As of today, the zornhau substack is now live. Going forward, I’ll be mirroring posts both here and on substack. If you’d prefer to get your fix direct to your email feel free to sign up.
Why Substack?
For a long while I was using patreon as the outlet for my various ramblings. While it has been a great tool for fostering our little community — and bankrolling art, etc on the side — people are trained to see “patreon” and assume that all the content posted thereto is behind a paywall. This isn’t an entirely unfair assessment, but it does create a barrier to the public content being discovered. On top of that, to use a social media site of any stripe is to accept the idea that at any time, you can be removed from the platform or lose access thereto. In the process, you lose not only your audience, but also your archive of work.
Setting up a proper site under which to host all of my work as a priority, and so I set up zornhau.com. This gives me a place where I can put all of the news, announcements, and rambling blog posts, but also product pages, downloads, and so on. Eventually, we’ll even have our forums back up. The thing about running your own site, paying for your own hosting, is that you have complete control of everything there and can back it up as you please.
The downside of setting up your own site is that it’s a silo, not a network. While it is one place to store all of my content, it is not a good platform for sharing said content or building a community around it. The reality of our digital landscape these days is that you need to be able to reach out to people or they’ll forget you exist. That’s where social media tends to come in, but also things like newsletters and so forth. Substack seemed like an ideal solution to all of the above, getting the combined benefits of an email list and a social media service. And if I leave for whatever reason down the line, I’ll be able to take my list with me, and stay in touch.
What about Patreon?
The patreon won’t be going anywhere. If you are a paying patron now (God bless you), you’ll still be getting access to locked content, most of which will be hosted on the zornhau site going forward. If, down the line, I open up a paid subscription option on substack, I’ll end up mirroring the same content there as well.
That’s all for today, Scoundrels. Thanks for your support.
-Brooks
