Even worse: we should bundle multiple subscriptions under 1 payment. We already have that! It’s called Medium! It lost because its discovery model incentives high volume algorithmic slop!
Ha I was going to comment that there should be some bundling.
Like there's got to be a way to do this. I know substack represents the "great unbundling" but one used to be able to read a variety of writers for a monthly free - we called it a "magazine".
Because the thing is, allowing access to an additional person has no incremental cost to the writer or substack, since serving articles is (basically) free. Assuming everyone has some rough amount they're willing to spend on substack each month - $20? $40? - giving them more access doesn't really have a downside.
Anyways I haven't figured out the magic formula for this and I don't know why Medium failed. But something feels unoptimized here. I think there's a method where writers make the same or more, and people get more access.
I don't mean the extreme case, like Spotify where you pay one fee and access everyone and all of the artists make nothing except Taylor Swift. But maybe some kind of 3-for-the-price-of-2 bundling of writers that have audience overlap.
Magazines were a great invention. At $5+/month I'm only going to subscribe to a couple of writers at a time. This means my 10th favorite writer in the world will never make a penny from me, which seems unfair.
But I'd happily pay for a magazine (like the Atlantic) giving me access to a bunch of writers I like (but wouldn't pay for alone).
I feel like a middle ground approach here would be for Substack to allow writers to form mini-communities to offer their work together for a price that is less than subscribing to them all individually. Perhaps subscribing in that way would mean a new tier in-between free and fully paid such that you only got some of any given author's work.
(Yes, yes I know this is basically reinventing the magazine, but within the Substack format and without some of the other overhead)
Could you spell out for me the incentives there? I can think of reasons bundling is a bad idea (mainly, it makes it hard on those succeeding under the current model, who will be pressured to take the new worse deal), but it doesn’t seem worse than pay-per-article. I would have assumed it’d be somewhat anti-slop since it guarantees a slice of the pie - though of course slop is always incentivized by “more article make more money” so any system is gonna have a lot of it.
Let’s say I’m making pretty good money on Substack because I’m good at writing and marketing myself.
If you bundle me, how do I know you aren’t taking my earned money to subsidise people worse at self-promotion? Why are you charging my niche iOS audience more to send them additional venture capital content they won’t read?
Maybe there’s no perfect option, but I prefer the brutal cutthroat capitalism of Substack’s model. I wake up every day and throw darts at a printed-out rising leaderboard.
Disagree! There a lot of successful Substacks that do a rotating cast of contributors or frequent guest posts. Nothing about being a solo writer that guarantees quality.
What a formal bundling model would add to Substack is it would allow the same Substacker to do a mixture of (high-value but unreliable) customer acquisition and (low-value but reliable) content partnerships. Maybe Substackers bundle aggressively when they are starting out and then strike it out on on their own after acquiring an audience.
A bit of an aside, but actual newspapers *absolutely should* offer $1 articles. Sometimes I'll see something interesting in, say, the Cincinnati Times I'd happily pay $1 to read. I'm not going to subscribe to the Cincinnati Times as I don't live in Cincinnati. So I don't read the article and they don't get my money, lose, lose.
I agree with you in principle, but my understanding is that when local newspapers tried to do this, it failed financially. It's sad, because like you every so often I'll need to look up something like an article from a newspaper in Indiana in 1987, so the archives are paywalled beyond a yearly subscription I'll forget to cancel in time, so I just don't pay and forget about it. And then when everyone does that, the information in the article goes from being part of history into being forgotten.
I have encountered papers that had levels of archive access based on time -- for example you could pay for a 24-hour pass, which gave you access to as many articles as you wanted to download in that period. Per article access for new content, though, I haven't seen.
I understand that resentment some writers have toward Substack. It really only works for certain kinds of writing, which is essentially quickly and prolifically written, high quality blog posts. There are many other kinds of writing where career opportunities are fewer and fewer and Substack does not fill the void. You mentioned books, but I'd add things like long-form essays and reported features as well. My impression is that, 20-30 years ago, if you were talented you really would be paid a solid salary to think and report deeply about something, and then produce one article every month or two.
And there are some topics where I do think Substack-style writing is inferior. There are some well-known Substackers I used to subscribe to but eventually became disillusioned with because I felt that they weren't doing enough research and thinking about the very weighty topics they were writing about. They'd write articles that almost felt like reported features at first, but then you realize that all the content was just prettied up twitter takes.
That said, I still pay for multiple Substacks, so I obviously think it works for some kinds of writing. The problem isn't Substack but rather collapsing career paths for other kinds of writing.
Part of me wonders about this tho. I hear a lot of visual artists complain that they can't make good money (or can only do so drawing porn), and I always think... yeah but wasn't it HARDER before?
Like I think it's just always true that short writing that speaks to hot topics in a timely manner and is agreeable or provocative is gonna be successful compared to anything else. That means if you want a space to create good work, you need to be really careful about not *further* biasing toward that, but I'm not sure substack does more than the world did already.
Tbf, I have no idea what the publishing world for poetry used to look like, so maybe it was way better.
I think it's a mixed bag for both visual art and writing. There are fewer gatekeepers now and fewer hoops to jump through, so in a way it's more open. Additionally, successful people can become successful much faster (not need to pay your dues). But there are fewer people making a stable, full-time, middle-class income in these fields.
It's amazing to think that nearly every major local paper had things like a professional food critic or movie critic on staff who could afford a middle class lifestyle on that salary.
Yeah, I have heard similar from comedians, actually. It’s easier for people to get in, but the routes to success are broken down - so people who might have been great struggle against virality, and being on TV is like, all of a sudden nothing
The model has been great for writers, but less great for consumers who have to pay something like $50-100 per year (each!) to follow their favorite writers.
This costs a lot more than a book or even a newspaper subscription (with a whole opinion section).
I think everyone who loves Substack is paying more than they want to right now. That’s amazing for writers—locking people in for a monthly subscription payment that’s more than anyone typically pays for writing, is a really great deal.
But it also sucks that I used to be able to follow a lot of writers by reading their op/ed columns and buying their books, and now the cost is so much higher.
I would like to see books “published” here. I published a book as a series for paid subscribers but I would like to publish one as a standalone on here ideally!
In that vein, CHH, what would you think about a feature where Substack allowed writers to create anthologies of posts and offer them for standalone fees? Maybe accompanied with a discount code for a full year subscription? So you pay like $10 for X number of past-posts that CHH think bests represents the content of the newsletter, and then get a coupon code for 10% or 15% off an annual subscription if you like what you've read.
Tangential, but I went down the wiki rabbit hole of reading F Scott Fitzgerald's bio on wikipedia, and if I recall properly, serial publication of his novels in installments in periodic newspapers was a big part of his literary career at the time of first publishing.
I know nothing about the economics of publishing back then, but it seems like there was a symbiotic relationship where the author got cheap, wide exposure and immediate financial income and the periodical got premium serialized content to drive reader interest.
Substack: the Saturday Evening Post of the 21st century? :-)
I can't tell you how starstruck I'd be if you walked up and told me you were CHH, I am dying to put a face to the words (would also be mildly confused, because I'm in the North of England, so what are you doing here?) Sort of related, but after I became a paid sub I showed my husband one of your pieces – he came across you randomly on Twitter the next day and I swear it was like he'd had a celebrity sighting 😂
I completely agree re the paid model. Having worked in SEO and having seen how shoddy content can become when writing purely for clicks (which is absolutely what would happen if everyone was fighting for that $1) I can confidently say that charging per article is the quickest way to turn this platform of bleeding hearts into a platform of clickbait con artists. I know what I'd rather it be.
I’d say I’ll look out for you, but I have no idea what either of you look like so that would be exhausting. Where are you headed to? The weather is quite nice right now (you’ll hear a lot of people commenting on the weather while you’re here) – hope it stays that way for you guys
I can also drop my list of best playgrounds in central London and kid friendly things to do if anyone is at all interested (I'm sure your holiday is already very well planned!)
This is like the dream assignment for a Londoner with kids lol.
My essay below:
First things first, DO NOT take a taxi from the airport (I'm going to assume you're arriving into Heathrow) - get the Elizabeth line or the Piccadilly line, both of which will drop you within a ~5 mins walk of where you need to be. You can pay for both the tube and Elizabeth line via contactless - e.g. apple pay/Gpay/whatever. Kids go free!
Museums - these (mostly) have free tickets you can book in advance, so make sure you do book to skip long queues.
Science museum - steam trains, space exhibit and so much more - they also have a play area called "The Garden" in the basement which is free and has water play etc. Our sons love it (aged 3 and 6).
Natural history museum - if your kids like dinosaurs, this is a great one. Really nice dino-themed garden as well.
Museum of Childhood - this is located in Bethnal Green, accessible easily on the Central line from Tottenham Court Road. It has a fabulous under 2s play area, as well as good play areas for older ages too. The theme of the museum is toys through history.
Museum of the Home - this is in Hackney, right opposite Hoxton station on the overground, so much be a bit too much of a trek. However it is fab, lots of interactive stuff including 90s Mario, and my son loved it most of all for its fireplaces (he went through a brief fireplace obsession).
National Portrait Gallery - this is right by Leicester Square, and I will say that while it doesn't have amazing play areas or anything like that, it DOES have excellent children's resources like scavenger hunts based on different themes (sculpture/tudors), but probably better for older kids.
Museum of London, Docklands - Again could be too far away. However accessible on the Docklands Light railway and your kids can enjoy the views and pretend to drive the train (they don't have drivers). It has a free, very good quality soft play (BOOK IN ADVANCE) and it has fab interactive stuff throughout including an old fashioned street. My son loved pretending to welcome people to the "pub" in the street as well as making "food" on the "fire" in one of the living rooms.
Imperial war museum - this is in Lambeth, get there via the Bakerloo line which is easy to pick up from Oxford Circus. Lots of planes, tanks, guns, well organised exhibits with kids activities and interactive stuff. Might again be just a bit too old for your children but our 3 & 6 yo enjoyed it, the 3 yo did get a bit bored though.
British Museum - meh for kids tbh. It's huge though and mine like seeing the Egyptian stuff.
Other stuff:
Hamleys - giant toy store on Oxford street. Under no circumstances buy anything from here as it's all incredibly overpriced. But it's a fab day out with lots of demonstrations from interactive staff - my kids love the window shopping and playing with the toys they have out.
Kew Gardens - Very West London but if the weather is still nice, a great place to mooch around with decent kids' activities and a nice playground. An astonishing amount of stuff to do.
Hyde park - great playgrounds for kids and giant sandpits.
London Zoo - excellent zoo, great kids' activities, excellent playground and splashpad.
Finsbury park - easy to get to on Victoria line, exceptionally good playgrounds, nice walk along the parkland walk to Muswell Hill and Highgate wood, with even more amazing playgrounds.
Stratford olympic park - incredible playgrounds and a nice place to mooch around if the weather is nice but not sure I can in good conscience advise tourists to go out of their way to go there.
One data point, but I've found a reasonable amount of success on Substack writing less frequent, longer form stuff (currently #28 in the "technology" category). I write roughly one essay a week (sometimes one every two weeks if they're longer, 6000+ word ones), along with a weekly link roundup.
I will note that while this is a slower pace when compared to other internet writing, it's probably pretty quick compared to how quickly most people could put out a similarly-researched work. My skill isn't writing quickly, but researching quickly, and it turns out that Substack rewards that too.
this is an interesting take!!! i offer basically all my content for free while also asking people to be paid subscribers… spoiler - the thing that brought me the most paid subscribers is when i paywalled something 😂 i’m torn because i understand you can’t subscribe to every substack you like, im in the same boat, and also publishing a lot of content and frequently obviously takes a lot of work! but id be open to a model like the dollar per article or whatever for people who want to support but cant pay X amount of month every month
I think I as a subscriber benefit from this model, I will subscribe to a publication, cancel so that I only pay one month and it doesn’t auto renew, and read all the best paid posts in that month. My ability to read good posts is much higher than a writers ability to write good posts, so I can wait a few months for good content to pent up before subscribing another month. I think this is because I heard somewhere that subscription models are designed to make money off of people who forget and auto renew, and the thought if being a sucker like that terrifies and enrages me, so I almost always cancel immediately after subscribing(except for essentials like Amazon, Spotify, ChatGPT). As a result, I actually get more good posts per dollar with the subscription model, since I’ll be reading a bunch of good posts over a couple of months rather than just one.
