A heartfelt plea for your support during our Pride sale
It's a great time to subscribe to Episodes. Our sale runs through Tuesday.
Hello, Episodes subscribers, readers, and friends. It's editor-in-chief Emily St. James, here to ask you to support us by becoming a paid subscriber during our annual Pride sale. I'm going to do a heartfelt plea in a second, but if you're already convinced, here's a button you can click.
Episodes is unique among culture newsletters, with a history running all the way back to over a decade ago when I started it to give myself even more work. In all that time, as I've switched jobs and even careers, Episodes has been the one constant. But because it's always been a thing I do in addition to everything else, I've never pushed as hard for it to become self-sustaining as I maybe should have.
I will be frank: Most of the time, I barely break even putting out this newsletter. It depends on the monthly churn – some months, I actually lose money – but between hosting fees for the newsletter (which are substantial, given our large number of free subscribers), paying managing editor Lily, and other sundry expenses, this newsletter is always a money suck. It's so tantalizingly close to starting to sustain itself that I keep plugging away at it, but we never quite get over that hurdle.
So here is my first plea: If you have gotten meaning from my work at any point in time, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. The numerous benefits you get from signing up are ones Lily ably covered last week, but you'll also get the benefit of knowing that you're helping me breathe easier at a time when it has grown devastatingly hard for trans voices to gain any purchase with larger media platforms. I do not know the last time I had a pitch accepted by a major publication.
I know I am luckier than most! I have a career writing fiction and for television. Yet at the same time, I am currently between TV jobs, and I got my last Woodworking payment earlier this year. So the money is tight and grows ever tighter.
Lily Osler
(Sidebar: If you are facing economic hardship and want a complimentary subscription to this newsletter, send me an email at emilystjams at gmail dot com with "comp subscription" in the subject line, and I'll gift you one, no questions asked. All I ask is that you tell your friends about the newsletter if you like it.)
Now, since hiring Lily late last year, this newsletter has gone from losing money to mostly breaking even. We are on a good trajectory, which is proof to me that what we're doing is working. But we're still really far behind where we would need to be for Lily and me to make this as stable as I know it can be. If we could get just 25 new annual subscribers this Pride sale, that would go a long way toward helping us build for the future. 50 new subscribers would give us serious breathing room, and 100 would make us start thinking about how to build even more cool stuff. Podcasts? YouTube videos? Hand-printed zines? The sky's the limit.
More, one of the initial goals of me beginning a subscriber-supported version of this publication was to be able to spread that money outward. It's gotten harder than ever to gain purchase as a culture freelancer, and Lily and I are dedicated to finding a way to bring those pieces back to this site. With 25 new subscribers, we could easily commit to one freelance piece per month, a thing we're both very excited about doing.
I won't reiterate this at length, but our Pride sale is the best time to sign up. For $40 a year, you get access to everything Episodes publishes. That's a savings of 20 percent over the $50 it normally costs for an annual subscription, and a savings of over 30 percent over the $60 you'd spend at the $5/month rate. It's a great deal, and we put out some great stuff. But don't listen to me! Listen to our subscribers, who say:
I wasn't sure if I was going to get "my money's worth" when I signed up for your newsletter this year. But this has unequivocally been some of the best money I spent this year. Nothing I read has been as consistently delightful, fun, engaging, and thoughtful.
Episodes abounds with thoughtful writing on film, television, music, and storytelling in general. It's a fine place to discover both incisive analysis of things I've watched and recommendations for what to check out next. And the Discord is a lot of fun as well.
My career is nothing without all of you. I'm so honored that you continue to read my words and care about my work. I hope that you'll consider helping me out again, and I promise it will be worth your while. So click the button for great savings! Our sale runs through the end of the month!
Sincerely,
Emily St. James
editor-in-chief
