“Your price is too high, pal. Eighty bucks a year? The whole New York Times doesn’t cost much more. I get Heather Cox Richardson for free! Think about it.”

Pricing is among the murkiest of human mysteries. What is fair? What is gouging? What predatory? How to know?

I never meant to charge for these missives. They were my gift to my time. But my missives were never meant to cost me. Let my audience grow as gradually as a stalagmite, I didn’t care.

A simple question changed my thinking. Did my five hundred amazingly loyal and smart readers represent 99.9% of my total potential readership or .001% or somewhere in between? The only way to test this was to dangle bait in the Internet ocean and count nibbles. We did that for two months – June and July – and wow, our audience of “free subscribers” more than quintupled, after modest advertising on Facebook. New subscribers had to be welcomed, settled. That took human time. The data from our experiment needed to be analyzed. That took human time. What if we advertised more? That cost money and time. Suddenly my innocent pastime was a hungry toddler, gobbling money and time. Maybe my readers would like to help fund this adventure. And if they didn’t, why should I? My ego didn’t need to be dandled by data!

One weekly missive I’d continue to dispatch for free, but what to charge for the complete involvement: daily missives, archives, e-books, etc.? I’ll never take a nickel for my contribution – it remains my gift – but each of these attempts cost something. What price was fair?

I settled on $80 a year because that amounts to twenty-two cents per missive. What can we buy these days for twenty-two cents? Is a jolt of thought worth less than five percent of an energy jolt from Starbucks?

Even if a majority of my present readers opted to purchase subscriptions – a crazy result I do not expect – not all our costs would be met. But their help would help – and hearten.

Writing, since the printing press made it replicable, has never been a paying gig, except for a few lucky winners. Publishers could make money peddling writers, but writers themselves ground out livings on Grub Street. Entry-level investment bankers earn more than all but a few scribblers. The remuneration for most writers is the glory of discovery, of making new, of a shapely phrase. We may even outlive our bodies for a minute (we can at least envision this posthumous achievement). But unless we’re clueless, we’re not in this for the pelf.

Our experiment so far has been an emboldening success. You and I are not alone in our belief in truth, reason, decency, beauty, kindness, and the delights of literature; or in our conviction that making the world better for all is the only sane reason to be. While geographically sprinkled, we are spiritually united. Early Christians must have felt this way, celebrating in secret. How many are we? Who knows. More each day.

To anyone who’d like to read these missives daily but can’t subscribe now, let me know at [email protected] and I’ll be honored to include you as my guest. Any who recommend Good Morning Project to friends also contributes mightily.

In this gruesome hour, it’s consoling to know we are not alone. The forces of the Good may be abashed, but we are not quashed. Hope is a stubborn flower that blossoms even from ruins.

Is eighty bucks a year too high? That’s your call. Whatever your level of involvement, bless you for your attention.