I’ve been on Substack for about a year now, and I want to tell you something honestly: I’ve been watching how this place works, watching how I work inside it, and I’ve decided to make a change that feels overdue.
I’m no longer accepting new paid subscriptions. All my writing goes free. Every piece, every time, for everyone.
If you’ve been a paid subscriber, thank you. That’s not a small thing and I don’t take it lightly. I encourage all who have a paid subscription to Light Against Empire to cancel. I want you to know the reasoning isn’t careless. It’s considered.
Why I’m Doing This
A subscription is a contract. Pay me monthly and I’ll deliver. The problem is that contracts rewards regularity more than quality, and I’m not always equally good. Some pieces earn your attention. Some don’t. A flat monthly charge asks you to subsidize my off weeks the same as my best ones, and that’s not a deal I’m comfortable asking you to honor anymore.
What I’d rather do is let you decide, piece by piece, whether the work earned something from you. That feels more honest on both sides.
But there’s a second reason, and it matters more to me than the money question.
I’ve noticed something troubling in the year I’ve been here. Substack, for all its virtues, tends to reward writers who build tribes. Gather your people, serve their priors, confirm what they already believe. That’s the model that converts readers to subscribers and subscribers to income. I understand it. I’ve felt the pull of it. And I don’t want it.
Light Against Empire was never meant to be a silo. I write about power, about civic life, about what this country is and what it still might be. That subject requires me to listen across disagreement, not just to the people already nodding along. If I’m going to write about reunifying a fractured people, I can’t build a wall around my readership and charge admission to cross it. That’s a contradiction I’m not willing to live with.
Someone who disagrees with me should be able to read me without paying me for the privilege of being challenged. That’s not charity. It’s just the logic of the thing.
There’s also the plain fact that people are drowning in subscriptions right now. Seven dollars here, twelve there, it adds up fast and the guilt of canceling things you barely read adds up too. I’d rather remove myself from that pile entirely. Come when something I write is worth your time. Don’t come when it isn’t. That’s a healthier arrangement.
And honestly, there’s an older tradition I want to align with here. The pamphleteers, the essayists, the writers who put their ideas into the public square because the ideas belonged to the public. Writing meant to help people think shouldn’t have a cover charge. I’m not Thomas Paine and I know it, but I can at least try to hold to that spirit.
What’s Coming Instead
I’m setting up a Ko-fi page. If you read something here that you think was worth a few dollars, you can go there and leave one. Completely voluntary. No obligation, no guilt, no monthly clock ticking. You decide what the work earned, when it earns it.
I’ll include a link at the bottom of pieces when I remember to, and I’ll probably forget sometimes. I’ve never been good at asking for things. My mother would confirm this without hesitation.
The writing comes first. It always has.
One Last Thing
I want readers who are here because the writing is useful to them, not because they once clicked a button and forgot to cancel. I want people who disagree with me to feel as welcome as people who don’t. I want the work to earn its keep one piece at a time.
That’s the whole of it. Thank you for reading. Thank you for a year of it. I hope you’ll keep reading, freely, on your own terms. Oh, and just because I am turning off my subscriptions, well, I’m still choosing to pay for the good writing of others.
Dino
Further Reading: