[HN Gopher] Sovereign writers and Substack
___________________________________________________________________
Sovereign writers and Substack
Author : feross
Score : 79 points
Date : 2021-03-22 14:48 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
| mdoms wrote:
| Substack is what happens when the mainstream media elites
| overplay their hand and force heterodox writers out of the
| "mainstream". As it turns out there are still plenty of people
| who want to read this kind of writing, and we don't appreciate
| the gatekeeping from formerly reputable sources.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| _Of course things aren't so simple; Sullivan, like several of the
| other names on that leaderboard, are, to put it gently,
| controversial. That he along with other lightning-rod writers
| ended up on Substack is more a matter of where else would they
| go?_
|
| While Substack is portrayed as being a good move for writers and
| journalists (and certainly it is, financially), I don't think
| this is actually good for journalism as a whole. It often will
| just mean that successful writers are the most celebrity-like
| ones: writing controversial things because it gets more traffic
| and therefore more income.
|
| I don't know about you, but I don't want the tactics of Kim
| Kardashian to be the model of a future journalist.
| jameshart wrote:
| Substack is a great move for a _columnist_ but a terrible move
| for a _reporter_.
|
| Unfortunately not all journalists are completely clear which of
| those they are.
| bhupy wrote:
| That's what journalism has _always_ been like, save for a few
| decades in one specific country (the US). The past few decades
| of supposed "objectivity" and "neutrality" in American
| journalism were a historical aberration.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/journalism-isnt-dying-its-return...
| slibhb wrote:
| I watched a classic movie from the 50s recently, Sweet Smell
| of Success. In the movie columnists are portrayed as almost
| exclusively venal and engaged in corrupt influence-peddling
| (except for one guy who refuses to compromise in the face of
| blackmail).
|
| It was an interesting counterpoint to the "journalists used
| to be objective" stuff.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Anti-discrimination laws, human rights, and democracy are
| also historical aberrations. But I think they're _kind of_
| worth keeping around.
|
| Perhaps getting accurate facts about the world is also
| important?
| bhupy wrote:
| > Anti-discrimination laws, human rights, and democracy are
| also historical aberrations. But I think they're kind of
| worth keeping around.
|
| Nazism was also a historical aberration, but that's
| certainly not worth keeping around. Just because some
| "good" things were historical aberrations, doesn't mean
| that all historical aberrations are "good".
|
| > Perhaps getting accurate facts about the world is also
| important?
|
| I don't think anybody disagrees with this. The central
| question is: is _journalism_ the institution that should be
| responsible for getting accurate facts about the world?
| That 's almost never been the case, and even today, isn't
| the case in most countries (including Western Europe). We
| typically use other institutions to suss out facts,
| including academia and peer-reviewed research. News
| articles published by mainstream outlets aren't peer-
| reviewed, and bias has existed in journalism since time
| immemorial. That was the point of my original response.
| Substack isn't "good" or "bad" for the future of
| journalism, it's "neutral", since it doesn't change the
| status quo all that much.
| adolph wrote:
| Were people getting accurate facts about the world
| previously?
|
| _Wen it came out in 1988, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's
| Manufacturing Consent rattled the accepted view in post-
| Vietnam, post-Watergate America that journalists'
| relationship to power was essentially adversarial. Instead,
| they argued, the institutional structure of American media
| -- its dependence on corporate advertising and sources in
| the upper ranks of government and business -- created a
| role for the press as creators of propaganda. Without any
| direct press censorship, with full freedom of speech, the
| media narrowed the political debate to exclude anything
| that offended the interests of the market or the state._
|
| https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/10/matt-taibbi-interview-
| fai...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > While Substack is portrayed as being a good move for
| writers and journalists (and certainly it is, financially), I
| don't think this is actually good for journalism
|
| And were neither objective nor neutral, just a close
| alignment of elite interests reflected in homogeneity.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| That's a strawman and a half.
|
| World-improving journalism follows a Pareto distribution where
| 90% of non-submarine hard-hitting journalism is done by 10% of
| the journalists and the rest just exist to peddle influence.
| The industry has been under pressure for a long time due to the
| death of print media, and substack just represents the 10%
| cutting the fat.
|
| Good riddance. Learn to code.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I don't know about you, but I don't want the tactics of Kim
| Kardashian to be the model of a future journalist.
|
| I don't think something like Substack could even support
| journalism. Sure, it could support various kinds of punditry,
| which is often confused for journalism, but beat journalism is
| probably too boring and investigative journalism produces on
| too irregular of a schedule.
| pydry wrote:
| >It often will just mean that successful writers are the most
| celebrity-like ones: writing controversial things because it
| gets more traffic
|
| The opposite seems more the case to me. Convincing readers to
| get out their wallet encourages more thoughtful, longer form
| writing.
|
| It's the larger media publications that are gradually getting
| more clickbaity in a desperate bid to gain clicks and ad
| revenue.
| zpeti wrote:
| My perception of old media is that they are doing exactly this,
| writing click bait things to get clicks and subs. This is true
| across the board from CNN to NYT to Fox.
|
| At least with substack the incentives are not there for daily
| churn articles, the journalists have independence to publish
| when they want to, how they want to, worst case they lost
| subscribers. I think those incentives make them a lot less
| likely to make everything about clicks and controversy
| actually.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Agreed, old media already does this. The question is: does
| switching to an individual-focused model actually address the
| underlying issues?
| carlineng wrote:
| I would argue that yes, the fundamental incentives are
| different. Traditional media relied on an advertising-based
| revenue model, that needed to maximize eyeballs to be
| attractive to advertisers. Substack relies on
| subscriptions, which can operate at a much smaller scale.
| Matthew Yglesias's 10k subscribers is not nearly enough to
| be attractive for an advertiser, but more than enough to
| support a single writer's subscription business. Through
| Substack, writers are incentivized to write things they
| think that _people will pay for_ , not just things they
| think people will click on.
| 762236 wrote:
| You've described NY Times and Fox News in how they write
| controversial things to get more traffic. They share the same
| world, yet have quite dissimilar front pages, because they're
| tailoring controversy for the value systems of their audiences.
| The authors on Substack don't need to seek controversy: they
| just need to point out the rules of the orthodoxy, and then the
| controversy follows them.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Yes, so Substack is just kicking the bucket further down the
| road. Just another game of musical chairs.
|
| I guess it's cool that writers make more money, but I'm not
| sure this is as revolutionary as it seems.
| snicksnak wrote:
| > I don't want the tactics of Kim Kardashian to be the model of
| a future journalist.
|
| Most mayor news outlets (including NYT) run branded/sponsored
| content. I doubt that you will see that on substack.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| You absolutely will when people on the cusp of making a
| living use them to push themselves over that edge. As is
| pretty common on other content platforms.
|
| Here it's happening already:
| https://medialyte.substack.com/p/the-curious-emergence-of-
| th...
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Old media and Buzzfeed-esque rags had their chance to write
| quality journalism in the nascent Internet age. They've failed
| spectacularly and are tearing society apart. If this is the way
| forward for the time being, so be it.
| slibhb wrote:
| > writing controversial things because it gets more traffic and
| therefore more income.
|
| This is a danger but I'd rather have "controversial" than "if
| you deviate from the politics of the publication that pays your
| salary, you get fired".
|
| Personally, I like Sullivan, Greenwald, Yglesias, Taibbi, etc.
|
| I think Sullivan and Yglesias are not drama queens and that
| Geenwald and Tiabbi are. But I like all 4, I just think the
| latter two need a responsible editor to rein them in a bit.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| I don't dislike them, I just dislike the idea that becoming a
| successful journalist will now mean you must also be
| charismatic, good at attracting attention to yourself, etc.
| x0x0 wrote:
| The word "now" is doing a lot of work there :) So also
| successful.
|
| Do you think there was really a time that being a really
| successful journalist didn't require some charisma and a
| talent for publicity? Maybe the publication handled some of
| those things, but it doesn't change that they were
| required.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Of course. Investigative journalism has little to do with
| building an audience of paying subscribers. When the
| newspaper handled the business end, the journalists could
| focus on the journalism.
|
| It wasn't called "loss leader" for nothing.
| ghaff wrote:
| Newspapers were historically a bundle of only somewhat
| tangentially related things that you had to take, if not
| actually read, all together. The foreign bureaus and
| investigative journalism provided the prestige, sports a
| lot of readership, and classified ads the money. Of
| course, the Internet broke that bundle apart to a large
| degree.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| To be honest, writing is a kind of art and what you
| describe has always been important among artistically
| gifted people.
|
| Introverted and shy geniuses tend to be discovered after
| their deaths, if ever.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| No, that really isn't true at all. Some of the most
| famous writers and artists throughout history were
| terrible at self-promotion.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Well we are talking more about financial success, right?
| Or that was my impression from the debate. Even the
| original article revolves around $$$.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| I'm just concerned that _journalists_ will become more
| like _celebrities_. Less concerned with the cold facts
| and more with giving their take.
