Welcome to Art of a Muse Zine

Where creativity, humour, and financial support come together

From author using Mage.Space

Have you discovered a talented artist that you feel is being snubbed by the public eye? Would you like to support them with more than just a “like” — but perhaps you can’t afford a piece of their work right now, evidenced by the dust in your pockets?

For less than the price of an Iced Gingerbread Oat Chai from Starbucks, you can contribute to making a thirsty artist’s life more enriched.

When you subscribe to Art of a Muse Zine, you’re not only supporting me, the publisher and managing editor. You’re also supporting one of our paid subscribers, a nominated artist, and an Art of a Muse Zine writer who shined during the month.

But we’ll get to all that.

First, let’s explain what this publication’s content is all about.

Comically creative

Art takes on many forms, and comedy is one of them. Art of a Muse Zine publishes stories that are about something real (or conceptual) in the art world, but with a humorous or satirical take.

That means you might read about how an AI robot artist glitched out and attacked someone with a paintbrush, which hasn’t happened — yet.

Maybe you’ll see something about how Da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper is actually about Jesus declaring he’s not paying the bill for the entire table, hence the distressed reactions of his disciples.

Stories here might also contain funny (but also sometimes inspiring) tips, like how you can use cat piss as a fixer in your paintings like Gustav Klimt reportedly did. (Cat not included.)

We don’t want this publication to be like art history class, with half of the students snoring through a slideshow about baroque painting, while the professor smokes weed outside the fire escape. Our goal is to inform readers about an interesting piece of work/period in history, while also making them snicker along the way.

But this publication is about more than creating entertaining content to generate income for our pub’s owner (me), who will put it towards his hydro bill.

We think the people who write for us, subscribe to us, and make art in general should also have a chance to be financially rewarded.

That’s why at the end of each month, we’ll do some calculations, and a full 75% of any revenue from paid subscriptions (after fees) will go to our supporters.

Yes, you read that right. We will literally hand out money each month, like some kind of Mr. Beast — but without a private jet.

Here’s how the monthly payouts will work:

THE FUNDING FORMULA HAS CHANGED AS OF APRIL 2025: PLEASE SEE THIS LINK FOR DETAILS

Each paid subscription fee will go into a month-end pool.

Art of a Muse Zine will keep 25% of the revenue generated from subs, which may be used to host contests along with paying utility bills.

The other 75% will be split between a paid subscriber, an artist (who may or may not be on the platform), and a writer who contributed to Art of a Muse Zine during the month.

In simpler terms:

25% of proceeds go to the publication

25% of proceeds go to a random paid subscriber

25% of proceeds go to a nominated artist

25% of proceeds go to our publication’s top writer each month

Example: If we have 10 paid subscribers at $5 U.S. each, that’s $50 U.S. total in the pool that month.

Substack takes a 10% royalty from paid subs, bringing the total down to $45. In this example, each recipient would get $11.25.

That might not sound like much to start. But imagine when the paid subs reach 100: that would mean $450 in the month-end pool (after Substack’s fee), with each recipient getting $112.50!

How will the revenue recipients be chosen?

I spent at least an hour thinking about how to split the money without being accused of bias. This is what I’ve come up with for now, although it’s subject to change in the event of a logical fallacy:

One paid subscriber will be chosen each month at random by Google Gemini, which isn’t biased. It has the same apathy for all humans.

All subscribers will be able to put forward the name and contact info of a living artist they think should be rewarded that month in this Google Doc. The artist receiving a payout will be also chosen randomly by Google Gemini from the nomination list.

The Art of a Muse Zine writer receiving the remaining 25% of the pool will be chosen by me, the managing editor. The winning scribe will have published at least one story during the month that made an impact, while also having a high open rate.

The eligible writers can be team contributors to Art of a Muse Zine, or have a guest byline that month. If the winning article was a collaboration, then two or more writers will share the 25% payout.

Start supporting Art of a Muse Zine now!

Readers, you can show support to our publication even though our content will be free (for now)! By paying for a subscription from the start, you’ll contribute more to the monthly pool to be shared.

We’ll start sharing the revenue when we reach 10 paid followers. So the sooner we get there, the better.

We hope to have you here as a reader, as a supporter, and maybe also as a recipient of a payout!

We’ll talk again soon. I’m currently working on our first a-muse-ing art-icle… see what I did there?

Artfully yours,

Jeff