Why Quit?
First published 11/16/2000

Why quit? Sorry for the rant, but here it comes…

I’m really proud of this column. I’ve done a lot of comedy stuff over the years -- standup, improv, radio, plays. But this column is, I think, just about the best stuff I’ve done. I’m really proud of it.

But the simple sad truth is I can’t afford to do it any more. Writing a column takes, believe it or not, an entire day. Sometimes two. I never intended to do it for free. I don't need to make a ton of money off it, but I need to get paid for it, and so far I haven't really found a way to.

Four years ago, when I started writing Subatomic Humor, my original idea was to syndicate it to a bunch of alternative newsweeklies. You know, those free artsy papers most cities have, the kind people leaf through while waiting for the bus. These papers don’t pay a lot, but there are a lot of them, many of which run some syndicated content -- cartoons and sex columns, mostly. If you can get into enough of them, you can make enough money to make the work worth doing.

So… I got the column into my local alternative newsweekly, See. (Thanks, See!) I wrote for a couple months, so I’d have a portfolio of samples to send to other papers. I sent the portfolio to about 15 Canadian papers. Later, I re-sent it. I made phone calls. I made more phone calls. Initially, nothing. Then, a few nibbles.

I got into prairiedog in Regina. (Thanks prairiedog! I appreciate you picking me up!)

Also, for a while I was in Uptown in Winnipeg. (A guy there even started a Paul Mather fan club.) But the paper changed hands and the new management dumped me in favour of their bold new boring-articles-with-spelling-mistakes format.

So, back to the drawing board. I made a larger list, including about 100 American alternative papers. I sent a better package. I made more phone calls. My wife made phone calls. We sent more packages. Nothing. Three years of this, no more sales.

I think Subatomic Humor’s as good as some of the other, successful, syndicated alternative features like Red Meat or Josey Vogel’s My Messy Bedroom. I think most newsweeklies need a humour column, too -- although I think most of them don’t know it. I think, eventually, someone will be wildly successful selling an alternative Dave Berry-type humour column to this market.

But not me, I guess. I’m sure it would have helped if I was a better salesman. And it probably would have helped if I’d been able to stick to it longer. But I just don’t have the time: I can either try to sell the column, or I can write the column. I don’t have time to do both.

I also think would have helped if I’d swore more, or done something more "alternative." A few more dildo references might have made the difference. (I honestly think so! What a shallow definition of "alternative." How depressing is that?!)

I also think, at least as far as the Canadian papers were concerned, it was an issue that I was from Edmonton. Hour Magazine, in Montreal, kind of snottily told me that they don’t run syndicated material… never mind that they syndicate Messy Bedroom to a ton of other papers. I guess "big" central Canadian cities are happy to talk to the rest of the country but feel no obligation to listen to it. Culture flows east to west here.

Anyway, after a few years, it was obvious newsweeklies didn’t want my column, and I’d run out of ways to try to sell it to them. But, meanwhile, I’d picked up a following in Edmonton. And, to a lesser extent, on the Internet. Now what?

So, I thought, e-commerce. I’ll sell a book. I ran a poll on my site: over the course of a week about 100 people said they’d be interested in buying a Subatomic Humor book. So I put one together and put it up on my website.

I've sold a few through my website, but nowhere near as many as my poll lead me to beleive. (Which is no one's fault but mine -- note to self: more people will say they're going to buy something than are actually going to buy it.)

I sold some more copies through bookstores in Edmonton, thank god, and a few more through Amazon.com… but still nowhere near enough to break even. In fact, it’s probably cost me more money than I made in three years of writing the frickin’ column. So now I’ve been writing for free all these years…

Meanwhile, other stuff’s been more successful. I’m doing two sketches a week for CBC Radio (thanks CBC Radio!), one for This Morning (a national show) and one with my buddy Peter Brown at Radio Active. The pay’s okay, and I feel at CBC there’s some chance for me to move forward career-wise.

But it’s hard doing three comedy items a week, week after week, with no vacations. It’s really hard. Let me italicize that again: hard. You have no idea. It’s terrible. Really really hard… sorry… hard.

So, something had to go, and I need to eat, so it’s Subatomic Humor. Which is a fucking shame, because I’m really proud of this column. As great as doing radio comedy for CBC is, it's a lot less personal that writing this column. Doing comedy for CBC is like being a part of somebody else’s jigsaw puzzle, Subatomic Humor was being the whole puzzle.

As I get ready to put this thing up on the website, I sort of feel like I’m doing the wrong thing. It’s a little soul-destroying to stop doing what you should be doing because it pays more to do something else. But that's the way of the world, I guess, and I know I've been luckier than most people to be able to do what I enjoy and get paid for it at all.

Again, if you’re a long-time reader (I’ve been on the web since 1996!), thanks for coming along for the ride. I hope you liked it.

-- Paul, November 16, 2000

PS: I always welcome your email at paul@subatomichumor.com.

Post-Postscript:

It's been a couple hours since I posted my little rant and I've got a couple orders for books... which I totally appreciate, thanks very much. (Hey, buy the book, it does make a good Christmas gift... fits in a stocking. Well, a big stocking.)

But just so we're clear, I don't want to guilt people into buying the book. Sheesh! Nobody asked me to write the column or put out a book; I did it myself. I'm just whining to get all this stuff off my chest, and because I thought it would be kind of weird to shut the site down without any explanation... I'd hate to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth or look like I'm hustling people or something...

So again, if you want to buy the book, I hope it's because you want it (and I commend your good taste -- did I mention it has a quality binding and a full-colour glossy cover, as well as being printed on acid-free archival-quality paper?), not because of my preceding self-pitying rant -- which should be properly thought of as the kind of sob story a guy would tell you at the bar after a bad day at work... - Paul

Like the column? Buy the book! 100 Years of Subatomic Humor now on sale!