|
| Frankly a similar thing has already happened in the art
| world. Banksy, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst are fantastic
| marketers, not artists.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Was Ted Koppel really a great journalist?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Not the example I'd use. Kronkite is a better one, IMO.
| That level of straightforwardness is sorely lacking
| today.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Journalism has always been a business that sells on sensation
| and controversy.
|
| The people who tell you otherwise tend to be journalists.
|
| That said, sensation driven journalism can be pretty good at
| checking the powerful, since it's sensational when they do bad
| things.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > While Substack is portrayed as being a good move for writers
| and journalists (and certainly it is, financially), I don't
| think this is actually good for journalism
|
| Certainly what I've seen from writers on substack is much worse
| than what I've seen from the same writers in traditional
| publications. It seems to be a great way of catapulting anyone
| who has achieved even a bit of name recognition into that
| "doesn't have to deal with editors/publishers/etc." phase of
| their career that's often the quality downfall as ego takes
| over for many writers, but which has historically been more
| available to writers doing long-form work.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I don't think I'll ever end up using Substack. In a world where
| information is virtually worthless, why should I pay you for your
| opinion?
| coldtea wrote:
| It might be worthless to you. Depends on what you can take out
| of it, or do with it.
|
| Well formed opinions, ideas, curation, and coverage, and
| priceless to others. To some because they operate in fields
| where they can put to use such information, to others because
| they want to understand the world they live in better (even if
| they don't get something out of it).
|
| Even more so "in a world where information is virtually
| worthless", in other words, in a world where good stuff is lost
| in the noise / signal ratio.
|
| In any case, I'd rather pay for a few great newsletters than
| for wasting my time with the nth BS Netflix show.
|
| (I pay for a couple of Substack subscriptions)
| [deleted]
| zpeti wrote:
| A very elegant non-political article getting to the core of the
| issue - that yet again old business models are being disrupted
| and this pisses people off.
|
| Shame these pissed off people have to get political though.
| naringas wrote:
| The Yglesias deal seems more like a marketing and promotion
| expense from the perspective that substack is a tool for writers
| to work with. not too different from a typewritter or a word
| processor.
| pavlov wrote:
| There seems to be a backlash in progress against Substack's
| publishing policies.
|
| Last week I finally subscribed on Substack to an art-related list
| where I had been enjoying the free edition for a while. ($55 /
| year felt like a pretty good deal for access to more of this
| interesting content.)
|
| A few days later, the writer announced that they're moving off
| Substack. I'll just quote their message verbatim:
|
| _" I'm planning to switch to my newsletter provider from
| Substack to Ghost in the near future -- if I understand it right,
| the paid subscriptions can all be migrated, so I don't think
| it'll be a big hiccup on the subscriber end. I'll let you know
| when I actually make the switch._
|
| _" It's because I'm concerned with Substack's marketing plan of
| subsidizing controversial authors (discourse here: Annaleen
| Newitz, Emily VanDerWerff, Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Metafilter
| thread), particularly a weirdly large number that can be
| reasonably construed as anti-trans. Plus, Graham Linehan still
| uses the service, despite being kicked off plenty of other
| platforms for documented anti-trans abuse._
|
| _" The media profiting off of platforming anti-trans views was a
| major impetus behind the rise of anti-trans sentiment in the UK
| in 2016, and the same seems to be happening in the US (broadly,
| not just on Substack). Yet Substack's response seems to pretty
| bluntly reject the idea that they need to reconsider anything.
| Even if they ban Linehan in the future, I've lost faith in the
| leadership."_
|
| Personally I feel this author is doing the right thing by getting
| off a platform whose policies they can't support. And it makes me
| wonder about Substack's stickiness, because as a consumer I
| certainly don't care one bit which company processes my annual
| payment and delivers the emails.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> [...] writers who can command a paying audience have
| heretofore been significantly underpaid._
|
| I don't know for sure, but I _suspect_ the writer-paid-monthly
| model is straight up more effective at pulling money from readers
| ' pockets than the magazine subscription model.
|
| I mean, I can pay PS34 a year for a fortnightly magazine with
| quite a few writers doing quite a lot of investigative
| journalism, and even mailing a paper copy to me. I can pay PS10
| for a novel by a bestselling author who takes several years to
| write each novel.
|
| But with the market positioning of "$10 per month" it turns out
| you can sell one person's writing for PS86 ($120) per year.
|
| Strange that the output of one full time human writer could be
| priced so differently, even when every example is award-winning
| and well known. Perhaps the future of writing is a return to
| Dickens-era serialisation, and the next J. K. Rowling will be
| posting two chapters a week on Patreon.
