I Need Your Help
I posted this on the Happy Place as well but figured it made sense to post it here, for an audience made up entirely of people at the very least willing to press a button for a free subscription.
Two very big things happened for me professionally in April, 2017. My column My World of Flops was unceremoniously canceled by my old employers The A.V. Club and I began Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place as a permanent online home no one could take away from me or corrupt.
I think I set the initial Patreon goal for the site was five thousand dollars. That did not seem like a huge amount of money considering that I had been writing professionally about pop culture for twenty years at the time for The A.V. Club and later The Dissolve and I saw Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place as a full-time gig.
My monthly Patreon haul has risen and fallen through the years, or rather, it rose at the beginning and has been in a seemingly permanent free fall ever since.
Six years on, I’m on target to make about thirty thousand dollars from this labor of love, or what I would have made if I had held onto my previous job as a part-time video store clerk at Blockbuster in a Midwestern college town during the mid 1990s.
I’ve held out hope that SOMETHING would alter the site’s steep downward slide financially. It never has. I’ve been lucky enough to have an insanely generous 500 dollar a month patron or two over the years but the downside to that is that when they scale their pledge back it results in a big financial hit that I have yet to recover from.
Oh, but it has been exhausting having hope! Optimism has been the bane of my existence. It has filled me with delusional hope that tomorrow will be BETTER than today instead of markedly worse.
I’ve given my site six years to become financially sustainable. Not only have I not reached my modest goal but I’m further away from it than I have been for years.
My life and particularly my career have been one long humbling. I had a few good years there a little over a decade ago and have been paying for it ever since.
I did what we Americans are supposed to do. I had a vision for a business that I wanted to read as well as write. I worked hard and constantly introduced new features to liven up the site and attract new readers and patrons.
I don’t want to say that I failed but I have achieved considerable non-success as a freelance writer. It’s reached a crisis point. I can’t go on this way for much longer.
That is why I am asking you for help. Do you know of a job I might be qualified for? Let me know! Do you need someone to write a coffee table book for you? I could do that! I wrote “Weird Al” Yankovic’s coffee table book with him and he is a HUGE deal. Do you need someone to ghostwrite a book for you? I could do that as well. I’ve self-published a lot of books successfully, all about “Weird Al” Yankovic. Would you possibly be interested in re-publishing them? Al is VERY popular!
How about columns? I’m a whiz at writing columns! I wrote a little column called My World of Flops that’s currently in its sixteenth year of existence. That introduced a little phrase you may be familiar with, Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Or movie reviews? I was a professional film critic for eighteen years at The A.V. Club and The Dissolve. I was pretty damn good at it and I have been dipping my toes back into those deep waters over at my Substack Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas.
I would REALLY appreciate it if you would pledge to Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place and become a paid subscriber to Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas. I have been banging out entries for my upcoming book, The Fractured Mirror, for the book’s Kickstarter and the Happy Place Patreon.
It’s not unusual for me to post five or six exclusive articles for the book on the Happy Place Patreon a WEEK yet that honestly has not resulted in a single new patron.
I’m so, so, so proud of the work that I’m doing on the Fractured Mirror book but it feels like it’s going into a massive vacuum and disappearing immediately. The downside to doing so much work on The Fractured Mirror is that I’m devoting a huge amount of my time and energy to something that will not make me a penny for months and months. The Fractured Mirror will be an amazing book. I just worry about it finding an audience.
I need help. I REALLY need help. Without help there is absolutely no chance that I will be able to get out of debt and transform Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place into a commercial success or even something mildly sustainable.
Are you a business whiz with a brilliant idea on how to make Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place a hit? I’d love to hear it! Would you like to buy a share in the site? I’d be open to that as well. Hell, you can sponsor a column if so inclined.
I’m basically open to any way of making money that isn’t illegal or immoral. I’m an honest man who would like to do an honest man’s work for an honest man’s wage. So I am very open to freelancing or part-time work. Or public speaking! I would be happy to give a speech at your book club or national convention.
I’ve attained an impressive and unusual skill set over the course of my twenty-six years in the business. Let me help you help me help myself.
I also would very much appreciate more patrons for Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place and Travolta/Cage, more paid subscribers for Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas and more book sales through this site’s shop.
And if you want to be an angel and PayPal me a donation to help the Happy Place get through this miserable time you can do so at nathanrabin@sbcglobal.net. You can also email me there or at nathanrabinauthor@gmail.com to discuss work.
Some people are great at asking. They make a request and the universe giddily acquiesces. That’s not me. If I were any damn good at asking I’d be making more than thirty thousand dollars a year over a quarter century into a career that I think is impressive in some respects. When I ask, the universe shoves its hands in its pockets, looks down awkwardly and changes the subject.
My first book, 2009’s The Big Rewind, was about how I overcame all manner of obstacles to become a successful pop culture writer. In the ensuing years I’ve lost faith in my ability to overcome obstacles or be a successful freelance pop culture writer.
That is why I REALLY hope that this is a good day on the internet for me and that the universe is kind because I really need a win in a world that can seem unbearably cruel.
Check out my newest literary endeavor, The Joy of Trash: Flaming Garbage Fire Extended Edition at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop and get a free, signed "Weird Al” Yankovic-themed coloring book for free! Just 18.75, shipping and taxes included! Or, for just 25 dollars, you can get a hardcover “Joy of Positivity 2: The New Batch” edition signed (by Felipe and myself) and numbered (to 50) copy with a hand-written recommendation from me within its pages. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind collectible!
Or you can buy The Joy of Trash from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Trash-Nathan-Definitive-Everything/dp/B09NR9NTB4/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= but why would you want to do that?
Buy my many limited edition signed books about “Weird Al” Yankovic over at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop
Pre-order The Fractured Mirror, the Happy Place’s next book, a 600 page magnum opus about American films about American films illustrated by the great Felipe Sobreiro over at https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
And we would love it if you would pledge to the site’s Patreon as well. https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace
Me not know anything about business, me just monster who enjoy your writing. But me do have one thought. Me have enjoyed getting steady stream of posts from Fractured Mirror in inbox these last several months. It terrific framework to talk about movies, it introduce me to movies good and bad me not knew existed, and it goes without saying that it well-written. You obviously have put loads of work into this.... but me already gave you my money.
Me feel like you have used Happy Place and this Substack have used quantity-and-quality approach, where you put tremendous effort into entertaining small devoted audience. But because it all directed at same people, none of it bring in new subscribers or new money.
And let's be honest, me have no idea how to bring in new audience. Me ended movie podcast because, after spike in traffic after one relatively well-known guest, audience generally just slowly slid into oblivion. (And me got consistent complaints that me was hard to understand. Me mangle English? That unpossible!)
But me did have this thought: me remember you were writing for mommy blog while back. Would it make sense to try and get paid work from Vox/Verge/Vulture (why does every pop culture web site start with V?), and scale back on Happy Place? Me feel like you could give us half as much content and most subscribers would still be perfectly happy as long as we get regular updates on Nicolas Cage and Weird Al, and then use rest of time/talent/energy to try and make money elsewhere. And again, me not really know how to navigate freelance market (which is why me have had steady gig on Sesame Street since 1969), just first thing me thought when reading this.
Phish stuff