You're my mirror image: I very rarely subscribe because I know that if I have a subscription, I'm very unlikely to remember to cancel, so I won't sign up unless I know I'll get my money's worth.
In re: The second issue at play is a bit more disturbing to me, which is that writing (or any art, really) is held to an impossibly pure moral standard, wherein we’re not supposed to want to make money, or we’re not supposed to accept any degree of unequal money distribution—you never see athletes talk about how they’re not going to take a salary because of all the former-D1 dads who never made pro.
One of the great writers of the West, Samuel Johnson, had this to say about that:
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."
The early Internet embrace of everything is free really drove the price of paid writing down. I helped a friend do some research on launching an online news site once (it never happened) and I was shocked at how low the rates were for most writers, even at places like Salon or Slate. I have been in the business/trade press for most of my career, and freelance rates there are plenty livable (I have been both a freelancer and a person who pays freelancers), although opportunities there are shrinking.
Blockhead here. I write for my own mental health. I like the clicks. I’d be too embarrassed to ask for money, as I am not a “real writer”. I don’t have the education to be one. I am raw. I also have an income. I also know that real writing is hard work and work needs to be compensated monetarily.
We did have a model (and sort of still do) where people got paid and you didn't need to subscribe to dozens of different writers: the newspaper and magazine industry. If I subscribe to the Atlantic or the NYT or Wired then I get a bunch of writers, they get paid, everything works out.
In that model, people still took a chance on new writers, they are just editors hiring them.
The big differences are that top people on Substack can make a lot more money, and that Substack expects much higher volume of writing, even compared to a regular newspaper columnist. I'm not sure those are great trends, though.
no there are two big differences. I will refer to them by Big names because I am rude SOB
The Matt Problem. Matt had a magazine, one he founded. He was driven out of it because he signed a letter defending free speech. The magazine model only works if you tow the company line
The Alan Problem. Alan, when he was mostly a free lancer, wrote incredible tv commentary and did amazing podcasts because he had to serve his audience. Then he joined Rolling Stone. He now cannot even be bothered to watch a good number of shows because his job only requires X articles per week. Good for Alan, I suppose but his work has degraded and as much as I like him I am not subscribing to a magazine that offers nothing else of interest for a shadow of his writing. If his stack was like his old stuff, I would be on Gooner tier. Magazines often make writers tend to their worst habits
"[Yglesias] was driven out of it because he signed a letter defending free speech." Was he? My recollection was that Yglesias left Vox because he didn't like having to deal with having his work edited.
I think it's rather apparent that the Harper's letter was never truly about "defending free speech," and the left-of-center folks who put their names on it were either hoodwinked or not so left-of-center. But it's not as if Michelle Goldberg, Dahlia Lithwick, Zaid Jilani, or Jeet Heer were "forced out" of their roles as left-of-center writer as a result of it?
they weren't working with ESJ. Matt has told the story publicly many times. a faction led by her claimed his support of the Harpers letter made the workplace unsafe and he didn't want to fight it. Just bemuse you didn't like the letter doesn't make it a scam
The letter was absolutely a scam to launder a right wing worldview, and anyone left-of-center who signed it really should reckon with that.
Assuming Yglesias isn't making that bit up, it would not surprise me if the folks complaining about Yglesias at work would present a more complicated picture of the scenario than that. Has that story been told from any other perspectives that you're aware of? I'd be interested to read those if so.
Honestly, this response is not productive or necessary. My initial instinct was to simply reply "NO YOU," for which the joke is that you've made a content-free assertion that I'm wrong, so I will reply with a content-free assertion that you're wrong.
If you're a conservative, that's fine. (I mean, "fine" in a relative sense, I think your views are odious.) But if you're left of center and you think that cozying up to right wingers who want to dominate women and queer people is going to advance the cause of free speech, you might want to look at what folks like that are presently doing when they actually gained power and recognize that, indeed, "you have allowed yourself to be led astray."
Beyond that, I'm going to politely request that you miss me with any posts similar to the above.
I 1000% agree. Even as a reader, I have to admit the flaws. Substack is winner take all. It selects the most dynamic writers and drops everyone else that a newspaper might employ.
So basically everyone who does fact-based original reporting is out. That’s bad. Their work feeds the dynamic people. I suspect it won’t be long before even Paul Krugman’s substack becomes, “Did you see what glip glop said to hoopta on Twitter?”
Maybe. I know you’re clearly not into $1 articles, but let me offer one more bit of perspective from the reader side:
I’m truly walking the walk, here. My entire subscription based entertainment budget is substack and Patreon. About $80/month. I want to, and I enjoy supporting independent art. All my non-book, recreational reading is Substack. That means that I’m not on twitter and I’m not watching White Lotus. So if one of my writers decides to put out a weeklong series on how the latest twitter beef is just like White Lotus, it would be nice to skip out on that.
That’s a made up and extreme circumstance, of course. But it’s also not way out of left field either.
I was thinking they could do several of those around specific topics, and offer slots to writers based on traffic or subscribers or whatever, and then each one gets a slice of whatever fee is paid by readers to access that sort-of Substack magazine.
I know that's just re-inventing the online magazine model, but it would be a nice way to expose readers with specific interests to writers they might not otherwise encounter. One thing I lament about the current algorithm-driven Internet vs how we accessed media in the pre-Internet and early Internet era is that I have a much harder time accidentally stumbling across things I like, because the space is so infinite and the algorithms just cough up more of the same all the time.
Correct. CHH wrote a couple of bangers and her high end is solid. The fact that substack incentivizes her to write “someone said something stupid on the internet” posts is a bug, not a feature.
Though as you allude to, there are fewer jobs like that, and those that exist pay less than they used to. I think a lot of criticism of Substack by writers (or would be writers) is really about that.
It's not just a higher volume of writing that is required to succeed on Substack, but crucially you also need a following on social media. I think a lot of writers resent that, especially the kind of person who aspires to be something like a New Yorker staff writer (or what they were 30 years ago, when they were better paid). I kind of get it. A lot of people don't like social media for good reason (it's toxic, degrades your attention span), and being good at writing a long article isn't really the same as being good at firing off takes on social media.
Back in the day you could be a true unknown and get hired for an entry level local newspaper or magazine job, and if you were good you could work your way up to writing magazine features or an op-ed column. That career path doesn't exist anymore, and blocks a lot of people who may not be suited to Substack for one reason or another.