| ghaff wrote:
| How many people will actually pay $120/year though. I pay in
| that ballpark for the NYT and The Economist. But it seems
| borderline nuts to pay that for a single author's newsletter
| unless they're delivering unique insights that I can turn into
| a lot more money than that. Or _maybe_ is they do a really good
| job of covering a niche hobby although that 's still almost
| certainly more than a niche hobby magazine would charge.
| abhinav22 wrote:
| I think once the novelty wears off and people start seeing how
| many subscriptions they are on, they will move to consolidated
| packages covering multiple writers, like Netflix for writing.
| Which already exists in the sense of Medium.com
|
| Everything reverts to the mean and your point is valid - we
| shouldn't expect one form of writing to have abnormally high
| returns to effort ratio for too long, unless there is a general
| shift in the value of writing by the population at large. Which
| given current trends towards video and higher stimulation, I
| would assume is less likely?
|
| Unless one could argue there's a huge untapped latent market of
| bookworms. I think there is some market to a degree as people
| get burned out on other forms of media, but I'm not sure if
| it's large enough for substacks model to work for a significant
| period in the future
| ghaff wrote:
| I could absolutely see an aggregator model, where the quasi-
| publisher maybe even provides some degree of editorial
| support at the copyediting level. The question then becomes
| though if the $100 or so/year which still seems to me to be
| the ceiling for something like this is sufficient to support
| a stable of writers.
| abhinav22 wrote:
| I guess how different will that be to the current
| subscription model for premium newspapers like WSJ, NYT, FT
| etc?
|
| Perhaps it could result in the rise of "micro magazines"
| where a few writers combine and create their own joined
| content vs being forced to being part of a larger
| bureaucratic organization.
|
| Or readers could pick and choose a selection for their
| bundle.
|
| Definitely can expect to see some disruption in the market!
| ghaff wrote:
| It's different in that there's a different level of
| editorial control--though it's not _that_ different from
| the op-ed page.
|
| There are other examples, albeit ad-supported ones. One
| of the tech pubs used to have a blog network of outside
| writers. (They eventually dropped this as they became
| less and less comfortable with outside people writing
| under their brand; this was also a period when orgs were
| pulling back from their own people having strong personal
| brands on their sites.) Back to the print days, many tech
| pubs had a stable of regular columnists. A lot of Forbes
| blogs are third-parties.
|
| It's not an unreasonable model. The question, as with
| many things, is what the economics look like.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "Perhaps the future of writing is a return to Dickens-era
| serialisation, and the next J. K. Rowling will be posting two
| chapters a week on Patreon."
|
| This is how online literature works in China:
| https://archive.is/uoOXS
| autarch wrote:
| As a further data point, Freddie deBoer just published a post
| with details about his Substack Pro deal -
| https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/financial-transparency
| danpalmer wrote:
| I find the current criticism of Substack quite interesting. It
| seems to be on the assumption that they are a publisher, or at
| least a visible brand in the publishing process, and they do
| indeed appear to be in the middle unlike most companies.
|
| It's obvious that the NYT are responsible for what's published on
| their site, after all it says NYT across the top, NYT on the
| subscription fee, and they (theoretically) have editorial
| control.
|
| On the other hand it's obvious that Stripe (for example) are not
| responsible for what's published on Stratechery, they are
| invisible to the customer, and I think most reasonable people
| would not suggest that Stripe exercise moral judgement on
| Stratechery and decline the business unless Ben Thompson crossed
| a line that is very far from acceptable (likely bordering on
| illegality).
|
| But Substack is both. Their name is in the URL, writers are found
| via Substack, articles say "published on Substack" on them. They
| are trying to claim that they are just a backend and that it's up
| to writers what they publish, but they are in fact a frontend at
| least in part for the customer, and therefore any decision or
| lack thereof is taking a moral standpoint.
|
| I think Substack are going to have to decide whether they want to
| own that responsibility, and become known for a certain "type" of
| content, or whether they want to fade into the background and let
| the writers' brands take over.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| What do you think about Wordpress as a counterexample? There
| was a time a decade ago when lots of blogs under the
| wordpress.com domain; I don't remember anyone being confused or
| arguing that Wordpress the company was responsible for their
| content.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Blogspot is a weird example too, because there are some very
| fringe, extremist people using that domain.
| danpalmer wrote:
| That's a good counter example.
|
| I wonder if it has something to do with the discovery flow
| and perhaps even the theming?
