Moving to a Paid Subscription Model Explained

Last week I announced that my Substack will move to a paid model beginning on December 1. This is a decision that I have been considering for some time. I started blogging about the Civil War, historical memory, and history education in 2005.

Over the last decade and a half my work as a historian and freelance writer has evolved into book projects, advising museums, public lectures, and guided tours to bring public spaces of memory and our common history to my audience.

I am incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to share my love for history in numerous ways with teachers, students, and the general public. This new model of a tiered subscription allows me to elevate my focus and engage with paid subscribers in more depth to address your comments and lead focused discussions in the chat room.

Connecting with people like you over the years through blogging and social media has been rewarding in ways that I never could have anticipated when I first started out seventeen years ago.

I am looking for opportunities now to enhance the ways in which I can connect with you. Substack allows me to centralize my social media footprint within the community that I value the most. I have met some of the smartest and supportive people through this site. This is where I feel the most comfortable and where I have been rewarded the most over the years.

If you do nothing moving forward and simply continue to read my blog posts, you have my heartfelt thanks. In fact, moving forward everyone will have access to my blog posts. From what I can tell, the most common model for going premium on Substack is to set aside individual posts for paid members only. That option is unacceptable to me.

Here is what will change:

• Comments: The ability to comment will be open to paid members only. This was a decision I made this week after only realizing that it was an option. Moderating comments takes way too much time. You would be amazed at the amount of hate mail and inappropriate comments that are never approved. I’ve thought about turning off comments altogether, but that would close me off from learning from all of you.

• Chat Room: I’ve been playing around with this new space all week. It has a bit of a Twitter feel to it. I will continue to use it to follow up on blog posts that I have written and share news stories that relate to the subject matter of this site. I also have plans to use this space to host discussions about books, articles, and primary sources.

• Podcast: I am going to use this space to record relatively short 5-10 minute book reviews. I’ve never thought seriously about starting a podcast, but Substack makes it easy to record very simple no-frills episodes. Stay tuned for the first episode after Thanksgiving, when I will discuss one of my favorite books of 2022.

I look forward to continuing writing for you here and engaging with you in our common interests. Most importantly, I look forward to continuing learning from each other.

Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.