Chasing Ghosts

After the excitement of starting the blog on Substack, my heart sank to read the ways in which the platform was monetising and profiting from cruel and dangerous content. Therefore, after some advice, I've moved across to Ghost.io. This is certainly a choice that's prioritises morality over comfort and convenience as it makes it harder for me to build an audience and it also has running costs which Substack absorbs into membership fees.

This is a niche blog about a small island and a remarkable woman from the early 18th Century. I am totally committed to telling the story of Barbara Fea and this is something I feel will make a phenomenal book one day. I don't expect to be raking in money while I do this, but I also need to cover some of the costs of travelling into Kirkwall for the Archive, the time spent transcribing old letters and the cost of running this blog.

It's an old adage of the internet that if a product is free to use, then you are the product. That seems clear in the case of Substack. Ghost will be charging me a monthly fee for the site and won't be driving traffic here in the same way that the Substack blog could have done. So, I'm reliant on your help, here and on Social Media, to prove that there's a demand for the story and, much as it pains me to ask, it would be brilliant if you would consider putting in a donation to help with my costs.

In time, I will be sharing the book idea with agents or I may set up a Kickstarter campaign to help get me to that stage, but in the meantime, it would be phenomenal if you would consider putting a donation, whether one-off, monthly or however you prefer, to assist in covering the costs incurred by moving away from Substack's support of extreme and dangerous content.

I have a series of transcribed letters that I am just waiting to share with you as I piece together a timeline for Barbara Fea's life story. I can't wait for us to get stuck in.