|
| Did Wordpress provide an index of all the websites? They
| don't appear to now? Also the fact that every site could be
| themed meant that many sites looked really quite different
| and so the website brand was stronger than the Wordpress
| brand.
|
| Just hypothesising. I feel like it is quite different but I'm
| not entirely sure why as, you're right, Wordpress worked in a
| similar way.
| bko wrote:
| The publisher model gets thrown around a lot in regards to
| social media companies like substack. The basic line of
| reasoning is that, as a publisher, substack would be
| "responsible" for its content.
|
| But what ways are traditional publishers "responsible" for
| their content? There's some internal self-imposed
| responsibility (e.g. someone will be fired due to insensitive
| tweet), but that's more politics than anything else. Large
| publishers regularly print patently incorrect data and
| narratives with no consequences. So maybe this
| publisher/platform distinction isn't all that meaningful
| naringas wrote:
| > most reasonable people would not suggest that Stripe exercise
| moral judgement on Stratechery and decline the business unless
| Ben Thompson crossed a line that is very far from acceptable
| (likely bordering on illegality).
|
| this is wrong in principle. Stripe should not excercise moral
| judgement "when bordering on illegality". That's a job for
| courts and judges.
|
| Judgement is supposed to be passed once there's proof of guilt;
| not when bordering near it.
|
| The current contemporary climate seems to be letting go of
| these kinds of crucial principles of society.
|
| But these exist for a reason, if we get rid of them we will
| find out why there were there in the first place, possibly
| after some social readjustment.
|
| the fact that this opinion is now 'reasonable' is worries me
| personally.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| They are just using the same playbook as the rest of Silicon
| Valley. Twitter and Facebook manage to never be considered a
| platform or a publisher, and they won't be until legislation
| requires it.
| danpalmer wrote:
| People view things like Substack as closer to traditional
| news publishing/writing and quite differently to social media
| so I think they're starting from a position of far higher
| expectations.
|
| But regardless, Twitter and Facebook are becoming more well
| known for their positions on these issues. Twitter is known
| for having a "lefty bubble" and taking a long time to "ban
| nazis". Facebook is known for having everyone's conspiracy
| theory loving Uncle.
| analyte123 wrote:
| The writers aren't completely "sovereign" as long as they are
| using Stripe (and Visa and Mastercard) to process payments. It is
| basically inevitable that some entity in the payment system will
| eventually interfere with Substack even if Substack themselves
| hold the line.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| True, but messing with people like Greenwald, Tufekci, Taibbi,
| Yglesias, Sullivan etc. _at the same time_ is bound to get
| Stripe into a world of hurt.
|
| These are names with a following and they have strong incentive
| to stick together if anyone on Substack is threatened with
| financial cancellation.
| criddell wrote:
| Substack themselves have a ToS. In theory Substack could always
| switch payment processors or allow crypto currency payment, but
| you can never get out from under their ToS.
|
| For example, you couldn't publish something like 2600 there
| because they discuss illegal activities like blue boxing.
| redisman wrote:
| I guess we're waiting to find out if Trump or someone will
| start writing there. The current big boys are all non-woke
| center left/right so they're not actually at all outrageous to
| the general public.
| gfosco wrote:
| They are however outrageous to the far-left journos at
| mainstream publications, which is why there's so much
| attention focused on Substack right now. Trump won't go
| anywhere that he doesn't get to own a significant portion of
| the business, so he'll have to build his own site (which it
| is already reported that he is doing.)
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| This is kind of a use-case for Bitcoin, no?
| capableweb wrote:
| It's the planned/future use-case for Bitcoin, yes. As of now,
| you cannot pay a lot of your daily expenses with Bitcoin so
| you still need a way of going from Bitcoin to
| USD/EUR/$LOCAL_CURRENCY so instead of Visa and Mastercard
| being the gatekeepers, the centralized exchange facilitating
| the fiat-trade is now the gatekeeper instead.
| [deleted]
| pydry wrote:
| Not exactly future. It happened in 2014 when MasterCard and
| visa banned payments to wikileaks. Wikileaks continued to
| take Bitcoin.
