This inquiring mind wants to know

411 supporters

Aug 10, 2022

Hello everybody — I have some thoughts and a question.

The biggest difference between writing for publication and blogging is that when I write for publication I write what I already know, while when I blog I’m trying to discover new things. (Why would someone ask me to write for publication unless they think that I really know something?) Writing for publication is summative, blogging is formative.

I get a sense that most writers my age are in full summative mode: they’ve learned most of what they expect to know and are now sharing that knowledge with the world. Which makes sense — but I seem to be headed in the opposite direction. I seem to be more and more concerned with what I don’t know, with what I can’t yet understand, with what I hope (in whatever time remains to me) to get a grip on. I honestly don’t know whether this is a virtue or a vice.

The second biggest difference between writing for publication and blogging is that the former brings in more money. The latter rarely brings in any money at all, but thanks to the generosity of my supporters here I do get some compensation for my exploratory activities. Pretty remarkable! Thanks, everybody!

And yet the imbalance remains, and it’s hard for me not to think that I ought to be doing more writing for publication: it makes my employer happy, it gets a bigger audience, it’s more remunerative (which is good for my family). Am I being self-indulgent when I prefer the open-ended explorations of blogging, with its “fit audience though few,” to quote Milton?

I trust that you see my dilemma.

Now, I am going to be blogging just as much as ever from now to the end of the year, at the very least. But when I think of the longer term, I wonder whether I should be doing more to encourage support of this project and especially of membership. The problem is: I don’t know what that might be!

One possibility I have been considering is a monthly AMA (Ask Me Anything) here at BMAC – enabling comments on my blog would just invite spammers and trolls, whereas this is a more controlled environment. But that’s just a vague and uncertain thought.

So I’d love to hear what suggestions y’all have. Many of you simply can’t become members here, or even support it – and I totally get that. (I’ve recently had to cut back on my own Substack subscriptions, because those things really add up.) Because I get it, I am absolutely determined to keep my online writing open to all – and just as a reminder, that exploratory, open-ended online writing comes in three venues:

All of these will remain open and free. But, as my buddy Austin Kleon likes to say about his newsletter, they’re “free but not cheap.” A lot of work goes into them. So:

If you could possibly be encouraged to support, or become a member of, this project, what could I do to encourage that? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Grace and peace to all!

UPDATE: Thanks to all for your thoughts, they really help. I'm groping towards a better understanding of what I'm trying to do with my blog and how to use this service. When I have more clarity I'll post another update.

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33 comments

Someone

Supporter

Aug 27, 2022

I want to second Laura Gee on her tendency to think of support as a gift rather than a donation. I think it hits a key part of the problem: the tension between our anonymity as readers and the personal value of your writing to me. The weird thing about your blog is that we get access to a less formal you, a you in process of thinking. Usually we only get that with friends and colleagues. And accordingly my feelings lend that way too: you are a writer I have an attachment to, even affection for. (After all. I don't read many other people every day-maybe my mother's emails?)But I am not that to you! And rightly so: I add almost nothing to your intellectual work. Nor am I part of your family, congregation, social, or work circle. So we have an imbalanced relationship. Your relationship to me is more of the journalist to his audience: it’s appropriate for me to pay for your work. But my relationship to you is more similar to a member of our church or neighborhood—I want to support you both because I value your writing, but also because in a way I am invested in your success. It makes it feel weird for me to pay you as a customer or consumer. Now I suppose this is why a platform like Patreon is so named—it’s trying to navigate this difference. But a patron used to have status he or she might use to elevate a client or support an artist or scholar. We only have money. How do we not only fund you, but elevate you?So it seems to me the challenge is to get your readers a way of investing in your work that acknowledges our more personal investment without demanding more than you could give. The only more concrete thought I had was whether we readers might supply some of the benefit to one another. I had wondered about whether we might sponsor specific lines of thought somehow. But the bonus in my mind would be actually connecting to other sponsors: who else cares enough about this to put some skin in it? To give a specific example: I am particularly interested in arguments like your recent post about the shunning of the past. I've been doing a rereading of your Reading-Thinking-Breaking Bread trilogy with another friend who is a Classicist, and that's because I think it will help me with my own reflections about this strange discipline of relating to the past. I’d be happy to have that conversations with others. Here’s hoping this struggle gives rise to something good.