The psychology around discretionary spending is wild: I will happily drop $15 on a cocktail but would think twice about spending the same on three months’ subscription to a writer I love. It’s silly.
I’d imagine that in the future some of the biggest superstar writers will have large enough audiences to have a $1 or $2 monthly subscription, which will help make it possible for people to have many subscriptions for a small outlay, if that’s what they think is important.
Personally, for an amount equivalent to a monthly streaming subscription I already have way more articles than I can keep up with.
Would you spend $15 on a cocktail consumed at home by yourself? I think in that case, you are partially paying to rent a seat in the bar to hang out with your friends.
I think that the big difference is the subscription model, honestly. People are aware that they can sign up for things and forget to cancel when they stop using them, etc. That's an essential part of the business model of gyms and such, after all.
I'd put the kinds of purchases you're talking about into two categories: the big category is stuff that you buy to facilitate a social interaction, like drinks at a bar. I'm not a big drinker, and when I meet up with friends at a bar, I will drink pretty much entirely for the sake of the experience, not that I want to consume a $15 cocktail or $9 beer. The second category is stuff you buy basically for a dopamine hit. "I want a candy bar, I will buy a candy bar. I am craving exactly this food so I will order it delivered."
All that said, I definitely agree that if there's a writer you LOVE, of course go ahead and pay for the substack. But generally I think that the reluctance to pay for a subscription to finish an article is well placed.
You described very well what I felt towards a certain clout of writers - it’s prob a selection effect but I feel a lot of writers are straight up anti capitalist (or worse against any money making activities) and that I think is harmful not only to themselves but other writers tbh.
(And I can relate how fucked publishing industry is as my family used to own a bookstore business…
The only thriving genre of publication is manga and even that is mostly bc of online platforms…)
As a long time proponent of "I should just be able to pay $5 for this Substack article", I have to say CHH has mostly convinced me.
In the Substack "Notes" feed I've see a sudden rise in a lot of clickbait and surprisingly right-wing content that I am not thrilled about. So I totally believe the pay per article model would encourage this kind of shallow but viral writing.
At the same time, I don't think the occasional free article and Substack recommendations method is necessarily the best method for discovery. I do come across detailed thoughtful writers who I might check out if I like the article behind the paywall, but I'll never know. Sometimes linked by a Substacker I do know.
Maybe it needs to be an option to pay for ten free articles from a writer, instead of the one-month subscription? After all that is fairer than doing a one-month subscription, reading everything, then unsubscribing (even though I feel like people don't actually do that).
Maybe with every $30 in Substack subscriptions I should get access to one article a year from anywhere else on Substack? Those Substackers would still be incentivized to write to acquire a subscriber audience, not just do a viral post.
I agree that Substack needs to experiment more with ways to get people to try new authors. I frequently come across some new author here (e.g. linked from one I already read) and hit a pay-wall on my phone and, eh, it is just kind of not a great experience to subscribe to get an overview of what else they've written, decide I'll give it a show, go back to the subscription page, pay money, finish reading the article I originally landed on, go back through their archives and add a dozen or so to my reading list, remember to check my reading list over the next few weeks, decide whether to cancel the subscription after one month.
There's just tons of friction at every step. Though I understand why Substack doesn't want to make it easy for me to cancel subscriptions they could definitely make everything else there better, especially on mobile.
FWIW, I have paid subscriptions to four Substacks and you are easily the best value of the bunch.
One writes very well and pretty frequently if irregularly, but rarely paywalls things so my subscription is essentially just a donation anyway - it seems like it either needs to regularise a bit more or just stick with the buy me a coffee model. One is consistent but massively variable in quality - some articles I think they have struck the nail on the head exactly, whereas others I will get a paragraph in and stop reading because it’s just poorly researched and argued nonsense. The output is frequent enough that paying for individual articles isn’t worth it (and it’s hard to tell what’s going to be good before you read it) but I sometimes question the value for money - I’d probably read them under some sort of joint subscription but am often on the fence otherwise. The last one writes enormous and detailed articles which are typically updated, but only ever does so once every month or two and in a pretty idiosyncratic way - I’d be much better off just buying them individually as and when I’m actually going to read them. There’s a few others I particularly enjoy that are completely free - I’d consider buying a small subscription as an appreciation gesture but they usually set the standard subscription price too high to justify it.
In contrast, you are consistent in output level, regularised in release schedules, are pretty much always interesting to read and are reasonably priced. I’m not surprised that subscription models work for you as it represents an excellent deal for both you and your readers, and I think you’re right that this level of quality is what Substack is best built around, so shouldn’t necessarily be surrendered in the face of another. However, I also think it’s a fair argument that more choice wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing - I wouldn’t want to switch models with you, but there are other for which it would make more sense, and I don’t think you would necessarily lose anything from people having the additional option of selling individual articles or teaming up for joint subscriptions even if that’s not something you particularly need to engage with.
Produce a regular (at least weekly but hopefully more often)
where a majority of the articles are well written even if I don't want to read them
I will occasionally throw a bone at a new person but often I find they can't keep the pace or I only liked the one free article so I finish my month and stop.
I agree with you entirely, though I think some of this (at least initially) comes from a good place: there are more writers here that I want to subscribe to than I can afford.
And some from a sort of confused place: why can I get the entire New York Times or everything on Apple TV for the same monthly price as one Substack subscription about cool planners? It doesn’t actually make sense? Can someone explain this beyond “scale”?
Even worse: we should bundle multiple subscriptions under 1 payment. We already have that! It’s called Medium! It lost because its discovery model incentives high volume algorithmic slop!
Obviously I still cross post my free articles but that’s because I like free money
Top tier comment 😂
The Substack feed gives me plenty of slop.
Ha I was going to comment that there should be some bundling.
Like there's got to be a way to do this. I know substack represents the "great unbundling" but one used to be able to read a variety of writers for a monthly free - we called it a "magazine".
Because the thing is, allowing access to an additional person has no incremental cost to the writer or substack, since serving articles is (basically) free. Assuming everyone has some rough amount they're willing to spend on substack each month - $20? $40? - giving them more access doesn't really have a downside.
