I’ve just turned off paid subscriptions (and so my one paid subscriber – to whom I’m extremely grateful – will get a refund).

I may revert at some point in the future, but the fact is that for the sake of my own mental health, I need to feel that this is a place where I can just play, rather than putting myself under the unnecessary pressure of having to produce ‘important’ work on a regular basis – I run a reasonably successful Patreon gig where I already have that commitment, plus I’m writing and self-publishing my own books.

Moreover, I’ve seen plenty of statistics now about the proportion of paid to free subscribers, even amongst some of the leading lights here. That number seems to hover at an average of between 1% and 3%, so until you have amassed thousands of subscribers in total, the likelihood of earning any kind of meaningful income here is slim. And frankly, I can’t be arsed. Instead, my Posts will contain links to my Ko-Fi page https://ko-fi.com/henryhyde where readers can donate if they feel they’ve been sufficiently entertained or informed.

Besides, it’s not as though I yet have any works of fiction, poetry, essays or a service to promote that would tie in with my activity here. (I design book jackets and maps, but there seems little point shoving that in people’s faces at a time when AI is affecting the industry so comprehensively. But if you’re interested, https://henryhyde.co.uk/design/)

In fact, what’s really interesting to me is that by meeting and engaging with other writers here, it’s given me new ideas about the kind of things I actually want to write. And for that, I’m grateful and content to separate my activity here from my professional life.

Finally, I edited magazines for ten years and it has to be said that this place feels very ‘magaziney’, with constantly rolling and extremely diverse content, and it’s triggered a familiar response in me to stop and bang out a few hundred words of content, as if for a looming deadline, resulting either from my own thoughts or in response to others, that I know is ephemeral. And if it gets a few likes or restacks or none at all, so be it. The satisfaction and therapy is in the doing – any feedback or payment is a bonus.

And so, folks, everything I do here is now free, and I can simply enjoy the company of a huge number of other creative people. lt feels quite liberating.

Have any of you made the same decision?

(Update: I have now recorded my own voiceover, rather than you being subjected to Substack’s AI alternative.)

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