New Section! New Schedule! New Pricing!
Happy 2023 W.A.S.!
Issue #210 Weekly Summary January 2, 2023
Happy New Year, We Are Speaking Readers and Subscribers!
This issue is slightly different from our usual weekly summary because it has some additional information to start the new year and the 11-month anniversary of our publication.
New Section Yesterday we introduced a new section of W.A.S., “Keith’s SciFi Musings.” As you may know, Keith is a published author, with the majority of his books in the dystopian, fantasy, and Afro-Futurism genres. He is also one of the co-founders, writers, and editors of Detroit Stories Quarterly, a print and online magazine with short stories written by various authors. All of the stories in DSQ have a Detroit basis but are also all written in one of the above genres. Now Keith will write a weekly article here in W.A.S. about the dystopian, fantasy, and Afro-Futurism ideas that come to his mind.
New Schedule As we expand W.A.S., we now publish nine issues per week: 7articles and 2 podcast episodes. It is our intention to provide you with valuable, informative, and even fun articles and podcast episodes that are all original writing.
Monday: OpEd
Tuesday: American History and Culture
Wednesday: Education
Wednesday: Find Out In Fifteen Podcast
Thursday: Government
Friday: Friday Funday
Saturday: W.A.S. Podcast
Sunday: W.A.S. Weekly Summary
New Pricing I have been pondering our pricing structure for a long time now, and I’ve also studied the pricing structure of several other Substack publications. Some Substacks are completely free to all subscribers, some Substacks are only for paid subscribers with no free content, and most Substacks, like ours, are a hybrid of free and paid.
Some Substacks charge $7/month, $10/month, or even as high as $30/month, however, the majority charge $5/month. Some Substack writers publish once a week, once a month, 3 times a week, or daily, as we do, and what they charge seems to have no relation to how often they publish.
We have been charging $10/month, $100/year, and $250 for Founding Members. We really appreciate the financial support from all of our paid subscribers so far.
The number of issues we publish weekly has almost doubled since we began in February 2022, but we’ve decided to go with the pricing structure of the majority of Substack writers:
$5.00/month (or about 14¢ each per 36 issues/month)
$50.00/year (or about 11.5¢ each for 432 issues/year)
All articles are free to read for 15 days after they are published. After 15 days, the articles become for paid subscribers only, including in the Archive. The podcast episodes are always free. Paid subscribers have access to the entire archive of our articles, can participate in the exclusive W.A.S. online chat, and can also join us every 2nd Friday of the month in the new W.A.S. AUS (Ask Us Anything) via Zoom.
$100.00/year (Founding and Premier Subscribers have all the benefits of monthly or annual subscribers and also receive free signed copies of our books)
If you are old enough to remember getting the daily newspaper, these subscription prices are actually cheaper than the 25¢ (daily) or 50¢ (Sunday) we used to pay.
You get a lot for just $5.00/month or less, wouldn’t you agree? The new pricing structure began on January 1, 2023.
ICYMI (In Case You Missed It): We were on a reduced schedule last week. Here are the articles and podcast episodes we published this week. Click the date to access the link to read and/or listen to that day’s article or podcast episode.
If you want to receive email notifications for just the Weekly Summary, Find Out In Fifteen podcast, and/or Keith’s SciFi Musings instead of the daily emails for each issue, here is how to change your settings:
Let us know which articles or episodes you like!
The W.A.S. Weekly Podcast will return on January 7, 2023.
Don’t Forget! If you have the W.A.S. app for iOS and Android, you can listen to each article by clicking the little headset icon. You can also participate in the W.A.S. Chat (for paid subscribers only).
Paid Subscribers: Join us in the new W.A.S. Chat!
I will be leaving Twitter soon, so I am concentrating much more on my Instagram account. Please click the link to follow me on my ‘Gram.
I am also now on the new and wonderful “Bird Alternative” site called POST. You can follow me there. (There may still be a short waiting period, but you’ll be ahead on the list with the invite link below.)
You can always leave any questions in the comments or email us.
Free posts are available for 15 days after publication. Adjust or upgrade your subscription here. Thank you for your financial support!