| abhinav22 wrote:
| Substack's business model doesn't make sense. They are just using
| VC money to try and build social platform, but it's a flawed one
| at best:
|
| - MOST people will not want to pay for articles. Especially in an
| ever increasing world of subscription payments across tv, music,
| SaaS, I really don't see how email newsletters will be high on
| people's lists
|
| - for the quality writers that people do want to pay, they will
| eventually move off the platform if it makes sense to do so (ie
| they get their brand recognition and followers and then jump ship
| to their own website). For the smaller ones, patreon onlyfans or
| some other direct contribution model would make more sense IMO
|
| So I really don't get Substack's model and how it can be
| successful long term unless it truly becomes the landing page /
| YouTube of articles. Which I can't imagine it will with all the
| competition
|
| More generally I'm looking forward to the day where the SaaS
| bubble bursts a bit or at least pricing consolidates - every Tom,
| Dick and Harry is taking a crud app and adding a few features and
| trying to create a b2c or b2b business
|
| It works to some degree, but I'm looking forward to the day that
| there are enough programming specialists that many solutions are
| done in house
|
| As to substack, it's a very simple technology stack; really the
| play with it and all other vc funded startups is to spend big,
| grab marketplace / users and exit. Then the buyer needs to
| monetize or is left holding the bag
|
| I'm much more of a fan of the Medium model, and even there it's
| very hard for writers and for the platform to make reasonable
| money.
|
| It's interesting how substack is asking everyone to bring their
| own mailing list with them, it's a very smart way to build out
| their users / network, I give them that.
| bhupy wrote:
| I guess my questions are:
|
| - Does it have to appeal to "MOST" people for it to be a viable
| dividends-paying business?
|
| - Does it have to be the "landing page / YouTube of articles"
| in order to be a viable dividends-paying business?
| abhinav22 wrote:
| Both these questions are related in the sense it reflects how
| large the audience needs to be to a viable business.
|
| Question is how much VC money has been burnt on it - perhaps
| it's bootstrapped well and it can succeed at a much smaller
| scale; it's definitely possible.
|
| However in the long run, it's somewhat of an easily
| replicable stack / feature set, particularly as I assume that
| most highly successful writers would want to control their
| branding and prefer not to be on substack if they could reach
| the same audience.
|
| Which they likely can't. Substack'a SEO abilities will be key
| to its success as that is in many ways it's main feature
| (everything else can be replicated by any one of the millions
| of web developers out there).
|
| In that sense, becoming the landing page of bookworms would
| be a significant achievement and to answer your question an
| important goal for any considerable success.
|
| I base this on the fact that it seems like they have spent a
| fair bit in building the platform and it's not as
| bootstrapped / low in capital as it may need to be to be
| viable as a smaller entity. But I'm guessing very much here!
|
| Is it really that different to hosting blogs, personal
| websites or to Medium.com? They just have the mailing list
| feature, but for most that doesn't work because it takes a
| long time to build your own mailing list, so the target
| audience of writers is small.
|
| My 2c
| bhupy wrote:
| > Both these questions are related in the sense it reflects
| how large the audience needs to be to a viable business.
|
| But as long as the unit economics are positive, why does
| the audience size matter? AFAIK, Substack's OPEX looks a
| lot more like traditional software/SaaS businesses and a
| lot less like Uber's or Amazon's.
|
| You're right that Substack's functionality can be
| commoditized, but loads of successful dividends-paying
| businesses operate in commoditized spaces.
| fra wrote:
| > More generally I'm looking forward to the day where the SaaS
| bubble bursts a bit or at least pricing consolidates - every
| Tom, Dick and Harry is taking a crud app and adding a few
| features and trying to create a b2c or b2b business
|
| I see these "I could build this in a weekend" type responses
| regularly on HN, and in my opinion it could not be more wrong.
| Substack isn't a CRUD app with a few features, it is man-years
| of work on the technical side. More importantly, they've had
| amazing execution on the business and product side. Building a
| business is really hard, and because you could replicate
| substack-the-app does not mean you would can build substack-
| the-business.
|
| > It works to some degree, but I'm looking forward to the day
| that there are enough programming specialists that many
| solutions are done in house
|
| What a waste this would be! Starting a business today is
| tractable because we build on the shoulders of giants. Tools
| like JIRA, Github, Sentry, Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoom, Slack,
| Notion, Stripe, GSuite, ... and many more are so much better
| and cheaper than anything you'd build in house.
| abhinav22 wrote:
| The business side of things - very difficult to pull off, I
| agree. The pure technical side of things? I honestly could
| replicate within 3 months of full time work and I'm sure a
| fair few others could.
|
| Thing is in theory, SaaS / Cloud should be win-win due to
| specialization. However the pricing I have seen is anything
| but - they need to charge that to support the sky high
| valuations and funding rounds. Which is why most scramble to
| do vendor lock in because without a barrier to entry they
| will need to keep reducing their prices down the equilibrium
| level that others can charge and have normal (but not
| abnormally high) economic profits.
