Know the Customers

Subscribers aren’t yours. You are Theirs.

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Wait - what the hell is happening right now?!

There’s a trend developing wherein authors are offering to unsubscribe me from their newsletters. This of course includes a survey of why “I am leaving”. Duh, you asked me too?

I find this confusing. Maybe I’m not the only one. Aren’t I choosing them? I know for many on Substack, the goal is to drive revenue to their business. This is their life. Shouldn’t part of that model include 100’s, maybe 1000’s, of subscribers who look like ‘friends with benefits’? Who only show up when it suits them?

I think the authors in question might have the wrong impression of who the customer is. I am not theirs, they are mine. The product is consumption of written material. The reader chooses who gets into their mailbox, when they consume the material, and what they think of it. Ergo, it’s up to me to unsubscribe just as it’s up to me to follow, subscribe, or upgrade to paid. All that said, I won’t hang around to gather moss, but I’ll roll on out the door when asked.

I need to tell everyone I subscribe to that I read the newsletters of 100’s of authors. I catch them in dribs and drabs on a weekly basis and approximately every 6 or so weeks I read for days and then interact about it in Notes. It’s not feasible to do more than that and work a double day job and write and touch grass and eat and sleep and breathe. If this means I’m somehow harshing your authorial buzz, then by all means feel free to show me the door. But my parting words are this - As a writer myself, EVERY like, share, read, and subscribe is equally precious to me. There is not a perfect subscriber, there are only humans who will connect with us in the most perfect way possible - THEIRS!

To EVERYONE who interacts with me in Notes, follows me, or subscribes to Bren’s Buzz, please know that your engagement with me is on YOUR terms, never mine. The awe I have for the current band of heroes in my Bren’s Buzz community - 65 subscribers and 194 followers - is deeply organic. When I started, I had only one goal “to try writing to see if my book idea was supported”. What I found has been so much more. It’s a continual release of whatever inertia has held me back from being a writer for 59 years. There is not a moment that passes that I don’t think to myself - “Huh. I never expected this.” Please carry on, or not, but be it as YOU wish.