No need to delve too deep into the why—I can only echo the thoughtful reasons other writers have given for leaving Substack. Lines have been crossed. I do not wish to associate with the company. I can’t accept your subscription money via this platform knowing where a percentage of it is going. Trans rights are human rights.
I started my Substack in December, not long before Ireland went into an ongoing lockdown, and working on it has been one of the great joys of this deeply unpleasant period. I’ve been trying to write both personal and ambitious stuff and it’s been phenomenal to see so many of you here for it. Honestly, the last couple weeks have been a real downer knowing that I’d have to turn away from what I’d been building on Substack. Never mind, though, because I’ve made the positive decision to move over to a new platform in Ghost and I think my newsletter is going to be even better than before. Most of the old posts are already there—I’m still moving in but take a look at how good it looks. And importantly, you don’t have to do anything for future posts will continue to land in your inbox. In fact, my most recent post should have dropped in your inbox via Ghost a few hours ago as a test run. If you’re a full subscriber, your payment schedule will stay as it is.
Ghost can do things that Substack can’t and vice versa, but a key difference is that whereas Substack takes 10 percent of your subscription cash, Ghost requires you to pay up front, after which you can keep all that sweet sub moneys for yourself (excluding Stripe’s small cut). To migrate over there, I had to decide whether it would be worth the investment. Well, I’m here to tell you that I’m backing myself to make this work economically. There will always be a free component to my newsletter but moving forward there’s going to be a lot more subscriber-exclusive posts, which was the way I’d been planning to push my Substack anyway.
So I’m taking this opportunity to encourage you to sign up. It’s $5/€4ish a month or less if you buy a year’s subscription. If you are unwaged, in precarious employment, or for any other reason unable to show your solidarity financially, please get in touch and I will grant you full access, no charge.
When I started on Substack, I intended my page to simply be a continuation of my oft-neglected Kinja music blog Lactose and Lecithin after it got pulled offline by the ghouls at G/O Media. That’s why I kept the name. As I got more into the platform, though, I found myself writing on a lot more topics than music. As the title no longer feels appropriate, I’m renaming the newsletter DEAN MAGAZINE. Simple, you know, and reflective of my broader interests that I’ll continue to write about.
For your subscription money, you will of course receive music writing, like my “Cowboy Bebop” column. But you’ll also be getting wider cultural criticism, personal essays, reviews of radical literature, in-depth movie articles (I’ve a series of deep dives on under-appreciated 2000s films coming up that I’m very excited about), and political writings from a left wing perspective. If you like reading about that kind of stuff I think we are going to have a lot of fun. The more paid subs I get, the more time I can afford to invest in DEAN MAGAZINE and the more prolific I will become. I’d love to eventually have the time to get on a more regular schedule. Let’s see how it goes.
That’s it for now. First Ghost newsletter will be next week—a freebee to get it going. Thank you for your support always. Stay cool.