Moving From Substack to Patreon (and Back Into the Material World)

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to write inside platforms that are built to measure, optimise, and extract. Substack has been good to me in some ways, but over time it’s felt like one more place where the work gets folded into metrics of open rates and impressions. None of that has anything to do with why I write and honestly, I’m tired of all the digital muck of algorithms and engagement. I don’t want to think about it when I’m trying to sit with a thought and I definitely don’t want to curate what I put into the world based on what performs well.

What I actually love is making zines. I love the slow, quiet work of cutting and folding; of turning ideas into something you can hold. I love zines because they’re small, human-sized containers. They travel at the speed of the postal system. They land in someone’s mailbox, not their notifications. There’s a little nostalgia in that, but mostly it’s relief: a way to put ideas into the world without needing them to perform.

So I’m moving my writing from Substack to Patreon. Not because Patreon is a whole lot better, but because it at least gives me room to make physical work again. Instead of feeding the newsletter machine, I’m going to mail out zines. Real ones. Paper, ink, staples. If you want to read what I’m thinking about, you’ll get it in the mail like a small dispatch from another pace of life.

I also want this shift to feel accessible. I’m keeping it cheap. I’m not trying to make much money from this, just enough to cover printing and postage so I’m not losing anything in the process. Mostly, I want to share ideas with people who actually want them, people who appreciate slowness and small-scale connection.

If you’d like to keep reading my writing, you can join me on Patreon. If not, that’s also fine. I’m grateful you read along this far. But if you want a quieter way to stay in touch, you can check your mailbox. That’s where the next chapter of this project will live. In the meantime, I’ll still post here when new zines are released. I hope you’ll enjoy the next iteration.