Dear reader,
In a day or two I will be shutting down or ‘pausing’ Existential Politics. I’m not sure for how long. I may even write the occasional free post, but paid posts will cease for now, as will payments of paying subscribers.
There are a few reasons for this:
I have built up a decent stream of income from paying subscribers on the site, but it isn’t enough to justify continuing in tough economic conditions at present. Also, Elon Musk’s Twitter/X/whatever it is suppressing Substack posts has made it much more difficult to promote and share my writing here, meaning that many fewer people are encountering it and new subscriptions have fallen to a trickle, while new paying subscriptions have virtually ground to a halt. One option would be to pay for a custom domain, but I have decided against this because:
I have a lot of crucial life things to get done and could do without the distraction of a writing quota for a while, even though finishing my second book last week means I have more time available. Paradoxically, while writing the book I found having that quota of articles to do was quite beneficial. It kept me in the groove of writing and served as a good place for testing and developing ideas. It also helped free up writer’s blocks (‘The Fear’) as they arose.
I think I could do with being quiet for a while. I’ve been writing an awful lot in recent times and feel like a period of (relative) silence would be a good thing, especially while I get on with lots of non-writing tasks and enter the publishing process for the book. Around the time the book comes out (likely early 2024) this will change.
Thank you to all subscribers, but especially those who have shelled out their hard-earned money to receive my full output here. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, or whatever the right word is. Certainly, from the rate of renewals, existing paid subscribers seem to have been quite happy.
So how does this process of ‘pausing’ work and how does it affect paying subscribers? Here is the blurb from Substack to writers:
Pausing lets you take a break from writing. When you pause, the billing cycles for your subscribers will be frozen. New readers will not be able to pay, and existing subscribers won't be charged. You can stay on pause for as long as you need, and when you're ready to start publishing again, you can unpause to resume the billing cycles of your subscribers.
If I should decide to close the thing down altogether, paid subscriptions will be cancelled and also refunded for any time remaining on their subscriptions.
Best wishes to all,
Ben Cobley, Existential Politics