Monetizing or Not on Substack

In Terms of Coffee

A garden in the woods.

So what will it be? You’re a writer and you decide to set up a blog or stack and post on Substack to better publicize you and your work better known. The question is to monetize your blog or stack or not?

Perhaps you believe you need to monetize because you’re the proverbial starving poet and really need whatever money you can earn wherever you can. For most of us, I’m sure, a little extra income is always welcome, especially those of us who are retirees living on a fixed income. But there are many substackers who are are successful writers, journalists, artists, and professionals of diverse disciplines and are already financially comfortable. They monetize their stacks, yet also post material available to free subscribers and followers. How many of them really need the extra income?

I chose never to monetize from the day I became a substacker. Why not? Perhaps because I recall fondly those early wild days of the internet when everything was free as in free beer. Call me a cheapskate, but I love free stuff. I also like to share if I can and seek to donate what I can, whether it’s time, money, or stuff I no longer want or need. Giving away stuff serves as a cartharsis.

So everything I post here on my “Meanderings” stack is free, including selected excerpts from my novel and stories from my short story collection, both independently published through Amazon KDP.

Instead of monetizing and asking you to “buy me a cup of coffee,” I have a better idea. If you’d like to support my work, instead of a buying me a cup of coffee or even a pound of coffee, you could buy either the paperback or ebook edition of my books.

For the cost of a pound of my favorite Peets Major Dickinson dark roast blend, you can order my quirky novel, The Writer of Unwritten Books, as a paperback and still have a few bucks left over, not to mention an entertaining read. The ebook edition might set you back just a cup or two at your favorite coffee chop.

My collection of short stories, The Prisoner & Other Stories, is a collection of 20 stories, some of which were previously published in print and online literary journals. In terms of coffee, it’s an even better bargain. The paperback edition, including shipping if you pay for it, costs much less than a pound of my favorite coffee. For the price of a small cup of coffee at your favorite coffee shop you can download the ebook edition.

But here’s still better deal: If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can dowload my books for zip, i.e., $0. Nothing like a freebie.

And I’d like to thank those subscribers and followers who regularly read, comment on, and share my posts.