You could get a $25k advance or a whole entire $100K grant if you’re one of Substack’s next fellows
Some news Deez Links has learned: Substack, aka your fave newsletter platform and mine, duh, is launching a second round of their independent writers fellowship, only this time instead of a $3,000 stipend, you could land one of four **$25,000 advances** or the **$100,000 senior fellow grant.** That’s huge!
All the details are on their site, but basically the difference between the advance and the grant is this:
The $25K works more like a book advance in that it’s an “up front payment out of the fellow’s expected future earnings,” per Fiona Monga, who leads Substack’s writer partnerships. The idea is that you’d start/have a Substack newsletter that charges a subscription, then Substack gets 40% of the subscription revenue (plus the normal 10% fee they charge all paid newsletters, plus credit card transaction fees) until they make back the $25,000.
After that, you get to keep all the money you make from subscriptions (though Substack will still have the 10% fee, and there will still be credit card fees, etc.) If you don’t make back the $25,000, you do not owe Substack.
*Also,* you still get the no-strings-attached $3,000 stipend (which is separate from the advance!), and if you don’t actually want to do subscriptions, you can forgo the advance entirely and just get the stipend and coaching/other perks.
The senior fellowship, which comes with the $100K grant, meanwhile, is paid out over six months while you publish on Substack. The only requirement is that you gotta publish something every week!
Other perks of both levels of the fellowship: You get a bunch of mentorship and support, including coaching from independent subscription model posterboy Judd Legum, newsletter branding help, and even a finance 101 workshop with personal finance wiz Yanely Espinal, who will be teaching banking basics, tax considerations, investing basics, and how to manage money earned from subscriptions. Basically, the kind of support network every independent writer would commit crimes for. Also you get a cool custom domain like the kind actual ur-Substackers like Daniel Lavery and Bill Bishop have, which honestly will be the biggest of flexes.
Who gets to apply? Per Monga: “Any writer on Substack anywhere in the world,” which includes writers who have just signed up to start on Substack, writers who have been writing free publications, and writers who have paid publications.” So as long as you have a Substack account, this could be you!! Go get ‘em.
Applications are open today through Tuesday, July 14 at 5:00 pm PDT, and winners are announced Tuesday, July 28, so gogogogogo get that $$$ my newsletter brethren!!
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