How do we fund slow journalism?
In 2026, we're aiming for fewer emails, higher quality essays, published as print pamphlets. Here are my plans to fund that.
Next year, I’m focusing on longer, more deeply researched pieces that will be published as print pamphlets.
As a writer, this is something I’m very excited about. I’m already researching four pieces I’m extremely proud of that will each serve as standalone pamphlets as well as the cornerstones to my coming book, We Should Own The Economy. The one I’m working on now is already 64 pages in length, and weaves together ideas I’ve had for about 15 different posts or book chapters.
Ordinarily, writing something this long would be a bad move on the internet and I would break these ideas up into smaller posts, but because I’m writing a book and need to map out the larger vision they will create, they need to be tied together to encompass the larger vision.
This is a risk financially. I publish 70,000-100,000 words a year, and the going theory is that monthly subscribers probably feel like they are getting a better value if I publish four to eight 1,000 to 2,000-word posts a month, rather than one 10,000-word piece. But I do have some proof to the contrary: Mondragon was the only post I published that month, because, at 10,000 words, it took me that long to write, and yet it has become an evergreen post that has drawn in more free subscribers than any other essay I’ve written.
If there’s an economic disadvantage to publishing fewer posts in a year, there’s a major creative advantage. If I had published the piece I’m working on now as smaller posts, I would have been wrong. For the 64 pages I’ve written, there are another 35 pages I’ve cut—various hypotheses that weren’t borne out upon further research, and that ultimately changed my mind about the solution I’m recommending. Rather than put all those wrong ideas out and explore them in public, here I am fully exploring each one to come to a conclusion that is rock solid enough to form a book and manifesto that reimagines the future of our world.
Being able to take the time to do this has allowed me to track down historians and archivists who have fact-checked my essay and sent me images I could use with it. I have spent hours talking to experts on the subjects I’m researching, and have tracked down old books that are the only existing source material for the data I need. I’ve been sprawled out on my floor reading books and pamphlets that are falling apart in my hands, but I’m learning so much more than ChatGPT even has access to and this is allowing me to form, not just a hypothesis, but an original idea for the future of our cities, states, and nations.
It’s also allowing me to commission an illustrator for the piece. If I had published 10-20 pieces online, I wouldn’t have been able to afford 10-20 pieces of custom art, so I would have farmed it out to AI. But now it only requires one, so I commissioned a piece for it! I also have a graphic designer who is putting together a custom pamphlet for it. When the article is ready, I will publish it online, as well as a digital and print pamphlet on Metalabel. We can reclaim our attention and read slow, long, good things in print, rather than hundreds of emails in our inbox.
In an era of algorithms, this really speaks to me.
All of this is why I’m interested in an economic model that can fund slow art and that’s a combination of patronage + Metalabel for me. Experimenting with Metalabel this year made me realize that I can put out less frequent digital and print pamphlets with readers supporting the ones they love. Annual subscribers on Substack help as well, supporting the annual collection rather than each individual piece. Nove, I’ve also been asking organizations I admire if they’d be willing to become a patron, writing the introduction to an upcoming piece or series, while helping me fund design and print costs. Already, two have said yes—our next two issues are completely supported by patrons!
This strategy has every opportunity to grow as readers resonate with certain pieces and support them, as we continue to attract more readers on Substack and Metalabel, and as we meet patrons interested in helping us produce custom-designed pamphlets and books. But it also allows us to stay small and support the kind of niche utopian journalism I like to write here and invest in here.
I’m happily working away on several really exciting pieces, as well as a half dozen collaborative pamphlets with other writers, and I’m excited to see how this strategy plays out in 2026.
In the meantime, I’d love to know your thoughts.
Thanks so much for being here and for supporting the work. I couldn’t do it without you!
P.S. If you or an organization you know might be willing to support one of our projects as a patron next year, let me know, I’d be happy to share my coming projects with you. Just email me at elle@elysian.press.
P.P.S. For subscribers at our Collector tier, here’s how the economics work for our next two print pamphlets, with estimates of earnings and expenses:
This is The Ledger, a monthly strategy newsletter exclusively for my subscribers at the Collector tier.