As an English professor at a public community college, I teach 3-4 extra courses a year—in addition to 6 -7 contractual courses—to supplement my salary and to make living in NYC more affordable. As I prepare to go back to teaching a full load, I need to be honest with myself about what I can actually accomplish. I spend 20-30 hours on each Noted post—while I love the work, it is a lot of work. And, it’s not sustainable for me to keep up my current pace of writing if I am also juggling around 10 courses. So, I’m asking you, dear reader, to consider upgrading your subscription. Right now only 1% of you are paid subscribers. If 5-10% of you upgraded, it would mean that I wouldn’t need to teach extra classes and could devote all of that time to Noted.
6-7 contractual courses at a public community college in New York is roughly equivalent to 5-10% of Hess' Substack subscribing at $50/year.
Rough estimates of the variables could fill in the holes here to get a current estimate of subscribers.