A brief note on paid subscriptions to diabolical

Clarifications.

Yesterday I posted an announcement: I was opening up the paid subscription option here at diabolical. My goal? To make a go at being a truly independent journalist and critic, speak truth to power and all that jazz. Do good work for you and you only, dear readers, oh thou droogies of mine.

One thing I didn’t mention? How it works.

Here’s the deal with Substack: Writers like yours truly get to set subscription prices, decide which posts are paywalled and so forth. 90% of the proceeds go to me, 10% go to Substack.

With enough paid subscribers, I could basically turn this into a full-time gig, focus more on the type of writing I do here, but also migrate some of my other writing, like TV and movie and game reviews, to this space as well. That’s the dream. We’ll see if it happens.

The vast majority of the money you spend subscribing to this newsletter goes directly to me (unlike, say, paying for access to a mainstream website). I will use this to devote as much of my time as possible to writing the best material I can for you—some behind the paywall, some in front of it. You can read my earlier post to get a bit of a deeper dive into all that. I just also wanted to clarify how the system works at Substack. $5/mo is also the absolute lowest Substack will allow you to charge (other than free) so that’s the bottom floor in terms of pricing. See what a bargain I am?

In any case, thanks so much for reading and for your support. Y’all are aces. And a super duper massive thank you to everyone who has already signed up for premium diabolical, by far the most sinister decision you’re likely to ever make. Your evilness is truly, deeply, whole-heartedly appreciated. Thank you. I promise to bring you the best possible content I can muster.