A Note to Subscribers About Patronizing this Newsletter

It's happening.

Hello subscribers, friends, acquaintances, comrades, strangers, and secret government agents. This is my announcement that you can now choose to give your kindly patronage to my work on Weird Catastrophe.

Don’t worry, I’m not pay-walling anything. All of my writing and any other work for this newsletter will remain free and publicly available. But if you like the work and would like to support the development of more of it, you can upgrade your subscription on Substack to a paid option. Substack allows you to pay by the month or by the year, whatever is preferable to you. The only noticeable change will be that paid subscribers can comment on posts. Free subscribers won’t be able to.

This kind of patronage model, if its successful, is my ideal. The makers and creators whose work I respect and admire most — people like the essayist Noah Caldwell-Gervais; the stalwart critic of the videogame industry, Jim Stephanie Sterling; and Caitlin Johnstone, who goes beyond just public access to her work and explicitly states that all of her work belongs in the public domain — they offer their patrons important and stimulating work and the people who choose to support them do so not because they will get some special, cloistered perks, but because they believe in the work and want to see more of it. I hope I have provided that kind of work to some of you, and I want to keep doing so.

Also, there will now be a way to directly refer Weird Catastrophe to your friends. Its called the Subscriber Referral Program. Here’s the basics:

How to participate

1. Share Weird Catastrophe by Kody Cava. When you use the referral link below, or the “Share” button on any post, you'll get credit for any new subscribers. Simply send the link in a text, email, or share it on social media with friends.

2. Earn benefits. When more friends use your referral link to subscribe, you’ll receive special benefits.

• Get a Special Shout-Out for 5 referrals

• Join a 45-minute Discussion Group for 10 referrals

• Get a Handwritten Thank You for 25 referrals

So yeah. Substack encourages writers to offer some tiered rewards for readers who refer the newsletter. Since this isn’t something that you pay for, I feel more comfortable offering a little something in return. The best idea I’ve got so far is to do a special monthly shout-out post for those who refer 5 people or more (which of course you can anonymously opt-out of). And for those who refer 10 or more, we’ll do a special monthly online discussion/meeting about a general topic of my choice, be it cultural or political, whatever strikes my fancy, and you can offer up questions and comments. We’ll see how that goes. If you have any other suggestions, let me know.

And that’s it! Thank you all for giving your eyeballs to Weird Catastrophe. It’s been your interest, attention, and (spiritual) support that has kept this project going. Now you can give a little something more by clicking below. :)