Interview #27: How Maria Bustillos Makes Money Writing

In this interview, Maria talks about building independent media platforms like Flaming Hydra, and why slow, sustainable growth beats VC-funded burnout.

Maria Bustillos has spent over 16 years at the frontlines of journalism, editing, and information activism—writing for The Nation, The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, and The New Yorker, co-founding reader-funded outlets like Brick House Cooperative and Flaming Hydra, and championing digital ownership and press freedom through projects like BRIET. These days, she’s less focused on earning a paycheck and more on building sustainable, independent media spaces that can support the next generation of writers.

In this interview, Maria shares what it really takes to create alternatives to corporate media, why freelance journalism alone rarely pays the bills, and how creativity and values drive her vision for the future. If you’re curious how writers can build sustainable platforms without chasing scale at all costs, this one’s for you.

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• What you do: Journalist, editor, information activist.

• Years writing professionally: 16.

• Earnings range: Super variable.

“The field is littered with the remains of publications that burst out of the gate with huge VC raises and marquee names only to collapse within a matter of months.”

Maria, your career spans journalism, editing, and advocacy for digital ownership and press freedom. What does your current income mix look like across these areas, and how has that evolved over time?

I’m anciently old, retirement age. Right now I volunteer as the chair of the Brick House Cooperative and the lead editor at Flaming Hydra. Nowadays I am mostly looking to help protect press freedom and create opportunities for younger writers and artists. And I still make a little money by freelance writing.

I’m very focused on BRIET right now, which is the cooperative’s project to connect publishers of digital books with the librarians who want to buy them (not through licenses, but ebooks libraries can buy for keeps). We work with organizations like the Open Library, Library Futures, Fight for the Future, and the Internet Archive to help advance digital ownership rights, both for libraries and for individual readers. 

My husband supported our household early in my writing career, and I got lucky in investments and California real estate, too, so we both worked and eventually saved enough for a modest retirement. Getting the kids through school debt-free is the thing I’m most grateful to have been able to do; all three were good students and had scholarship support, and are doing pretty well now in these tough times. We are old-fashioned empty nesters now, and I love it.