Anyways I haven't figured out the magic formula for this and I don't know why Medium failed. But something feels unoptimized here. I think there's a method where writers make the same or more, and people get more access.
I don't mean the extreme case, like Spotify where you pay one fee and access everyone and all of the artists make nothing except Taylor Swift. But maybe some kind of 3-for-the-price-of-2 bundling of writers that have audience overlap.
Magazines were a great invention. At $5+/month I'm only going to subscribe to a couple of writers at a time. This means my 10th favorite writer in the world will never make a penny from me, which seems unfair.
But I'd happily pay for a magazine (like the Atlantic) giving me access to a bunch of writers I like (but wouldn't pay for alone).
I feel like a middle ground approach here would be for Substack to allow writers to form mini-communities to offer their work together for a price that is less than subscribing to them all individually. Perhaps subscribing in that way would mean a new tier in-between free and fully paid such that you only got some of any given author's work.
(Yes, yes I know this is basically reinventing the magazine, but within the Substack format and without some of the other overhead)
Could you spell out for me the incentives there? I can think of reasons bundling is a bad idea (mainly, it makes it hard on those succeeding under the current model, who will be pressured to take the new worse deal), but it doesn’t seem worse than pay-per-article. I would have assumed it’d be somewhat anti-slop since it guarantees a slice of the pie - though of course slop is always incentivized by “more article make more money” so any system is gonna have a lot of it.
Let’s say I’m making pretty good money on Substack because I’m good at writing and marketing myself.
If you bundle me, how do I know you aren’t taking my earned money to subsidise people worse at self-promotion? Why are you charging my niche iOS audience more to send them additional venture capital content they won’t read?
Maybe there’s no perfect option, but I prefer the brutal cutthroat capitalism of Substack’s model. I wake up every day and throw darts at a printed-out rising leaderboard.
^This^
Disagree! There a lot of successful Substacks that do a rotating cast of contributors or frequent guest posts. Nothing about being a solo writer that guarantees quality.
What a formal bundling model would add to Substack is it would allow the same Substacker to do a mixture of (high-value but unreliable) customer acquisition and (low-value but reliable) content partnerships. Maybe Substackers bundle aggressively when they are starting out and then strike it out on on their own after acquiring an audience.
A bit of an aside, but actual newspapers *absolutely should* offer $1 articles. Sometimes I'll see something interesting in, say, the Cincinnati Times I'd happily pay $1 to read. I'm not going to subscribe to the Cincinnati Times as I don't live in Cincinnati. So I don't read the article and they don't get my money, lose, lose.
Substack and the Cincinnati Times could have a beautiful friendship if substack didn’t prioritize subscriptions uber alles.
I agree with you in principle, but my understanding is that when local newspapers tried to do this, it failed financially. It's sad, because like you every so often I'll need to look up something like an article from a newspaper in Indiana in 1987, so the archives are paywalled beyond a yearly subscription I'll forget to cancel in time, so I just don't pay and forget about it. And then when everyone does that, the information in the article goes from being part of history into being forgotten.
I have encountered papers that had levels of archive access based on time -- for example you could pay for a 24-hour pass, which gave you access to as many articles as you wanted to download in that period. Per article access for new content, though, I haven't seen.
I understand that resentment some writers have toward Substack. It really only works for certain kinds of writing, which is essentially quickly and prolifically written, high quality blog posts. There are many other kinds of writing where career opportunities are fewer and fewer and Substack does not fill the void. You mentioned books, but I'd add things like long-form essays and reported features as well. My impression is that, 20-30 years ago, if you were talented you really would be paid a solid salary to think and report deeply about something, and then produce one article every month or two.
And there are some topics where I do think Substack-style writing is inferior. There are some well-known Substackers I used to subscribe to but eventually became disillusioned with because I felt that they weren't doing enough research and thinking about the very weighty topics they were writing about. They'd write articles that almost felt like reported features at first, but then you realize that all the content was just prettied up twitter takes.
That said, I still pay for multiple Substacks, so I obviously think it works for some kinds of writing. The problem isn't Substack but rather collapsing career paths for other kinds of writing.
I agree and I touched on that. It’s so hard to become a full time writer doing anything *except* what I do!
Part of me wonders about this tho. I hear a lot of visual artists complain that they can't make good money (or can only do so drawing porn), and I always think... yeah but wasn't it HARDER before?
Like I think it's just always true that short writing that speaks to hot topics in a timely manner and is agreeable or provocative is gonna be successful compared to anything else. That means if you want a space to create good work, you need to be really careful about not *further* biasing toward that, but I'm not sure substack does more than the world did already.
Tbf, I have no idea what the publishing world for poetry used to look like, so maybe it was way better.
I think it's a mixed bag for both visual art and writing. There are fewer gatekeepers now and fewer hoops to jump through, so in a way it's more open. Additionally, successful people can become successful much faster (not need to pay your dues). But there are fewer people making a stable, full-time, middle-class income in these fields.
It's amazing to think that nearly every major local paper had things like a professional food critic or movie critic on staff who could afford a middle class lifestyle on that salary.
Yeah, I have heard similar from comedians, actually. It’s easier for people to get in, but the routes to success are broken down - so people who might have been great struggle against virality, and being on TV is like, all of a sudden nothing
The model has been great for writers, but less great for consumers who have to pay something like $50-100 per year (each!) to follow their favorite writers.
This costs a lot more than a book or even a newspaper subscription (with a whole opinion section).
I think everyone who loves Substack is paying more than they want to right now. That’s amazing for writers—locking people in for a monthly subscription payment that’s more than anyone typically pays for writing, is a really great deal.
But it also sucks that I used to be able to follow a lot of writers by reading their op/ed columns and buying their books, and now the cost is so much higher.
I would like to see books “published” here. I published a book as a series for paid subscribers but I would like to publish one as a standalone on here ideally!
In that vein, CHH, what would you think about a feature where Substack allowed writers to create anthologies of posts and offer them for standalone fees? Maybe accompanied with a discount code for a full year subscription? So you pay like $10 for X number of past-posts that CHH think bests represents the content of the newsletter, and then get a coupon code for 10% or 15% off an annual subscription if you like what you've read.
Tangential, but I went down the wiki rabbit hole of reading F Scott Fitzgerald's bio on wikipedia, and if I recall properly, serial publication of his novels in installments in periodic newspapers was a big part of his literary career at the time of first publishing.
