I Often Lose Subscribers When I Post
And I sometimes don't give readers what they want
I violate many rules of newsletter writing. I know because I get emails from various online marketing gurus who tell us to give readers what they want.
I don’t really do that. This means that sometimes, maybe even most times, I lose a subscriber or two when I post.
My approach toward posting often goes against the advice of marketing gurus, who insist that we not piss off our audience.
Another thing marketing gurus say we should never do: Tell our readers we are losing subscriptions. Well, I’m not losing subscriptions from a net standpoint. I’m gaining. But there are often a couple of drops with many posts.
This will probably happen again soon when I hammer Democrats, and Nancy Pelosi in particular, for denying Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) the role as the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee in favor of septuagenarian Gerry Connolly (D-Va.).1
Some of my subscribers are hardcore Democrats who worked their asses off during the last election. I have tremendous respect for that, almost as much as I have for first responders. When I write a negative post about Democrats, all I can do is hope that these hard-working folks don’t think it’s about them. I need to say what I need to say, though. But, just in case, thank you for your work.
It will happen when I post my upcoming essay tentatively titled, “DEI and CRT: A Primer for White People.” At least one person will sigh. Another will roll his eyes. They’ll both unsubscribe. I don’t need a marketing guru to tell me that white people of all political beliefs hate being lectured about race.
I lost a few subscribers when I yelled at men for not voting for Kamala because she’s a woman. I couldn’t help myself. I mean, come on, dudes.
The same is true of Trump. My attacks on him are relentless. I know for a fact that I’ve lost subscribers because of some of these attacks. A marketing guru would clobber me over the head with an iron skillet for saying, “Good riddance if you like Trump.”
I’ve just begun to start on Musk, who, if possible, is beginning to look to be more of an idiot than Trump. He’s only 53, so we can’t blame his bizarre antics on age (I blame them on his drug use, but I have no compelling evidence for this). How many Musk fans will I lose when I start up on Musk’s dangerous and gross behavior? I don’t like shadow presidents, especially craven ones, so, yup, I’ll be posting about it and losing a few subscribers in the process.
This doesn’t mean I only want to keep subscribers who agree with me. I enjoy debate with honest opinion that isn’t clouded by false premise. Opponents of Trump, for example, are an opinionated group full of people who look at the problem from multiple perspectives.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where if someone disagrees with you, it often means automatic severance. When half the country feels one way, and the other half feels the opposite, that automatically slashes the subscriber base in half if you write about politics.
If you go further, like I often do, and talk about race, things become even more segmented. I have objected loudly to racism all my life. I do that here, too. Slice. More subscriptions lost. Talking about race makes white people uncomfortable, even if they aren’t particularly racist or prejudiced. But I gotta say what I gotta say. The fact that I’m white makes me want to get loud about it because not enough of us do.
The same holds for writers like me who support the LGBTQ+ community. If you want to lose subscribers fast, post something like this:
That post was like a big sucking machine that sent subscriptions southbound like a gravel truck hurtling out of control down a mountain road. But I gotta say what I gotta say. It’s the whole point of writing. I want more subscribers like any normal human being would. But we live in a broken society. So I write about it.
You see, I’m concerned about the world I will leave behind. It hurts my soul to see Americans vote for an end to the climate fight, the loss of women’s health and LGBTQ+ rights, for corruption in politics, and for a hateful bully to be their president. Again. Much of this doesn’t even directly affect me. I’m privileged. I’m not a woman, I’m not gay, I’m not a Person of Color, and I don’t work for Amazon. I don’t know oppression on a daily basis.
Most of the terrible things that might happen will happen after I’m gone. For some reason, this makes me even more passionate about trying to help circumvent the disasters facing us.
When the next pandemic hits, do you realize that enough people won’t even mask up or vax that millions of people around them will die as a result? The science denial has reached that level. Mostly because the corporate-owned mass media is afraid of losing its version of subscribers — ad dollars, so it gives equal coverage to science denial trumpeters like Musk, who already has his own massive platform for spreading lies.