|
| To give you an example, I was quoted 12,000$ per year for an
| enterprise b2b database solution to record questionnaire
| answers. Great software, meeting a need we have. But I'm
| building a basic postgresql database and a very basic web
| front end for free in its place. 80% of the functionality, 0%
| of the cost.
|
| I admit the remaining last 20% is the most complex and
| hardest part; also marketing and all the business aspect is a
| whole another game. So I have no intentions trying to compete
| with them, I respect them but at the same time I can't
| justify to my company to spend 12,000$ per year for something
| that an in-house solution can cover most of. Even my CEO said
| - isn't that just a database?
|
| This case doesn't apply generally, but there should be enough
| examples of SaaS that can be replicated and we don't need to
| pay an inordinate fee to use. I would place substack firmly
| in this list - it is a mailing list software with a text
| editor (I wouldn't be surprised if they just reused TinyMCE
| for this).
| fra wrote:
| > To give you an example, I was quoted 12,000$ per year for
| an enterprise b2b database solution to record questionnaire
| answers. Great software, meeting a need we have. But I'm
| building a basic postgresql database and a very basic web
| front end for free in its place. 80% of the functionality,
| 0% of the cost.
|
| Your ROI calculation is wrong. Your homegrown solution
| costs you [your hourly wage] x [hours spent working on it]
| + infrastructure costs. If you have an engineer who spends
| 3 or more weeks a year on this (incl. initial development
| cost amortized over # of years), then you lost money.
|
| Worst, you spent time building a commoditized solution
| which you could have spent improving your own product!
| [deleted]
| jger15 wrote:
| "...it's not that Substack will compete with existing
| publications for their best writers, but rather that Substack
| makes it easy for the best writers to discover their actual
| market value."
|
| Thompson on point per usual
| purple_ferret wrote:
| IMO it should read more:
|
| "...it's not that Substack will compete with existing
| publications for their *popular* writers, but rather that
| Substack makes it easy for the *popular* writers to discover
| their actual market value."
|
| I've yet to read what I would consider high quality journalism
| on Substack. It's a lot of quick take opinion pieces.
|
| On top of that, some may consider journalistic good writing a
| collective effort, in which an editor is usually necessary.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I 've yet to read what I would consider high quality
| journalism on Substack. It's a lot of quick take opinion
| pieces._
|
| Most of what passes for "high quality journalism" in "high
| quality outlets" are fluff pieces and government/corporate PR
| masquerading as facts.
|
| And as Alan Kay said: "a point of view is worth 80 IQ
| points". I'd rather read the opinion of people with well
| honed points of view than what passes as news in mainstream
| media.
| glennismyfren wrote:
| Glenn Greenwald has written a number of very good pieces on
| his Substack that I would in no way describe as quick take
| opinion pieces and Matt Taibbi has the best reporting on
| the journalism industry itself going around. These guys are
| "well honed" because they're well read on the activities of
| the media and they think and communicate clearly
|
| Maybe you're not reading the right posts or you just agree
| with the prevailing narrative in the traditional outlets?
|
| Usually I find the people who don't see value in Substack
| also want the news to be reported with "moral clarity" and
| to eschew objectivity as a valuable aim entirely.
|
| And besides, the mainstream outlets are barely reporting on
| anything anyway (where's the national news coverage of the
| George Floyd Autonomous Zone in Minneapolis? For the second
| time an American city has lost sovereignty over several
| blocks and the mainstream media is ignoring it) and if you
| do real investigative journalism into the wrong group, like
| Andy Ngo has (thank God for Quillette) you are branded a
| fascist
| [deleted]
| mc32 wrote:
| And that raises a question. What will readers value? Will they
| value rigorous writers who may provide discomfort or engaging
| writers who write to choirs?
| WJW wrote:
| Presumably different audiences will prefer different writers,
| as they always have.
| jameshart wrote:
| One of the dangers is that it turns out audiences actually
| prefer writers constrained and filtered and checked by
| editors.
|
| But by the time they realize that, editors won't exist any
| more.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Do we know how many writers on
| Substack/Medium/independent blogs employ an editor or
| researcher in some capacity? I've only seen occasional
| mention, e.g., Kevin Kelly has said that he employs a
| librarian as a full time researcher. But the absence of
| mention isn't necessarily a strong indicator to the
| negative.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Let's hear it for the NYTs!
| soneca wrote:
| Very unlikely that they won't exist anymore.
|
| And whichever low number they are reduced to, they will
| start to grow again because there will be people willing
| to pay for their services.
