay, still here? Whew. Here’s a cat picture as a reward for not ditching me.
The first thing you need to know: nothing is going away for free subscribers. I will be adding something for paid subscribers.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while and come to a few conclusions:
The writing and publishing section of my newsletter is the most popular section. It gets the reads, the shares, the new subscribers. Yay!
It’s important to me to help educate authors so they can better advocate for themselves — and understand what is “normal” in this industry.
It’s also important to me that the information is free for everyone to read.
However, it’s not free for me to write. It costs me time and brain energy that I’m not spending on my books.
I think it is content worth paying for.
Like I said, though: I do want that content to be free. So even a few paid subscribers will help make it sustainable for me to share more posts like What happens when you aren't your publisher’s Chosen One and Understanding author money. (My latest one is The regular life of being an author.)
Obviously, I know money can be tight. Upgrade to paid only if you can. You’ll still get the same writing and publishing posts regardless.
But for those who decide to upgrade, I will be offering a little extra:
Sneak peeks about upcoming books and what I’m working on.
Occasional Deep Thoughts. (Stuff I want to talk about but doesn’t fit in any of my established categories.)
Q&A will be open to you.
Book/show/movie/game “reviews.”1
Priority topic suggestions.
Access to the full archives of this newsletter.2
Bonus cat pictures, probably.
My undying gratitude.
My plan is to have an additional post each month for paid subscribers. I might add to this in the future, as I figure out what I like doing and what I’m willing to share. If you have suggestions, I’m ready to hear them.
I’ve set the prices at the lowest Substack will allow — $5 a month, $50 for a year, and $100 (or whatever) for a “founding” membership, which is an extra step up and I have renamed “unicorn level” because anyone who chooses that option is an actual unicorn. Right now, I don’t have any plans for that tier, but there could be extra posts for those readers in the future.
So that’s the news for today! I’m going to finish celebrating my birthday with some cinnamon rolls . . . and working on MY SALTY MARY. We’re going to turn it in Friday! And the moment that’s done, I have DAWNBREAKER pass pages to read, which are due next week! And then edits on a different book!
Confused about the writing and publishing section? Not getting those emails? You can add them here:
If you’ve been a subscriber for a while (before December), you might not be getting all the emails. When I first switched to Substack, I thought I would let those be opt-in, and people who wanted those emails could just take care of it themselves. So I only subscribed everyone to the news and updates section.
But then, I realized new readers who were coming for the writing and publishing emails weren’t getting those emails because of the extra steps. So now everyone is subscribed to all the emails upon hitting the “subscribe” button. I wrote a little more about it here.
Here’s a bonus cat photo for everyone. (The cats’ birthdays are this month, too. Just sayin’.)
Quotes because it’s largely going to be positive — what worked for me, rather than what didn’t, especially when it comes to books.
The archives are all currently unlocked and anyone can access them. I haven’t yet decided when/if I’m going to lock older posts. But if I do, they will be accessible to paid subscribers.
Happy Belated Birthday! May birthdays are the best!
Happy birthday!