I know nothing about the economics of publishing back then, but it seems like there was a symbiotic relationship where the author got cheap, wide exposure and immediate financial income and the periodical got premium serialized content to drive reader interest.
Substack: the Saturday Evening Post of the 21st century? :-)
what’s the point? you can publish a book on kindle. are substack’s terms better?
I can't tell you how starstruck I'd be if you walked up and told me you were CHH, I am dying to put a face to the words (would also be mildly confused, because I'm in the North of England, so what are you doing here?) Sort of related, but after I became a paid sub I showed my husband one of your pieces – he came across you randomly on Twitter the next day and I swear it was like he'd had a celebrity sighting 😂
I completely agree re the paid model. Having worked in SEO and having seen how shoddy content can become when writing purely for clicks (which is absolutely what would happen if everyone was fighting for that $1) I can confidently say that charging per article is the quickest way to turn this platform of bleeding hearts into a platform of clickbait con artists. I know what I'd rather it be.
We are going to England in a few months! So not out of the realm of possibility :)
I’d say I’ll look out for you, but I have no idea what either of you look like so that would be exhausting. Where are you headed to? The weather is quite nice right now (you’ll hear a lot of people commenting on the weather while you’re here) – hope it stays that way for you guys
If you see someone serving an insane amount of cunt on the streets of London, you’ll know it is CHH
😂
Ooh this is exciting! Where in England? I'm in London so will keep an eye out for CHH fashion.
Of nice! We are staying in London in August. I’ll see if she is open to some meetup
I can also drop my list of best playgrounds in central London and kid friendly things to do if anyone is at all interested (I'm sure your holiday is already very well planned!)
It’s not lol! That is very thoughtful and would be helpful. We are staying near the soho area.
This is like the dream assignment for a Londoner with kids lol.
My essay below:
First things first, DO NOT take a taxi from the airport (I'm going to assume you're arriving into Heathrow) - get the Elizabeth line or the Piccadilly line, both of which will drop you within a ~5 mins walk of where you need to be. You can pay for both the tube and Elizabeth line via contactless - e.g. apple pay/Gpay/whatever. Kids go free!
Museums - these (mostly) have free tickets you can book in advance, so make sure you do book to skip long queues.
Science museum - steam trains, space exhibit and so much more - they also have a play area called "The Garden" in the basement which is free and has water play etc. Our sons love it (aged 3 and 6).
Natural history museum - if your kids like dinosaurs, this is a great one. Really nice dino-themed garden as well.
Museum of Childhood - this is located in Bethnal Green, accessible easily on the Central line from Tottenham Court Road. It has a fabulous under 2s play area, as well as good play areas for older ages too. The theme of the museum is toys through history.
Museum of the Home - this is in Hackney, right opposite Hoxton station on the overground, so much be a bit too much of a trek. However it is fab, lots of interactive stuff including 90s Mario, and my son loved it most of all for its fireplaces (he went through a brief fireplace obsession).
National Portrait Gallery - this is right by Leicester Square, and I will say that while it doesn't have amazing play areas or anything like that, it DOES have excellent children's resources like scavenger hunts based on different themes (sculpture/tudors), but probably better for older kids.
Museum of London, Docklands - Again could be too far away. However accessible on the Docklands Light railway and your kids can enjoy the views and pretend to drive the train (they don't have drivers). It has a free, very good quality soft play (BOOK IN ADVANCE) and it has fab interactive stuff throughout including an old fashioned street. My son loved pretending to welcome people to the "pub" in the street as well as making "food" on the "fire" in one of the living rooms.
Imperial war museum - this is in Lambeth, get there via the Bakerloo line which is easy to pick up from Oxford Circus. Lots of planes, tanks, guns, well organised exhibits with kids activities and interactive stuff. Might again be just a bit too old for your children but our 3 & 6 yo enjoyed it, the 3 yo did get a bit bored though.
British Museum - meh for kids tbh. It's huge though and mine like seeing the Egyptian stuff.
Other stuff:
Hamleys - giant toy store on Oxford street. Under no circumstances buy anything from here as it's all incredibly overpriced. But it's a fab day out with lots of demonstrations from interactive staff - my kids love the window shopping and playing with the toys they have out.
Kew Gardens - Very West London but if the weather is still nice, a great place to mooch around with decent kids' activities and a nice playground. An astonishing amount of stuff to do.
Hyde park - great playgrounds for kids and giant sandpits.
London Zoo - excellent zoo, great kids' activities, excellent playground and splashpad.
Finsbury park - easy to get to on Victoria line, exceptionally good playgrounds, nice walk along the parkland walk to Muswell Hill and Highgate wood, with even more amazing playgrounds.
Stratford olympic park - incredible playgrounds and a nice place to mooch around if the weather is nice but not sure I can in good conscience advise tourists to go out of their way to go there.
One data point, but I've found a reasonable amount of success on Substack writing less frequent, longer form stuff (currently #28 in the "technology" category). I write roughly one essay a week (sometimes one every two weeks if they're longer, 6000+ word ones), along with a weekly link roundup.
I will note that while this is a slower pace when compared to other internet writing, it's probably pretty quick compared to how quickly most people could put out a similarly-researched work. My skill isn't writing quickly, but researching quickly, and it turns out that Substack rewards that too.
It helps that your choices of subject matter and execution are both awesome!
this is an interesting take!!! i offer basically all my content for free while also asking people to be paid subscribers… spoiler - the thing that brought me the most paid subscribers is when i paywalled something 😂 i’m torn because i understand you can’t subscribe to every substack you like, im in the same boat, and also publishing a lot of content and frequently obviously takes a lot of work! but id be open to a model like the dollar per article or whatever for people who want to support but cant pay X amount of month every month
Didn’t realize you were on here! I’ll follow.
I think I as a subscriber benefit from this model, I will subscribe to a publication, cancel so that I only pay one month and it doesn’t auto renew, and read all the best paid posts in that month. My ability to read good posts is much higher than a writers ability to write good posts, so I can wait a few months for good content to pent up before subscribing another month. I think this is because I heard somewhere that subscription models are designed to make money off of people who forget and auto renew, and the thought if being a sucker like that terrifies and enrages me, so I almost always cancel immediately after subscribing(except for essentials like Amazon, Spotify, ChatGPT). As a result, I actually get more good posts per dollar with the subscription model, since I’ll be reading a bunch of good posts over a couple of months rather than just one.
