Chill Subs Turns 2-Years Old!
Chill Subs Turns 2-Years Old!
Lots of emotions from Karina, new Write or Die workshops, writer recommendations, and more
Hey everyone, Karina here! It’s our 2-year birthday tomorrow (wow), and I’m getting emotional. It’s been a looong intense journey, but somehow still feels like we’ve only just started?!
But in these two years, we grew to almost 19,000 registered users, and over 40,000 people on socials. We married Write or Die and got ourselves a magazine and a workshop platform (and Kailey!!). We launched a membership program and 3 awesome newsletters. We learned how to earn some money (through a lot of trial and error…) (still learning) and we created an unfathomable amount of spreadsheets. And we made tons of friends in the community!
We also met for the first time in real life and spent a whole week together in Istanbul. It felt real! And then even more real as Ben, Shelby, Nikita and I were all lucky (well if you call not having enough money to stay in Poland luck…) to live together in Georgia (the country) for 2 months, where our artist Mariam also lives.
Not all of this journey went according to plan.
We haven’t made a submissions manager yet cause it requires tons of focused effort from the whole team for several months which we couldn’t afford because we needed to pay rent so had to find quicker ways to earn money. (which we now have more of, so here’s to SLUSHPILE 2024)
We had to temporarily kill our weird social media [ugh] because turns out you can’t code social media properly in one week… So it was influencing the website performance and we couldn’t let it get in the way of our main functionality. So waiting till we have time to rewrite it a bit!
We launched advertising and merch (which we spent like 4 months working on lol) and then closed both because the way we had it wasn’t worth the effort and again, didn’t have time to reimagine the whole thing.
We wanted to create a cool ranking system for magazines that would consider lots of factors and not just their popularity and the prize-winning thing, but turns out it’s way more complicated haha. You can read about how that went here.
We also learned to have some work boundaries because we were realizing Chill Subs was consuming us whole and started forgetting who we were outside of it.
And we got to a point where with so many users and members now, we needed to get our shit together and make sure our website works always, and not…most of the time. (this is what we’re on right now) That means slower releases, more testing, and relying on long-term solutions instead of short-term fixes (and that’s not easy when your brain is constantly spinning and generating new ideas)
All in all, well, we’re growing up! We’re learning from our mistakes, we know our strengths, and we can afford more stuff!
It’s honestly un-fucking-believable for me because I constantly struggle with finishing things and showing them to the world, overthinking to the point of passing out and convincing myself I shouldn’t do something. And so the fact that Chill Subs got through and grew into THIS and will keep growing, and now earns enough to pay the rent of 6 people? (well not Kailey’s (Americans)) And I get to wake up every day and just set my own tasks and do this thing that I love? Makes me cry, and smile, and all the feels.
So HAPPY BIRTHDAY to us! And thank you for being with us on this journey, and using the website, and sending your feedback, and telling your friends, students, teachers, partners, everyone! And thank you for making our dreams come true.
If you want to buy us a present today, you can become a member! We think we managed to make our Premium really useful as it includes the full Sub Club newsletter subscription, tools allowing you to store your submission details in one place and automatically format your prose, discounts for workshops and from our partners, and more! And next week we’re announcing a fantastic new addition to our Supporter plan. You’re going to shit your pants, seriously.
What we published this week:
In Sub Club, Ben collected a list of magazines that often attract agents (confirmed by the community):
Kailey also pulled together a list of mags publishing CNF:
We talked about our new, more detailed format of lists for Sub Club (warning, there were a lot of spreadsheets involved in the process):
And I celebrated our upcoming birthday by talking about Chill Subs’s defining moments (including the first email ever to me from Ben and a lot of funny photos and screenshots):
Brittany, assistant interviews editor: Another pick from the new mom corner over here: Jessi Klein's I'll Show Myself Out.
Ironically, the book was published 2 days before my baby arrived, although I was already at the hospital on March 28th. Anyway, I digress, but this book has been fantastic so far. It's essays on "midlife and motherhood" and IT'S FUNNY! It's funny and sad and poignant and honest. It's exactly what I need to be reading right now.
Kailey, EIC: I recently finished Kate Brody’s debut novel, Rabbit Hole, and it’s a banger! If you are a fan of true crime but are craving literary prose without the thriller cliches, I highly recommend this novel.
Essay: Multiplicity of Creative Hunger: In Between Genres and Sports by Cynthia Via
To cross over that pain means to emerge in a place where you feel alive—a blank page where you can focus on the process. It becomes not about circumventing pain, but meeting it on the trail and learning from it.
Interview: Brian Allen Carr: On Transience, Seeking the Real, Literary Hierarchies, and His Novel ‘Bad Foundations’ by Brittany Ackerman
It might not be as easy, but, truth be told, nothing in publishing is easy. Plenty of big press publications fail to get noticed. A $10,000 advance spread out in three payments over two years isn't going to affect my life substantively. So what's the upside, exactly? Pride? Ego? Plus, the whole big press world and literati community is crazy. These people will look you dead in the face, tell you they are against hierarchies, and then ask you where you went to school or who you studied with or who your agent is. Haha. Okay, kiddos. Take out some more student loans and buy yourselves dictionaries. No hate, but some crowns aren't worth the weight. Some crowns are really just expensive, glittery, dunce caps.
Saturday, February 3 from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM (EST)
Spending Time with Heartbreak with Arriel Vinson
This workshop will allow us the space to be cliché–to write about the hurt and everything in between--and tell a story that says so much more.
We will read essays and memoir excerpts that explore the many facets of heartbreak–how it affects mental health, the willingness to love again, what it says about the rest of our lives.
February 3rd from 11:00 - 3:30 PM EST
The Write Together Retreat featuring Etaf Rum
Join us for a day of writing during our monthly virtual retreat! You will have the opportunity to write alongside other writers in real time and learn from authors in the industry. This will be a time of encouragement and a chance to make real progress! Plus, there will be a special craft chat and Q&A session with Etaf Rum, author of "A Woman is No Man" and "Evil Eye.”
February 10 & February 11 from 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM (EST)
From Page to Stage: Performing Poetry and Spoken Word with Kayla Martell Feldman
Discover the art of spoken word in this dynamic workshop, where you'll learn to transform written stories into captivating oral performances using various styles and techniques. Students will refine their skills with hands-on practice, develop a personalized performance piece, and gain insights into the spoken word community, including opportunities for public performances and monetization.
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