If mass media simply covered climate change completely honestly, without giving any credence to congressional snowball throwers, there’d be a mass movement toward fixing it. If it refused to cover vax denialists, there’d be no resurgence of measles, and maybe, polio on the horizon.
We live in a world where the corporate media misinforms, obfuscates, and covers up for an oligarchy of ryacht enthusiasts.
The Trump phenomenon doesn’t exist because people are stupid. It exists because many people are ill-informed or influenced by mass media and oligarchs like Elon Musk and his massive 300 million user-base Twitter empire.
Meanwhile, there are dozens of delta points for a future Malthusian event. I probably will dodge it if it happens. If I don’t, well, I have lived a full life. I’ll pass on to whatever spirit world awaits me while the world burns.
Maybe, like Jacob Marley, I’ll haunt the world by wrapping my chains around the necks of the rich.
But before I hit the grave, I’ll continue to fight for those who are younger than me, even the blind young Musk fanbois who worship his every Tweet.
Instead of losing subscribers who disagree with me, I’d much rather they post their objections in my essays or fiction posts. With very rare exceptions, all of my posts are free. All of my posts allow comments by everyone. It’s much healthier to engage than disengage, even with people you disagree with. Unless you’re a troll. Trolls get blocked.
For those of you who enjoy my fiction but puke at my politics, there is an answer, of course. You can choose to silence my political newsletters.
I provide instructions for seeing only the type of newsletter you want here:
I assign each newsletter to a topic type, such as political or fiction. Most people don’t want both. A few of you do. I appreciate your subscription, paid or otherwise, either way.
But beware, much of my fiction also relates to social justice. So there’s no way to fully escape my political beliefs.
For example, this short story demonstrates alarm about our phone culture:
I wrote about gender roles in this fiction piece:
This one explores climate change and The Rapture:
In this story, I imagine a society that incarcerates people who do nothing more than think about committing a crime:
This one explores a dystopian world where a news reporter disappears in a Trumpian world full of detention camps:
My upcoming novel, Restive Souls, imagines an alternative world in which the British win the Revolutionary War and immediately emancipate the slaves.
All this means that subscribing to Ruminato means subscribing to a certain type of worldview. If you are an enthusiastic subscriber to this worldview, I hope you’ll restack my posts to help them gain more readers. And I thank you if you already have.
I’m an eternal optimist. I think we can do better. I hope my posts reflect that, too.
If you’re still with me, thanks! Let’s make the world a better place, together.
Thanks for reading!
While you’re here, consider giving yourself a holiday present! 20% off the yearly plan. This offer ends one minute after Christmas Day.
Notes
Solender, Andrew. 2024. “AOC Defeated by Connolly in Battle for Oversight Role.” Axios. December 17, 2024. https://www.axios.com/2024/12/17/aoc-loses-gerry-connolly-democrats-oversight.
"The Trump phenomenon doesn’t exist because people are stupid. It exists because many people are ill-informed or influenced by mass media and oligarchs like Elon Musk and his massive 300 million user-base Twitter empire."
Truer words never spoken, Charles. People are either just stupid or willfully ignorant. We haven't paid attention to what's happening in our government for so long that when we really should, we don't.
Like you, I lose some subscribers the minute I hit send! It bothered me at first, but I've learned it is inevitable. There are so many great writers on Substack I cant possibly read them all, and I hope that is the case with those who leave me. Obviously I would like to keep them all.... but I'm sure I'm not everyone's cup of tea. 😂 I'm writing for the love of it...and the discipline of it. And I always look forward to what you have to say. ✌️
It's more than just not giving the reader the content they want - a lot of people are treating Substack like they treat Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and so forth: they're after numbers and they think you are too. So they subscribe. They subscribe so that you'll subscribe back. They aren't writers and they aren't writing. And because they aren't writers, there's a good chance that they aren't readers either; they're subscribers. They are validated by their subscription numbers and when you don't subscribe back, they're gone. And then there's the subscriber/numbers persons that, once they have your subscription, that's all they were ever after and they unsubscribe because they were never interested in your writing in the first place.