You're my mirror image: I very rarely subscribe because I know that if I have a subscription, I'm very unlikely to remember to cancel, so I won't sign up unless I know I'll get my money's worth.
In re: The second issue at play is a bit more disturbing to me, which is that writing (or any art, really) is held to an impossibly pure moral standard, wherein we’re not supposed to want to make money, or we’re not supposed to accept any degree of unequal money distribution—you never see athletes talk about how they’re not going to take a salary because of all the former-D1 dads who never made pro.
One of the great writers of the West, Samuel Johnson, had this to say about that:
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."
The early Internet embrace of everything is free really drove the price of paid writing down. I helped a friend do some research on launching an online news site once (it never happened) and I was shocked at how low the rates were for most writers, even at places like Salon or Slate. I have been in the business/trade press for most of my career, and freelance rates there are plenty livable (I have been both a freelancer and a person who pays freelancers), although opportunities there are shrinking.
It's also that the Internet showed how ineffective advertising was, which destroyed the print media model of selling cheap.
Blockhead here. I write for my own mental health. I like the clicks. I’d be too embarrassed to ask for money, as I am not a “real writer”. I don’t have the education to be one. I am raw. I also have an income. I also know that real writing is hard work and work needs to be compensated monetarily.
We did have a model (and sort of still do) where people got paid and you didn't need to subscribe to dozens of different writers: the newspaper and magazine industry. If I subscribe to the Atlantic or the NYT or Wired then I get a bunch of writers, they get paid, everything works out.
In that model, people still took a chance on new writers, they are just editors hiring them.
The big differences are that top people on Substack can make a lot more money, and that Substack expects much higher volume of writing, even compared to a regular newspaper columnist. I'm not sure those are great trends, though.
no there are two big differences. I will refer to them by Big names because I am rude SOB
The Matt Problem. Matt had a magazine, one he founded. He was driven out of it because he signed a letter defending free speech. The magazine model only works if you tow the company line
The Alan Problem. Alan, when he was mostly a free lancer, wrote incredible tv commentary and did amazing podcasts because he had to serve his audience. Then he joined Rolling Stone. He now cannot even be bothered to watch a good number of shows because his job only requires X articles per week. Good for Alan, I suppose but his work has degraded and as much as I like him I am not subscribing to a magazine that offers nothing else of interest for a shadow of his writing. If his stack was like his old stuff, I would be on Gooner tier. Magazines often make writers tend to their worst habits
"[Yglesias] was driven out of it because he signed a letter defending free speech." Was he? My recollection was that Yglesias left Vox because he didn't like having to deal with having his work edited.
I think it's rather apparent that the Harper's letter was never truly about "defending free speech," and the left-of-center folks who put their names on it were either hoodwinked or not so left-of-center. But it's not as if Michelle Goldberg, Dahlia Lithwick, Zaid Jilani, or Jeet Heer were "forced out" of their roles as left-of-center writer as a result of it?
they weren't working with ESJ. Matt has told the story publicly many times. a faction led by her claimed his support of the Harpers letter made the workplace unsafe and he didn't want to fight it. Just bemuse you didn't like the letter doesn't make it a scam
The letter was absolutely a scam to launder a right wing worldview, and anyone left-of-center who signed it really should reckon with that.
Assuming Yglesias isn't making that bit up, it would not surprise me if the folks complaining about Yglesias at work would present a more complicated picture of the scenario than that. Has that story been told from any other perspectives that you're aware of? I'd be interested to read those if so.
Out of respect for CCH, I will just say go with God because you have allowed yourself to be led astray
Honestly, this response is not productive or necessary. My initial instinct was to simply reply "NO YOU," for which the joke is that you've made a content-free assertion that I'm wrong, so I will reply with a content-free assertion that you're wrong.
If you're a conservative, that's fine. (I mean, "fine" in a relative sense, I think your views are odious.) But if you're left of center and you think that cozying up to right wingers who want to dominate women and queer people is going to advance the cause of free speech, you might want to look at what folks like that are presently doing when they actually gained power and recognize that, indeed, "you have allowed yourself to be led astray."
Beyond that, I'm going to politely request that you miss me with any posts similar to the above.
I 1000% agree. Even as a reader, I have to admit the flaws. Substack is winner take all. It selects the most dynamic writers and drops everyone else that a newspaper might employ.
So basically everyone who does fact-based original reporting is out. That’s bad. Their work feeds the dynamic people. I suspect it won’t be long before even Paul Krugman’s substack becomes, “Did you see what glip glop said to hoopta on Twitter?”
It might make sense to pool less prolific writers into a magazine-style format while the Slow Borings continue as their own magazines.
Maybe. I know you’re clearly not into $1 articles, but let me offer one more bit of perspective from the reader side:
I’m truly walking the walk, here. My entire subscription based entertainment budget is substack and Patreon. About $80/month. I want to, and I enjoy supporting independent art. All my non-book, recreational reading is Substack. That means that I’m not on twitter and I’m not watching White Lotus. So if one of my writers decides to put out a weeklong series on how the latest twitter beef is just like White Lotus, it would be nice to skip out on that.
That’s a made up and extreme circumstance, of course. But it’s also not way out of left field either.
I was thinking they could do several of those around specific topics, and offer slots to writers based on traffic or subscribers or whatever, and then each one gets a slice of whatever fee is paid by readers to access that sort-of Substack magazine.
I know that's just re-inventing the online magazine model, but it would be a nice way to expose readers with specific interests to writers they might not otherwise encounter. One thing I lament about the current algorithm-driven Internet vs how we accessed media in the pre-Internet and early Internet era is that I have a much harder time accidentally stumbling across things I like, because the space is so infinite and the algorithms just cough up more of the same all the time.
Correct. CHH wrote a couple of bangers and her high end is solid. The fact that substack incentivizes her to write “someone said something stupid on the internet” posts is a bug, not a feature.
Though as you allude to, there are fewer jobs like that, and those that exist pay less than they used to. I think a lot of criticism of Substack by writers (or would be writers) is really about that.
