Has anyone seen Steve Job’s first iPhone unveiling? It was a big presentation — stage, screen, turtle neck, yada-yada — and there’s this moment when he is about to reveal the iPhone.
He says:
“So, three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communications device.”
And again:
“An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator.”
And then the reveal:
“An iPod, a phone… are you getting it? These are not three separate devices, this is one device, and we are calling it iPhone. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone, and here it is.”
Wow. Truly, an incredible marketing campaign. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend checking it out.
Yeah, so anyway, we’re doing the opposite of that. Over the past six months, we’ve tried to extricate ourselves from, well, ourselves. From now on there will be Chill Subs, Sub Club, The Forever Workshop, and Write or Die. Each do different things and have built up their own audiences. So, we will be growing them separately and trying to isolate each membership before building some sort of bundle.
What does that mean for this newsletter and all of you? Well, good news!
This newsletter is now completely free. All paid subscriptions will be donations. We won’t be paywalling any more content. We have enough paid subscriptions for things that are actually worth paying for. I mean, I’m not criticizing your spending habits. But like, thank you for sticking with paying for Things We Do While Waiting To Die. You’re either really nice, or really irresponsible, or…mother? Are you still here?
Anyway. Some things are just for the birds and the bees. So if you want to stop giving us money, please cancel your paid membership to this newsletter.
But, I mean, if you insist:
Thank you, thank you.
I will continue using this startup diary to update everyone on all our disruptive synergistic innovations decentralizing the writing world…or some shit.
Can we send each and every one of you hard-working scribes a black turtleneck - - so you'll feel like you just stumbled out of a Greenwich Village coffeehouse (or maybe like the next Steve Jobs)? x o x o
Generous!