HELLO! (A little bit of an explanation about why I am here.)

Thank you for subscribing to my new Substack page. I really appreciate all of you who have taken the time to do it, whether you have chosen the paid or free option, and I wanted to explain a little about why I’m doing this, and why I’m hoping it will significantly improve my creative life.

Tom Cox is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In the middle of 2015, I made a big decision: after close to twenty years of making the bulk of my living by writing for national newspapers and magazines, I chose to completely quit, in order to concentrate on a different kind of writing, less shackled by corporations and their agendas: the kind of writing I’d wanted to do all my life. Since then, I have kept my promise to myself and not written one piece for a national print media publication, and virtually all of my work has ended up in the several books I’ve published since then, or on my voluntary subscription website, or both. It felt simultaneously destructive and phenomenally freeing and, although I had a following on social media before to help me on my way, I had no idea if this new step would work, but almost seven years - and hundreds of thousands of words - later, I am still here, amazingly, surviving. Since then, I have also crowdfunded and published five books which I know in my heart are inarguably the best I have ever written. I view that decision, back in 2015, as one of the very most important of my life. It did more than just get me away from many of the downsides of newspaper journalism - chasing late payments, subliminal pressure to “shape” your writing for a perceived readership - it significantly changed who I am as a writer, permitted me to be more truly myself in everything I do (I wrote in more depth about this recently here).

But since 2015, the landscape of social media has changed significantly. Many of us who built our followings on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram long ago are not able to speak directly to our readers in the way we once were. Due to the whims of algorithms, and all the noise and attention-seeking, many people who want to know when we have a new book or story or essay out don’t find that out in the way they used to. What was already a shallow and distracted way of communicating has become far more so. Social media has always been hard work but now it’s much harder. Negativity and fearmongering tends to fly and often only the noisiest and most brash get seen. On my Twitter account, for example, I am on the surface of things speaking to 83,500 people, but the number is almost meaningless unless I catch that algorithmic wave. I will often work so hard on a 3000 word essay that I’m dizzy and feel like falling over when it’s done, then I will spend very nearly as much time editing it, but often it feels like it’s only after that that the real hard graft begins. It needs to be shared and promoted. You need to find ways to outwit the machine. It might get heavily reposted by lots of people and take off a bit, but it might not. It’s all very capricious and arbitrary. And it all means more time in front of a screen. You risk annoying people with repetition as you strive for your work not to be lost in the din. But it’s that very repetition - especially now - that can bring a writer more readers, more of the particular kind of readers suited to the writer’s niche. I’ve become even more aware of this since autumn last year, as I’ve hammered away at the social media coalface that bit harder, and seen results. New people have become aware of my writing and read my books. But that hammering feels like a temporary thing for me, something - for my own creativity and sanity - I cannot carry on doing at anything like the rate. I do not like self-promotion; it’s a practical necessity that makes me feel slightly sick. I like writing; it’s a non-practical necessity that makes me feel whatever the opposite of sick is. I like more than almost anything in the entire world, and I want to make it even more of a priority.

I am aware that I am currently enjoying the best creative years of my life. Most days, I feel like I’m overflowing with thoughts and ideas and projects. Ideally, I’d be putting all of my working energy into turning this inspiration into the sharpest, most diverse writing possible and wasting none of it on promoting my work via social media. That is not viable for me financially at the moment but I am hoping that I am about to find some middle ground that is a bit kinder to myself, and the work I’m producing. On Substack, I am not at the mercy of the algorithm and all its attendant racket. I can write with freedom, about all sorts of topics, and that writing gets delivered directly into the inbox of the people who want it, without having to trouble the people who don’t en route. Tweeting interests me only as a portal to proper meaningful art. Seeing the feedback of people who consume only my tweets and not the writing they link to does not interest me. Jumping on popular discussion points for greater exposure doesn’t interest me. The noise and thin judgements and topsoil opinion of social media doesn’t interest me. I am, like so many people nowadays, tired of the shallow nature of social media as a form of communication, its lack of nuance, its limitless capacity for misunderstanding. I am not planning to delete my social media accounts, but I no longer want to fritter away time on them that I could be using on proper, lasting creativity that doesn’t blow away instantly on a digital breeze. I want to write, and broadcast, and do more of it than ever.

I have no problem with hard work, especially when that hard work is creative. I have so so much planned for this year and I could not be more excited about it: it’s hopefully going to be one of my most happily busy ever. I intend the writing on here to be an addition to, not a replacement for, the more in-depth pieces I write on my website, with some crossover here and there. I’m partway through a new novel, the follow-up to Villager, which I’ll have more news on very soon. I’ve already posted several times on Substack, including uploading the first two episodes of my new podcast (the third is already half recorded and the plan is to keep them appearing every 3-4 weeks). I have so many pieces planned, plus another two projects in the physical world which I am dying to tell you about but can’t, just yet. Everyone who subscribes to this page or shares the work on it helps me move towards a position of greater - and hopefully deeper - communication, which requires less self-promotion. If you are one of those who are able to take out the paid option, you are doing even more to help for me to write more frequently, to help me gain greater independence from the things that impede true creativity, and I massively appreciate your kindness.

I have and am going to be offering various extra podcast material and writing for paid subscribers, and if you choose to upgrade from a free subscription to the cut price annual subscription between now and the end of Monday, and are one of the next twenty people to do so, I will send you a free original linoprint by my mum, Jo, who has illustrated the inside of my latest five books (you’ll see examples of just a couple of these accompanying this post). The offer is also open to people overseas.

Thank you so much for reading, and helping make this a potentially much more exciting world to live in as a writer.

PS I also have a few of my books Villager, 21st-Century Yokel, Ring The Hill and Notebook here at the moment (my other recent book Help The Witch is awaiting a reprint) to sell direct and personalise/sign for readers in the UK: I charge cover price plus p&p and have some smaller prints by my mum to include with the first few I send. Please drop me an email via this link if you’d like one or more of these. (I am sorry I can’t bring myself to charge people the insane fees for international postage from the UK right now but Blackwells will send you all four of the books outside the UK with free delivery).

Much more to come very soon!

Tom (Cornwall, UK, 29.1.2023)

Tom Cox is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.