I’ve started working with LeakyPaywall to get paid for some of what I write. For $10 a month, members will get access to subscription-only content on the site, which will include videos, previews of forthcoming projects, and eventually occasional emails and invitations to events, all while supporting my work. It’s meant to be easy to sign up for and also easy to cancel. If there is ever an issue, send me an email, a message on Signal (@EchoWhiskey.28), or find me on any of my socials.

I am SUPER sensitive about the way email marketing can turn into a hydra, spying on all of us, selling our data and tracking our behavior. That’s why email will come last as I figure out how best to control the access it has and what exactly it does with that access.

I will keep many posts free to view, but the stuff that takes days to produce and edit will be for members going forward.

One bit of housekeeping: I’m having issues retrieving the old (and unused) subscriber list. Funny story: I didn’t even know Jetpack had been collecting names. There were no alerts, emails, badges. Nothing. I disabled it because it was making the site sloooooooow, and now it doesn’t want to show the subscriber email details. I have a ticket open with them, and the reps have been super responsive. All of this is to say that if you were a subscriber, you might want to sign up again for the free email list, just to make sure that when I get the thing rolling, you’ll be kept in the loop. Thanks!

PS: I did consider Substack: it’s elegant, affordable, and does a great job at building an audience. But then there’s this. The Guardian has talked about it too, among others. Alternative platforms didn’t support the whole scope of what this site has become, so until there’s something affordable, beautiful, and robust that doesn’t have a Nazi monetization problem, I’ll stick with the ancient code held together with duct tape and plugins we all call WordPress.