I had been questioning books and the written word 1) as book sales decreased, 2) as newspapers folded, 3) as universities turned away from the humanities, and 4) as making a living as a writer became increasingly difficult.
All writers have to confront gatekeepers and these confrontations leave huge gaps between the beliefs we hold about ourselves and the beliefs others hold about us. A number of gates seemed perpetually closed, and I had been experiencing a significant gap between what I believed about my work and what it appeared that editors believed about it.
Having lots of engaged readers on Substack has been a tremendous gift. Their subscriptions let me know people still believe in the power of a good story to change the world and also believe in me. I thank my Substack subscribers from the bottom of my heart for this support.
Truly, thank you. Thank you.
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One of my subscribers is a friend, Jeff Dwyer, who was a children’s book agent for me before he retired. We were never able to sell a children’s book, but it wasn’t for lack of Jeff trying.
Recently he and I were in conversation about the model of an e-newsletter as a writing venue. I was questioning it. Jeff has worked in publishing in many ways, as an agent, as a bookseller, and as a publisher. I asked him this:
Don’t you think this newsletter stuff is a bubble that’s going to pop? How many of these can the world support? I love the idea, but I worry that it’s not sustainable.
His reply was incredibly interesting and helpful to me. He said:
I think the top-down management style of the publishing industry feeds on the desire of the talent to be validated, and if you have been on the inside of that business, as we were, you know it is an exploitative capitalistic business that takes advantage of the talent and competes them against one another to keep their compensation under control and their freedom limited.
I think that the SubStack model probably has flaws that I have not identified yet, but I like directly supporting the writers whose work I want to read and bypassing the management that is seeking to constrain their creativity and suck a portion of their revenue stream away from the necessary parts of the production chain needed to get the prose to the public.
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One of the staggering lines in that excerpt from Jeff’s email is “The real enemy of talent is not piracy but obscurity.” I don’t pretend to be “talent,” but we all know what obscurity can feel like. SubStack is fighting against obscurity and helping connect writers and readers. That is what Gutenberg did in 1450. It will only be a bubble if the talent lets it happen to them
Therefore, I sincerely thank you for your support of me and my work, especially stories that defend the living, breathing planet we inhabit. Please accept my true gratitude.
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