On Substack (sigh)

Substacks about Substack is my least favorite newsletter genre, and I’ve held off for years now, but today I am caving in. I’ll be brief!

First an overview:

• Substack has been a controversial platform for a few years now, based on several decisions made by its owners, regarding who is and who is not allowed on the platform.
  

• Many people left the platform in the wake of these controversies, and subsequent related ones, and an even larger number of people refuse to pay for or read anything published here.
  

• I respect the opinions of those who have left and those who have stayed.
  

• I am not a fan of the policies and decisions made the owners of Substack.
  

• I expect this platform to become increasingly unfriendly to newsletter writers like me, who are not chasing Big Scale, who do not participate much in the Notes (social media-esque) part of Substack. Enshittification is the right word.
  

• I have tried to leave the platform for one of the other platforms many others use and have stalled out, several times, for varying reasons.
  

Now some longer thoughts:

• There are many writers here who are making a living, or a substantial portion of it, from Substack specifically. They have been here for a long time, and it’s an extraordinary accomplishment and godsend that they have been able to be sustain themselves through newsletters which, like blogs, have been historically well-nigh impossible to profit from. I am thinking of people who started early, like me, such as

  Alicia Kennedy
  Anna Sproul-Latimer
  Raechel Anne Jolie
  . That these people may feel pressure to abandon a key income stream, or lose readers because people refuse to read writing hosted here, pains me quite a bit (and, to be clear, the money I earn from these newsletters has always been important to my bottom line as well, but has always been as a side hustle).
  

• When I started on Substack—I joined when they started, moving over from TinyLetter, because they had a way to get paid for newsletters, I gave this platform ‘maybe three years” before it would get bad—in my mind, back in 2018, that meant filled with ads or junk or basically like all the other similar efforts beforehand. That it has lasted as long as it has—getting worse all the time, yes, but not quite yet unusable—has been a surprise.
  

• Although many people espouse how easy it is to move to another platform, I did not find that to be the case when I tried recently. And I have heard, from people who left and are dependent on newsletter income to pay their bills, that they have seen drop-offs in subscription revenue as well as readers since they left Substack, and that really really upsets me to hear. What an accomplishment to have made a decent freelance income from a newsletter, and what a shame to potentially lose it, not because one’s politics and/or morals compel you to, but because other peoples’ calls to leave this platform compel you to (especially as it is extremely difficult to find ‘pure’ policies on any platform anywhere, ever).
  

• A few months ago, when I had decided to move to another hosting service—from what I understood of the finances, I would do better if I did, even if it meant a large initial payment from me, and I find anytime I go to Notes I end up in a bad mood— I met a stranger who turned out to be a subscriber to my newsletter. It was very fun and exciting for us both to meet! I told him about my planned move, and he said “oh I only read you on the app so if you move I won’t read your newsletter anymore” and that took a lot of wind out of my sails (more wind was released when the help desk at the new place I was setting up with wasn’t really helpful.)
  

• After that experience, I experimented with creating a newsletter co-operative of sorts: get 5-7 people who all write about a similar topic, work out the backend admin between us (as longtime newsletter writers/freelancers, we’d be pretty good at figuring out how to divvy up the money, etc.). We’d offer one bundled subscription price to avoid the very real problem of individuals supporting too many different newsletter writers. It wouldn’t be a magazine so much as a rotating roster of weekly newsletters, with one payment option. And it would be off Substack, and thus free from the morass described above, and a fresh new start. I reached out to a few possible people about the idea but the response was, well, nill. So I shelved the idea

  

  .
  

To sum up: I do wish there were other options for supporting this newsletter financially (let people give a few bucks every so often!). I am not a fan of the owners, and I don’t trust their business model to last. I do understand why people left. I do understand why people refuse to pay for this or other newsletters. I do find refusing to read anything written on this CMS less palatable than the other positions, and likely leads to hypocrisy (do they know the politics or moderation policies of every hosting platform they might click on? Also, I tend to fall into the “boycotts don’t work” camp more generally. And I bet they read the Lizza piece last night anyway. ) It pains me to no end that the money that independent writers have made here—not the six figure big newsletters but the ones like those mentioned above— may shrink. I would be thrilled if better alternatives arose, but I lean more towards “this newsletter era will simply end at some point” thinking.

And so I remain here. And appreciate those of you who support me, and see those of you who do not, as well as those who may be biting their fingernails over a truly unfortunate ‘must the poor get poorer?’ possible decision.

And now of course I add the lol button lol below and also remind you that my book proposal course starts sooner than you think!