My Substack Has Experienced A Surge of Modest Growth and I'm So Shocked and Overjoyed I Can Barely Stand It
I don’t like to brag because it’s unbecoming and also because I generally have very little to brag about, but in the past two months or so, something positive happened in my career. Actually, there have been several positive developments.
My Substack newsletter, Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas, reached an all-time high. In the last thirty days, I gained 203 new and 20 paid subscribers.
My vitriolic eviscerations of Reagan and Megalopolis seem to have been the catalyst for this welcome growth. I went to the 9:40 screening of Reagan. The movie is one hundred thirty-five minutes long, preceded by a solid half-hour of previews and commercials.
That means my Reagan experience lasted nearly three hours and ended well past midnight.
It was fucking brutal, but I am professionally obligated to do my paid subscribers’ bidding. So if they said that I had to suffer through Reagan, then, dammit, I had to suffer through all two hours and fifteen minutes of that abomination.
Thankfully, I got a lot out of that piece. My suffering was not in vain. The piece was read ten times more than the average review and received all sorts of likes, restacks, and various other forms of very much appreciated validation and approval.
When I’m writing a piece that I’m particularly proud of, I always hope that it’ll attract attention and win me donors or subscribers, but that almost never happens. However, it happened with Reagan, Megalopolis, and Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas.
Unfortunately, while I had an all-time high on Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas, I hit another all-time low on this site's Patreon. To add insult to injury, Patreon recently suspended my creator account due to a glitch, and it took me weeks to get it back. At one point, Patreon, who have been my primary form of income for over seven years, asked me to provide evidence that I had an account with them because they didn’t recognize my email address. That made me feel special and appreciated.
I suspect that Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas' audience is also growing because the newsletter is less messy and less personal than this website. Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas is devoid of posts like this, for example. I can also work ahead on Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas because it involves less work, whereas I am regularly behind here.
Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas is also more interactive. I have paid subscribers vote on which movie I see every weekend and which lowbrow franchises I write up in their entirety.
Finally, with Substack, I benefit from recommendations from other creators, which can be huge. I’ve been lucky enough to get recommended by folks like Paul Scheer, Dave Weigel, and the School of Trivia, which has been huge for me. It does not hurt to be on a popular site already filled with simpatico film writers and bloggers.
The older I get, the more I don’t understand. That’s partically because I have Bipolar 2 and ADHD in addition to being autistic. So my brain works very differently than neurotypical brains do. Having those neurological conditions has made me doubt my judgment and problem-solving ability. More specifically I know how to have problems. I do not know how to solve problems.
But this blog post isn’t about failure. It’s about modest success.
Though I continue to struggle in many facets of my life and career, I have reason to be excited and optimistic. A few months back I started writing My World of Flops pieces for my old home at The A.V. Club. That has been going well. People really seem to dig the new pieces. I’m very proud of them. I’m five for five so far. I’ve written up Madame Web, Ant-Man: Quanumania, Hillybilly Elegy, Argylle, and finally, Borderlands, which hasn’t run yet.
It feels good doing something that people seem to really like.
Finally, after an unforgivable three years lapse, I have finished two books that I fucking love and think are great, The Fractured Mirror and my first novel. I can’t wait to share them with you guys. They’re some of the best and most work I’ve ever done.
I am overjoyed that something I’m doing is succeeding and growing more popular rather than less.
I also plan to revamp the site’s shop when The Fractured Mirror comes out and introduce several new options, like The Big Rewind, My Year of Flops, and a signed print of Felipe’s artwork for the site. So there is fun stuff on the way.
So please consider subscribing to Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas and reading me at The A.V Club. Also, buy my books when they come out, or I have a crowd-funding campaign for them.
Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas is heavy on amusing commentary about pop culture and light on existential despair. It’s fun! It really is! Become a paid subscriber now and you get to vote in every poll/control me.
For the first time in a long time, I feel like I have some real momentum professionally. I just need to keep it going and build on it and my genuine, organic enthusiasm for my work.
My pain will be your gain! And maybe you should consider pledging here as well. It would mean the world to me and costs almost nothing. For the price of a 99-cent hamburger, for example, you can access the Patreon archive and see my massive upcoming book, The Fractured Mirror, in embryonic form. I’ve posted over three hundred blurbs from it, and they’re all great!
To paraphrase the end of every YouTube, please subscribe.
Nathan recently got life-changing but extremely expensive dental implants and his insurance doesn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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