A Special Message About the Newsletter

Bringing you even more animation from around the world.

We launched the Animation Obsessive newsletter a little over six months ago. Back then, our plan was to see how far it could go. We didn’t know whether anyone wanted a guide to animation from around the world — one deeper than we offered on Twitter. As it turns out, you did. Thank you so much.

Now, six months later, we’re taking another step into the unknown. We’re introducing bonus issues of our newsletter for paying members only.

This is new territory for us. On Twitter, we’ve never even had a Ko-fi link — taking money to share other people’s work felt wrong. Charging for our own work now, with this newsletter, is different. It doesn’t feel wrong, but it’s the hardest choice we’ve made since we started Animation Obsessive.

What it means

We’ve thought for a long time about going this route. From the start, we’ve treated the newsletter almost like a job. It’s tough and rewarding work. Our question now is whether it can be an actual job, even a part-time one. We don’t know yet — but we want to try taking this even more seriously.

Let’s make one thing clear. We’re opening up paid membership for readers who want to offer extra support for what we do. If you want to keep enjoying this newsletter as you have, you can. Our regular Sunday edition is still free — we don’t have plans to paywall it.

Membership gets you access to our new, members-only bonus posts. We’re rolling out the initial ones for free, as a teaser for readers on the fence.

Our first three bonus posts are in-depth interviews with animation insiders from around the world. They’ll drop every Thursday through September 16. Bonus posts after that date will go behind a paywall, with few exceptions.

What it costs

After six months as a free newsletter, setting a price was a struggle for us. In the end, we looked at it objectively. Keeping up with animation is hard. We try to deliver the best and richest newsletter we can, without filler. If an issue doesn’t excite us, we don’t send it to you — and that takes time and effort by our whole team.

So, we’ve gone for $10/month. We picked a price that matched the amount of work. We decided that, if we were going to charge at all, we wanted it to reflect reality.

That said, the economy is chaotic right now. We get it if that’s outside your budget. It’s outside our budget, too. Your readership is valuable to us whether or not you make the jump.

If you do decide to become a member, you have our gratitude. You’ll find everything you need on our new and improved subscription page.

Annual membership comes with an automatic discount. If you’re a student with a .edu address, you’re eligible for an additional 40% discount off monthly or annual membership. Students can email animationobsessive@substack to receive the code.

Thanks for reading to the end! We don’t know where this will lead. Still, we can say one thing for sure — we’ll be back on Sunday with another edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter.

Hope to see you again soon!