Another step toward becoming reader-owned media
A bunch of business updates and a request for your feedback.
This is The Ledger, an (almost) monthly newsletter in which I share the strategy behind building a media ecosystem and writing a book in public.
Today I want to share the new title for my book, a few changes I’m making to my business model, and introduce the next step toward becoming a reader-owned media, with a request for your feedback on how we should built this next.
First, I changed the title of my book
During the last board meeting for my forthcoming book, we agreed to change the title from We Should Own The Economy to We Should Own the Future. Here is the new mockup for the cover:
We made this decision for one reason: When I set about this research, I thought: the economy needs more equity owners, the government should incentivize that. I no longer think that, alone, will solve the problem.
Our economies primarily benefit investors, but so do our neighborhoods, our cities, our states, our national governments. As I’ve learned from my research, we need to fundamentally alter who owns everything, if we want the world to work in our favor. My book aims to provide a new vision for that world.
The book has expanded to meet that scope, as evidenced by the manuscript so far, and the new title is a better fit. Covers have been redesigned, I have three monster sections to research this year and next, and I’m planning research trips readers will be invited to attend next year, as well as our first conference.
Paid subscribers will continue to get new chapters as they come out, and I am still on target for a tentative January 2028 publishing date.
Second, I’m changing my collector tier
Paid subscribers at my Collector tier get every print pamphlet I publish in a year—that’s about 4-6 per year now. Based on the analysis of my business I did last month, I’m making a few changes to that tier. Going forward:
Print pamphlets will only go out to paid subscribers at my collector tier. They will not be up for individual sale until I’ve moved on to future projects. This is so that I can focus on my subscription business, with individual sales available only for purchasing past editions.
The exception will be collaborative pamphlets. When multiple people contribute to one pamphlet, articles will continue to be free to read online, and digital and print pamphlets will be sold as the series publishes, with collaborators sharing the profits.
There will no longer be an annual Elysian book. Now that all of my work is being printed as pamphlets and packaged into my forthcoming book, I will no longer be publishing the annual Elysian book, which previously contained one year of my written work. The book was great when it was the only print piece I published each year, but now it’s redundant. Volume III was the last one!
Also, our community now meets in Substack Chat instead of Slack. It was too difficult to onboard and offboard paid subscribers to the Slack space, whereas on Substack, that part is automated. If you want to join us, get the Substack app and click the chat icon to head to the chat space. You’ll find “The Elysian” there.
I will continue to use this space to share the behind-the-scenes of my life and work, host regular salon discussions and questions, and share ideas the rest of the community might enjoy. Paid subscribers at all tiers can start new discussions there as well. More to come for this space as I debut future collections!
Finally, we’re moving toward reader-owned media
I’ve long been experimenting with reader-owned media. I publish cooperative print pamphlets, sharing profits from pamphlet sales with contributors. I crowdfunded my next book from readers, and will share the profits with investors when it sells. Now, I want to make my entire media business reader-owned.
The idea is that the more you contribute to this community over time, the higher membership tier you reach, and the more shares you earn in a future Elysian Trust. Readers get points for every dollar spent on a Substack subscription or in the pamphlet shop, and those points are worth more the longer you’ve been a subscriber—points get multiplied by 1.25 if you’ve been a subscriber for more than 3 years, and by 1.5 if you’ve been a subscriber for more than 5. Readers get bonus points for commenting on posts (2 points per comment) and sharing posts with friends online (5 points per share or restack), as well as contributing guest essays (100 points).
Subscribers who have contributed most to the community, who have been with us the longest, and who participate in discussions and share posts earn higher membership tiers, receive higher benefits for their contributions. Our highest tier, “Trustees,” will even eventually earn annual dividends as my business grows, but that step involves a $1,500 business expense to change my business from an LLC to a membership LLC and I don’t yet have profits to distribute as dividends. I’ll wait until we arrive at that point to make the legal switch.
All of these metrics are tracked by my Substack and Stripe accounts, as well as my shop, so I had Claude design a custom plugin that lives on the backend of my website, connects to all of the above, and assigns every reader a membership score. You can find yours by going to this page and entering the email address you used to subscribe to this newsletter or to purchase a pamphlet from the shop. There, you should be able to see how many points you have and the various membership tiers available to you based on those points. (Please note that investments in my book are a separate project that come with their own tiers!)
So far, I’ve built the membership system that does all of the hard work, tracking everyone’s contributions and upgrading them into new tiers as we go. But I haven’t yet built out what each membership tier should include. That’s where I’d love your feedback!!! Please leave a comment and share ideas that could be fun to include in each membership tier. I’ll incorporate at a later date, and send out rewards when we’re ready to go.👇🏻
Thank you so much for contributing to my business over the years—for reading, commenting, sharing, and inspiring all of us to write and think about a better future. Some of you have been here for a long time—it’s been five years since I started this newsletter!—and I’m excited to invest in you in return, and reward readers who continue to be part of what we’re building here.
I’d love your feedback as we go!
Next up, I’ve got a new essay series publishing soon and I’m excited to debut that one shortly.
More to come,
Elle Griffin
That Claude plugin is awesome! Really cool to see how powerful these tools are in the hands of non-technical business owners. Congrats on the launch!
I would love to hear more about what you think subscription models add to the economy, and the future. As the majority of views I've seen is that a subscription based model, where the customer doesn't own anything (such as books, games, DVDs, etc), but has to continually pay to access them, is exploitative of the customer, and forces us into neverending consumerism. I assume you see subscription models differently, as you have said that's what you want to focus on, and as I know you are far more into collectivism than the majority of companies.