To pay, or not to pay…
It’s more than a question when it’s out of your hands
DO I DESERVE TO BE PAID? HELL, YEAH!
A question has come up about paying writers for their stories. I know where I stand at the moment. I’ve got 534 subscribers, and about as many followers. I put out my short stories for free — novellas actually — every Sunday night. I also put out my serial fiction on Wednesdays. Those I keep behind the paywall. As of this moment though, everything is FREE. That’s because I’m in Italy on holiday, and can only get here once in a while. The other day, a piece of our luggage was stolen. Unfortunately, it was the piece that had my WALLET in it As a result, I’ve had to cancel my credit card, and my debit card. And another result is that all those people I was a paid subscriber to, (sorry Margaret Atwood) will be dropping me. I won’t be able to fix the issue until I get back home and my new card arrives, but sometimes losing a Paid subscriber is as simple as that. Shit happens.
So do I want to be paid for my writing? As a matter of fact, I do. I now have my wife’s old iPad, where I’ve downloaded, uploaded (?) PAGES and have started working on my serial THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY, whenever I get a chance. That hasn’t been very often. But I have enough to keep caught up with when I get home and start working up on my ‘Stack again. I think one of the things I lost with my carry-on bag, was my copy of LE MORTE D’ARTHUR. (I’m hoping I forgot it at my cousin’s house back in Holland.) But do I want to be paid for the serial novels I have going on?
HELL, YEAH!
And my reason for this? I’ve put a lot of work into writing my stories. I write, and when I write, I write a lot. As my ‘Stack goes, I give the ones that matter to me, personally, away for FREE on Sunday nights. My Stories After Eight are the ones that matter the most to me. My serials, I put up for those few people behind the Paywall, because I feel they deserve something extra because they support me and believe in me. The thing about that, is that my serials are pretty fucking good. I have two of them going on right now. JACK OF DIAMONDS is my other one. People tell me they like my stories. They like JACK, and they like LOCKSLEY. They are paying for them, and so I feel I have to make the effort to please them.
The whole idea of me going paid was so that I could make a printed copy of my stories and send it to my PAID subscribers. That isn’t working out as well as I’d hoped it would. I had it all lined up, too. It was going to be a POD printing. I only needed about 70-80 PAID subscribers, and I could actually mail everyone a printed copy of one of my stories. But, nobody seems to want to play with me.
I’m not dropping the paywall though. That stays.
If my readers want to read, or listen, to the stories I read out, I’m good with that. Maybe some of them will get curious about my other stories? The serials? But I owe it to my 19 PAID Subscribers and feel I have to give them more. (One of them is a comp.) Three of them subscribed two days after I started this project. They are my friends, and I love all of them for different reasons. The others, I feel indebted to. That’s why I say I owe them my best. That’s not a problem though, because I love writing my serials. I want you to know that. JACK OF DIAMONDS and THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY are so different from each other, and are both challenging because they are so different. (I also have IN THE SHADOW OF THE MANDALORE, a SCI-FI Friday story I’ve been putting up as well, and that’s also FREE.)
With only twenty PAID subscribers — I know, I said one’s a comp — I don’t care if people complain that I shouldn’t have a paywall. Why shouldn’t I? This is my ‘Stack, and I’ve only got a limited amount of time left to figure things out. You see, I’m 66 years old. I’ve given myself 20 years to make something out of this. I could very well die before I reach that goal. I could end up with Dementia as well, or Parkinson’s, or Cancer, or anyone of a dozen other ailments. It doesn’t really matter. I’ve learned that life goes on, until it doesn’t, and I’m okay with that.
My attitude towards life has changed over the years, and not because of my age, but because of the circumstances that have brought me to this point in my life. If you want to know more about what happened, you can look in the archives and find the story of my friend Steve.
So do I deserve to be paid for my writing? My wife says that I do. The almost fifty years I’ve spent teaching myself to write, says that I do. The fact that I’ve put up stories that people seem to like, says that I do. If you want to pay, I’m good with that. If you don’t, I’m good with that, too. The quality of my stories is all that matters to me. I’ll be the first to say that my novellas mean more to me than my serials, because that’s where I challenge myself as a writer. Take my latest story as an example. It takes place in three different time lines. And the main character is gay. My daughter says I don’t have the right to write about that sort of subject. I say, love is love. And I believe that, too. I guess we’ll find out who’s right in the comments that follow.
The question still remains though, do I deserve to be paid for my writing? It’s because it’s fiction, isn’t it? Fiction is a hard sell here on Substack. If you don’t have a name, or a following, people don’t want to pay you. I suppose some people think that it takes no effort to write a story. And maybe for some, it doesn’t. But that’s not really true, is it? Writing a story, stringing a line of words along, is no easy feat. I enjoy it though. I love writing and editing as I go along: I love the whole process. For some strange reason though, the reader is the one who ultimately decides if I deserve to be paid. They are more than willing to pay for advice about investing, or for political views and opinions. They pay for cultural issues, food, technology, health, world politics, faith and spirituality…but for some reason, they feel that they shouldn’t have to pay for fiction.
As I continue to grow my ‘stack, I may find a few people who are willing to “gift” me with a subscription. I have the price set as low as Substack allows, at $30 Canadian for the year. That works out to about 8 cents a day. Sometimes, I think to myself that people don’t want to pay for my writing because I’m not a good writer. Self doubt is always going to be there for all of us though, isn’t it? Sometimes, I think they don’t like the length of my stories. People like short pieces. There’s no way of knowing what is, or isn’t, going to work. Is this piece too long? Who knows?
All I know is that I have to get a Hop-on Hop-off bus ticket and explore Turin.
I'd love to make money from my writing, and I do, a little - from short stories published in mags (some of them pay - don't think about how that converts in $/hour, you'd weep!), from a published short story collection (the publisher takes off a hefty chunk, and the printer/distrib), and hopefully from the crime novel coming up this summer. But Substack? I never considered it... I much prefer having people pick up the books. And who would pay for my thoughts about writing anyway????
Well said, Ben. It can be a frustrating endeavor, this writing. And couple that with an attempt to make money at it, and it's a bit like pounding a nail with your head. I only have one paid subscriber in 6 months and I still do all of mine as free. I, too, think fiction is a hard sell on here and frankly that surprises me.