It's not just a higher volume of writing that is required to succeed on Substack, but crucially you also need a following on social media. I think a lot of writers resent that, especially the kind of person who aspires to be something like a New Yorker staff writer (or what they were 30 years ago, when they were better paid). I kind of get it. A lot of people don't like social media for good reason (it's toxic, degrades your attention span), and being good at writing a long article isn't really the same as being good at firing off takes on social media.
Back in the day you could be a true unknown and get hired for an entry level local newspaper or magazine job, and if you were good you could work your way up to writing magazine features or an op-ed column. That career path doesn't exist anymore, and blocks a lot of people who may not be suited to Substack for one reason or another.
The psychology around discretionary spending is wild: I will happily drop $15 on a cocktail but would think twice about spending the same on three months’ subscription to a writer I love. It’s silly.
I’d imagine that in the future some of the biggest superstar writers will have large enough audiences to have a $1 or $2 monthly subscription, which will help make it possible for people to have many subscriptions for a small outlay, if that’s what they think is important.
Personally, for an amount equivalent to a monthly streaming subscription I already have way more articles than I can keep up with.
Would you spend $15 on a cocktail consumed at home by yourself? I think in that case, you are partially paying to rent a seat in the bar to hang out with your friends.
My $15 DoorDash bubble tea says Yes!
But the cocktail isn’t the point, you can substitute that for any small discretionary purchase.
"My $15 DoorDash bubble tea says Yes!"
Man, you folks are rich. ;)
I think that the big difference is the subscription model, honestly. People are aware that they can sign up for things and forget to cancel when they stop using them, etc. That's an essential part of the business model of gyms and such, after all.
I'd put the kinds of purchases you're talking about into two categories: the big category is stuff that you buy to facilitate a social interaction, like drinks at a bar. I'm not a big drinker, and when I meet up with friends at a bar, I will drink pretty much entirely for the sake of the experience, not that I want to consume a $15 cocktail or $9 beer. The second category is stuff you buy basically for a dopamine hit. "I want a candy bar, I will buy a candy bar. I am craving exactly this food so I will order it delivered."
All that said, I definitely agree that if there's a writer you LOVE, of course go ahead and pay for the substack. But generally I think that the reluctance to pay for a subscription to finish an article is well placed.
You described very well what I felt towards a certain clout of writers - it’s prob a selection effect but I feel a lot of writers are straight up anti capitalist (or worse against any money making activities) and that I think is harmful not only to themselves but other writers tbh.
(And I can relate how fucked publishing industry is as my family used to own a bookstore business…
The only thriving genre of publication is manga and even that is mostly bc of online platforms…)
As a long time proponent of "I should just be able to pay $5 for this Substack article", I have to say CHH has mostly convinced me.
In the Substack "Notes" feed I've see a sudden rise in a lot of clickbait and surprisingly right-wing content that I am not thrilled about. So I totally believe the pay per article model would encourage this kind of shallow but viral writing.
At the same time, I don't think the occasional free article and Substack recommendations method is necessarily the best method for discovery. I do come across detailed thoughtful writers who I might check out if I like the article behind the paywall, but I'll never know. Sometimes linked by a Substacker I do know.
Maybe it needs to be an option to pay for ten free articles from a writer, instead of the one-month subscription? After all that is fairer than doing a one-month subscription, reading everything, then unsubscribing (even though I feel like people don't actually do that).
Maybe with every $30 in Substack subscriptions I should get access to one article a year from anywhere else on Substack? Those Substackers would still be incentivized to write to acquire a subscriber audience, not just do a viral post.
I agree that Substack needs to experiment more with ways to get people to try new authors. I frequently come across some new author here (e.g. linked from one I already read) and hit a pay-wall on my phone and, eh, it is just kind of not a great experience to subscribe to get an overview of what else they've written, decide I'll give it a show, go back to the subscription page, pay money, finish reading the article I originally landed on, go back through their archives and add a dozen or so to my reading list, remember to check my reading list over the next few weeks, decide whether to cancel the subscription after one month.
There's just tons of friction at every step. Though I understand why Substack doesn't want to make it easy for me to cancel subscriptions they could definitely make everything else there better, especially on mobile.
FWIW, I have paid subscriptions to four Substacks and you are easily the best value of the bunch.
One writes very well and pretty frequently if irregularly, but rarely paywalls things so my subscription is essentially just a donation anyway - it seems like it either needs to regularise a bit more or just stick with the buy me a coffee model. One is consistent but massively variable in quality - some articles I think they have struck the nail on the head exactly, whereas others I will get a paragraph in and stop reading because it’s just poorly researched and argued nonsense. The output is frequent enough that paying for individual articles isn’t worth it (and it’s hard to tell what’s going to be good before you read it) but I sometimes question the value for money - I’d probably read them under some sort of joint subscription but am often on the fence otherwise. The last one writes enormous and detailed articles which are typically updated, but only ever does so once every month or two and in a pretty idiosyncratic way - I’d be much better off just buying them individually as and when I’m actually going to read them. There’s a few others I particularly enjoy that are completely free - I’d consider buying a small subscription as an appreciation gesture but they usually set the standard subscription price too high to justify it.
In contrast, you are consistent in output level, regularised in release schedules, are pretty much always interesting to read and are reasonably priced. I’m not surprised that subscription models work for you as it represents an excellent deal for both you and your readers, and I think you’re right that this level of quality is what Substack is best built around, so shouldn’t necessarily be surrendered in the face of another. However, I also think it’s a fair argument that more choice wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing - I wouldn’t want to switch models with you, but there are other for which it would make more sense, and I don’t think you would necessarily lose anything from people having the additional option of selling individual articles or teaming up for joint subscriptions even if that’s not something you particularly need to engage with.
Thank you!! ❤️❤️❤️
I agree. I tend to pay for stacks that:
Produce a regular (at least weekly but hopefully more often)
where a majority of the articles are well written even if I don't want to read them
I will occasionally throw a bone at a new person but often I find they can't keep the pace or I only liked the one free article so I finish my month and stop.
I find gaming the free trial to be uncultured
I agree with you entirely, though I think some of this (at least initially) comes from a good place: there are more writers here that I want to subscribe to than I can afford.
And some from a sort of confused place: why can I get the entire New York Times or everything on Apple TV for the same monthly price as one Substack subscription about cool planners? It doesn’t actually make sense? Can someone explain this beyond “scale”?