Laura Gee

Member

Aug 17, 2022

Dr. Jacobs, your blog is the only individually-directed/owned writing I support (meaning I subscribe to a few journals/magazines but I'm not a paid subscriber to any substacks--the $$ would add up too quickly!!). I think of my payment to you as a donation, partly because that's how you frame it; it's suggested, not required. But I also like thinking of the money I pay as my gift to you. It's my way of showing how much I appreciate the gifts you have given me by sharing your thoughts and discoveries on a blog instead of confining them to a personal notebook. You say, "Am I being self-indulgent when I prefer the open-ended explorations of blogging, with its 'fit audience though few,' to quote Milton?" I don't think you can be self-indulgent if you are giving something to others. So I suppose you could ponder if you'd like to continue participating in a gift economy via your blog (and I wonder if even the people who don't donate money to you may be passing along the gift in some way--like by engaging with political opponents in a more thoughtful and generous way, for example) or if you think you'd prefer it to be part of market exchange, which does indeed have many benefits but also obscures or eliminates many positive things that occur when you choose to share some of your writing as a gift.I do like the idea of a way to invite your community in to dialogue with you and each other. As another commenter said, the people who read your blog must be very interesting people. I think some sort of community feel would be nice, but perhaps it's not critical.

VL Brandt

Aug 15, 2022

I'm a long-term reader of your blog, which I believe I discovered through your writings at the New Atlantis, and have been pondering this post ever since it landed in my mailbox a few days ago. My sense is that your thoughts here on this page are pulling in different directions. In the original post, you ask two explicit questions of your readers. The first is,"Am I being self-indulgent when I prefer the open-ended explorations of blogging, with its 'fit audience though few,' to quote Milton?" The second is, "If you could possibly be encouraged to support this project, what could I do to encourage that?" The answer to the first question seems, to me, a resounding NO, you are not being self-indulgent. It is an act of generosity to share your thought processes with readers who ponder similar questions! But the fact that you ask these two questions within the same short space leads me to wonder whether you feel it is self-indulgent to blog _because_ it doesn't produce (much) income. In fact, although you state at the end of the original post that you want the online writing to remain open and free, you also comment in response to An Expat Abroad that "I wish I knew how much support justifies continuing the blog." So there seems to be a tension in your thinking about blogging: it should be free, but it must justify its existence by income. Both cannot be true at the same time. If we really want to instrumentalize blogging, to justify it within a capitalist framework—and do we really want to do that?—then I suppose I would argue that thinking in blog mode will somehow end up shaping (or revealing) your thoughts in ways that will eventually be instantiated in your published work. To paraphrase Longfellow: Talk not of wasted writing, writing never was wasted, if it enrich not the mind of another, its waters returning back to their springs...shall fill them full of refreshment; That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain. Your blogging is a gift in the Hydean mode. Gifts like this are particularly good at creating community, and I wonder if perhaps you might feel the blogging was 'paying' for your time and energy more if you were to open up comments that might help create engagement, open a dialogue. You write that opening up comments will 'just lead to trolls,' but was that your experience with comments at The New Atlantis? Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you; sometimes it helps to try to enlarge the field of possibilities.

Barbara A Winters

Supporter

Aug 12, 2022

So, I feel out of place responding with this august group of writers and thinkers. But I'm going to anyway. I'm a 76-year-old widow who should be retired but isn't. I need your blog -- and actually rely on it -- to help me keep dealing with the profound questions of life. There needs to be a category for folks who are sort-of in my tribe, so to speak. Eternal thank-yous for the work you are doing.

ayjay

Aug 12, 2022

Thank you, and bless you. I intend to keep writing on the blog no matter what!

Karen Wilson

Member

Aug 12, 2022

What if you could snag a $60K NEH Public Scholars grant to fund a year of explorations? I realize it involves publication in the end, but might it give you the creative space to run with your ideas and broaden readership at the same time?

ayjay

Aug 12, 2022

Thanks for the thought! The thing is, I don't have any trouble getting support for writing that leads to publication -- it's this open-ended exploratory writing that no *institutions* want to support. Which is why I'm grateful to the individuals supporting me here!

