Programming note — and a big sale

One especially fun consequence of working as a writer is that work seems to come either in great, heaping feasts or long, empty famines. This summer has been a fairly long stretch of famine for me, one I mostly spent waiting for other things to happen. Now, however, I find myself with two book drafts due by the end of the year and a few other odds and ends I'm hoping to place between now and then.  

Consequently, something has to give, and it's going to be the free edition of this newsletter. If you are a paid subscriber, you'll still get a weekly exclusive edition on Fridays, which will alternate between essays and recaps of the show Andor, with the first recap running on Sept. 22. Those of you who are paying to receive this newsletter are the only way I can keep it afloat, and I want to make sure you're getting your money's worth.

If you're not a paid subscriber, that's okay! But you'll be getting one newsletter every other Wednesday through the end of the year. In that time, I plan to spin up the Kirsten and Natalie series again, and I'm hoping to run some interviews with people I think are cool. So you're going to be getting some good stuff, even if you can't afford a paid subscription.

It would be great if you subscribed, though! To that end, I'm going to be running a deal for two weeks starting today. Instead of the annual subscription costing $50/year, it will be set to $40/year. (The monthly subscription will remain at $5/month.) If you sign up at the $40 rate, consequently, you will be getting four months completely free. (I know how to do math!)

I would really appreciate if you considered becoming a paid subscriber. Ghost is a very expensive platform to host on – my bill every month is in the $125 range. Since Ghost charges per subscriber (my rate goes up with every new tier of subscriber I hit), every new free subscriber adds to my bill. This newsletter has a very healthy readership and a large subscriber base, but the vast majority of those subscriptions are unpaid ones. That would be fine if there were more paid subscribers trickling in, but I've actually lost paid subscribers since resuming the newsletter in July.

I don't mean to shame anyone – these are challenging times financially for so many of us – but I am in a place where I'm not quite running ahead of where I need to be to keep this a going concern financially. So let me try to sell you on paid subscriber world!

• As mentioned, you get a weekly exclusive post on Fridays.
• Every other week, that post will be a recap of an episode of Andor, a popular TV show I really love that is about people who fight star wars.
• You get the opportunity to comment on posts and have discussions on all manner of topics.
• Starting today, you get access to a special Discord server just for subscribers, where you can ask me to perform crazy stunts.
• You will have my gratitude and thanks.

The newsletter business is driven by writers with specific areas of interest sharing their expertise in ways readers find engaging. The recommendation for building a readership for a newsletter is essentially the opposite of what I've done, which has been following my own whims into increasingly eclectic territory, especially as my relationship to television shifts from critic to creative. That I've been able to find any audience for this newsletter at all remains deeply humbling to me, and if you simply cannot afford or do not want a paid subscription, I remain grateful for your readership always. Many of you have followed me since The A.V. Club, and that means the world to me.

Thanks again for reading, and I'm going to post the subscription button again. Fancy!