A Note On Pledges And Subscriptions

Unexpectedly, and out of the blue, I got my first ‘pledge’ today, which Substack tells me shows that someone thinks my work is actually worth paying to read. To be honest, even though I’ve not turned on paid subscriptions, I wasn’t aware that the ‘pledge’ button was set to ‘accept’. Having read through the blurb at Substack, I now understand that a pledge will become a paid subscription if I choose to turn on paid subscriptions. I thank the person involved for their confidence in the quality of what I write.

My attitude to pledges and subscriptions can be summed up as follows:

1. I will NEVER solicit money from my readers.

2. ALL content and commenting facility on my posts is FREE and will always remain so - I don’t believe in limiting information or online comment to those who pay.

I guess if I was to write a book, then I would be happy to be paid to do so and happy with the fact that readers considered it worth paying to read it. Blogging is a little different in that the time and effort to write a blog post is considerably less than the time take to research and write a book. But I suppose if you look at the sum total of all posts on a blog, then that can be looked upon as a book in itself. So applying that logic, I guess I’m not ideologically opposed to opening up subscriptions and am deeply honoured by anyone who does think that reading my work is worthy of financial support. But, as I say, I won’t ever solicit donations and everything I write will always remain free to view and comment upon.

So, if at some point in the future, I begin to accumulate more pledges, then I might consider activating paid subscriptions. If that happens, then I will naturally feel obliged to put more time and effort into researching what I write and more time into actually writing.

Thank you to all my subscribers and commenters.