A Note to Free Subscribers
On Upcoming Changes
Until quite recently, I have operated under the assumption that in this day and age, it's virtually impossible to write for a living. However, in a turn of events that both shocks and humbles me, I am now markedly closer to writing for a living than I have ever imagined I'd be. Substack has drastically changed how I think about my life as a writer. In fact, I could confidently say that Substack has changed my life.
I started the publication that would become Hickman's Hinterlands as a casual experiment; I did not post consistently, I had no clear thematic ambitions — in fact, I had no ambitions for the publication at all. I had already internalized the myth that no one 'makes it' as a writer in this day and age. To me, it was already a foregone conclusion that writing as a job was off the table — I only started a Substack at the behest of a few Twitter fans, and I only monetized it at the request of a few die-hard readers who wished to toss me some “beer money” each month for my efforts. I was grateful for it, and enjoyed posting my random thoughts as I liked.
In only a few months, however, I’d be making as much as I could make at a part-time minimum wage job. The income isn’t much by normal American standards, but for a practicioner of ‘extreme frugality,’ it is now — amazingly — a living in the most very basic sense of the word. That these developments have come in the six months following the end of my enlistment in the US Coast Guard seems to have been an extremely fortuitous sequence of events. I had no idea what I’d do upon leaving the military — and it seems my readers have answered that question for me in startlingly short order. I accept their charge, and will work as diligently as I can to ensure that their faith in my ability to produce meaningful, enlivening writing is not misplaced.
And as of this week, Substack has dubbed Hickman’s Hinterlands a "2024 Featured Publication." In only four days, I’ve gone from 2,980 subscribers to over 3,900. Presumably some of you now reading this article are among these recent newcomers to Hickman’s Hinterlands, and I am exceedingly thankful for your interest in my work. Truly, it means the world to me.
As of now, I am at a “fulcrum point” where with only a few more Paid Subscribers, I’ll not only be able to travel farther afield and for more sustained periods of time, but I will also be able to provide for a family. This is especially germane lately, as I and
will be married in June (!) with children to follow soon after, God willing. They’ll need to be fed and cared for — and either Hickman’s Hinterlands will cross the threshhold of being a full-time job that is legitimately capable of supporting a family, or I’ll need to start thinking of directing my energies elsewhere. While I am willing to pivot away from writing if needed, I feel that the written word is my first calling — and I feel that now is my chance to find success as a professional full-time writer and author with your support.And so it is that I will now be paywalling most articles I post, effective next week.
I am writing you — all of my Free Subscribers — now because you deserve a “heads up.” Your interest in my writing means the world to me, and I don’t want to let you down. At the same time, this work takes time and costs money, and if it is to become my full-time job in earnest, I’ve got to start employing at least a modicum of entrepreneurial shrewdness about my efforts here. As one very successful fellow Substack author recently told me at a pub in downtown Albany — “You’re writing and that’s a job. Don’t give all your hard work away for free.”
I was touched — and I had to admit that he is right.
For I realize that the work that I do is not frivolous. The industrial and digital revolutions have ushered in dramatic technological and social changes in harrowingly short order. Whatever the fantastic benefits of these revolutions have been, they have come at the cost of spiritually, culturally, and anthropologically destabilizing the great mass of human beings in the developed nations. Many of us are lonesome, overworked, without free time, and even feeling lost, depressed, or hopeless. We look on with wonderment at what the vast techno-industrial Leviathan has wrought; and we yearn for tribe, tradition, wilderness, and God. We crave a living tendril of mythopoeic human beauty which is ours to dwell in and steward.
The mantle of the writer, the artist, the musician, the dancer, the thespian is to seek and articulate the enlivenment of mankind in any era or age — in times of famine or war or depression, he is the bard who lifts spirits and reminds them of the why.
And the traveler goes and finds the still-burning embers of this sacred why at the far corners of the earth. The vagabond does not “visit” a “place” so much as he is swallowed up whole by a great bird and subjected to the sublime randomness of his flight. He is dropped helter-skelter in all of the world’s edges, be they squalid and distressing or ecstatic, faith-restoring homecomings among warm-hearted strangers. His mantle would be considered frightening to many, and yet after over a decade of itinerance in one form or another, I am certain I was born to do it.
Where once I was doing this desperately, for myself, for my own hope alone — now, as a writer, I can do it for you.
And with that, I have offered you my petition — humbly, I hope — and given you a nudge in the direction of investing in this work. Moreover, I have given you a “heads up” that the majority of my work will now be paywalled, at least for a while. I hope you understand; thank you again for your support and interest, from the bottom of my heart.
God Bless,
A.M. Hickman
P.S. — I should finally note that “Founding Members” who subscribe at the $240/yr tier will receive free copies of my upcoming book about how to survive homelessness. They will also fund the distribution of four copies of the book per year to homeless people and those at risk of becoming homeless. The book should be ready to publish later this year. Thanks again for your faith in the work that I am doing.