Angela Jones

Member

Aug 11, 2022

I also love your blog as it is. I especially appreciated your post today (8/11/22) on exhaustion, which gave me a lot to think about. And I also appreciate seeing you develop your thoughts on a particular subject. I would be happy to be a member of your project simply for that. Perhaps you might increase the number of paid members/supporters by having a platform where the paid members could comment and engage with one another, while the "free" readers could not? It should control the spam and trolls, at least. I could also see a potential to have community interaction in such a way that it would help to develop and sharpen some of your excellent ideas.

ayjay

Aug 12, 2022

Thanks! The community element is the hardest thing to manage when you have a blog -- Substack would be better for that, but I can't write the way I want on Substack. Something's gotta give!

Matthew Boulos

Supporter

Aug 11, 2022

Honestly, I love your blog as it is, and am glad to to support it however you need us to. What I worry about is that monetization can take on a life of its own, so make sure you love whatever else you want to add so it doesn't become exhausting. That said, I think it's quite something how interconnected you are to marvelous thinkers; access to them, in some shape or form, is something that's much harder for the rest of us. That could be anything from featuring them to AMAs where they participate with you to who knows what.I'd like that. But my support won't depend on it. Separately, this is an interesting take on these models: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

Bynorthemore

Supporter

Aug 11, 2022

Supporter, but would never be a member. Nothing against this blog (quite the contrary); just not a joiner. Personally, I'd rather see the blog left as it is. I really think you have a mission here, however few or unfit the audience it's fit for. But contrary to the "no money, no mission" mantra of the wider world, I can't help but think that for your blog, the more that money enters in, the more diminished the mission will become. A dilemma, as you say.

@matthew_loftus

Member

Aug 10, 2022

I think some dialogue series might be good. What you and Brad East and Jeff Bilbro got carried away with a few months ago was a lot of fun, and I think that could get you some of the things that people would want from a podcast if you did that with other interesting, intelligent people. Could even be a good model of charitable, generous disagreement if you picked subjects that you don't agree on!

ayjay

Aug 11, 2022

Sorry, Matthew, when it comes to charity in reading and arguing I'm strictly a theory guy.

Mark Ward

Supporter

Aug 10, 2022

Ironically, this very day a piece of mine went out on the Logos Bible Software blog that included this paragraph: “Individual blogging, it seems to me, is dead. The people who had it in their blood and couldn’t stop and got readers and made a difference found paid work. The few I still read, like Alan Jacobs, are just wunderkinds who are spilling over with so much good prose that they can give some of it away for free. But money does come to real writers, eventually.” I've given some thought and even some prayer to this. I'm humbled to get to advise a writer I've so long respected! I myself have Patreon and Buy-Me-a-Coffee support for my YouTube channel. The labourer is worthy of his hire, as the KJV says. But I have given away tons of blogging and (later) YouTube content for free over 14 years, much like you. I only set up the opportunity for others to support me when I had literal costs involved: a plane ticket to an event that was done for the YouTube channel. The support I immediately received was very heartening: people were just waiting to chip in! I think the question is whether you need the money. What is any of us doing with all his or her scribbling? Trying to love and bless and instruct and persuade or neighbors—and honor our God, the God of truth. You're doing this. You don't seem to be able to stop. ;) I and others here are grateful. Patreon and Buy-Me-A-Coffee are great ways for us to bless you back without the awkwardness of your fundraising or writing mainly gated content. Unless kids' college bills or some other specific need has arisen, I think that making regular mention of Patreon and/or Buy Me a Coffee (I've gotten advice to do both: the former for regular support and the latter for one-time gifts) will get you to the place where you feel you can tread out the corn without being muzzled. I, for one, am going to chip in. You *MIGHT* also consider changing/adding media and taking your blog posts to YouTube. I have found it to be a natural next step for the kind of content I used to put on my blog—and I have definitely reached a larger audience than my blog ever did. Perhaps get a super efficient method of recording in place (I could help!) and start putting out your blog posts (or many of them?) in that medium. Make it easy there for people to support you, and I think with your prominence you could easily be pulling in triple to quadruple what I make a month (which is about $825 from Patreon supporters and $150 from YouTube ads). Would that pay a sufficient number of your bills? If lowly me can get that kind of money, someone with your ability and reach could surely do better.

ayjay

Aug 10, 2022

Thanks for all the ideas! Filing them away for consideration.... My chief worry about add-ons is that in order to generate support for my writing I'll end up doing things that give me less time to write. Not the ideal trade-off. It'll be a balancing act for sure!

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