| Meekro wrote:
| I'd like my journalists to be constrained by the truth,
| and paid editors in the context of a "traditional"
| newspaper are one possible way to achieve that. However,
| if you believe the stats on this, trust for traditional
| news sources is at record lows.
|
| I personally don't trust traditional news sources very
| much. Therefore, I'm open to trying something different.
| I've been a happy subscriber to a handful of Substack
| journalists for a few months now. It's too soon to say
| whether this will be a lasting improvement, but it's hard
| to do worse than the mainstream media.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I'm curious, as I tend to trust many of the large media
| outlets, especially the NYT and WaPo.
|
| 1) Which outlets do you consider to be the "mainstream
| media" or "traditional media"?
|
| And 2) why don't you trust them?
| mc32 wrote:
| Yes but like food diet, is junk food more profitable or are
| staples more profitable?
|
| What should we aim for?
|
| If junk is more profitable, is that okay? Do we all jump on
| that wagon while the going is good, or do we think a minute
| about what is more fulfilling?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Media outlets other than substack are also hiring
| terrible people, and optimizing for trash.
|
| To me the largest difference between large corporate
| outlets and substack (and other reader-financed
| journalists) is that large corporate outlets will keep
| people employed for years that nobody wants to read and
| could never support themselves independently -
| journalists who are only important and interesting
| _because of_ their access to the outlet. The outlets
| themselves keep those journalists around as pure vehicles
| for the opinions of their owners.
|
| At least with these outlets, the owners are the readers.
| If the readers like trash, they'll pay for trash. If the
| owners like quality, they'll demand it. I don't have to
| worry about how the subject of the article will affect
| Bezos's net worth, or wonder how David Brooks, Maureen
| Dowd, or Thomas Friedman are still employed.
| mc32 wrote:
| But still, we're not sure that the content will be free
| of external influence taking advantage of the writer's
| reputation.
|
| Obviously if they peddle too many interested articles
| they'll likely get caught, but if they do it once in a
| while or take payment from opposing interests, etc.,
| who'll know the difference?
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Obviously trash sells and it always has ("The person who
| writes for fools is always sure of a large audience"),
| but some people care more about things like truth and
| style than they do about money.
| madmadjo wrote:
| This is the world we're living in. Unfortunately, I can
| give you only one upvote...
| WJW wrote:
| There is no "we" here, certainly not in the sense that
| "do we think a minute". People can choose for themselves
| just fine, and they'll do so whether I wring my hands
| about it or not. If you want to be worried about other
| people, go ahead but leave me out of it. :)
| tarkin2 wrote:
| Vaguely off topic, but why do so many programmers use substack
| and medium to write about programming? Why not use their own
| programming skills to create their own website, rather than
| consume a service?
|
| I used to love visiting programmers' websites, where programmer's
| would use their skills to not only write, but create. Now it's
| largely a drab stream of medium posts.
| renewiltord wrote:
| You can still go to programmers' sites where the software is
| written by the programmer as well as the content.
|
| The answer to your question is the same as the one to "Why do
| software engineers use libraries?"
| Traster wrote:
| Well there's two reasons. Firstly, you're not producing a
| competitive advantage by writing your own site. Unless you have
| some specific purpose, why would you waste your time. Let's
| assume it takes you a couple of weeks, that's probably
| thousands of dollars of lost wages when you can use substack,
| medium or even wordpress for basically free.
|
| Secondly, whilst these companies are _trying_ to claim the
| responsibility of a peice of infrastructure, they 're actually
| trying to be publishers, they control discoverability. You go
| to substack because you want to scoop of some of that substack
| readership, you want to be part of their "webring" and hope
| that you get more readership whilst they monetize your activity
| by telling VCs they have their boot on your neck.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Only so many hours in a day. Perhaps setting up and operating a
| blogging platform isn't how they'd prefer to use their time.
|
| When I ran my own business, I had the skills to do everything
| myself: accounting, order fulfillment, _everything_. I created
| a kick-ass system that saved me hours of work for things like
| calculating and disbursing royalty checks (it was a publishing
| business). Sure, it was better than off-the-shelf software, but
| I would have been able to dedicate a lot more time to the core
| of my business--the part where I was creating truly unique
| value--if I had hired an accountant, or at least used off-the-
| shelf software.
| drcode wrote:
| LOL I built my own blogging platform for my personal site, but
| I get constant nagging for not handling permalinks in the
| expected way and for never implementing RSS. (lisperati.com)
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I host my content on other services because I have a full time
| job, a family, and interests outside of tech. Even though I can
| do it all myself, what's the point? I get paid well into 6
| figures for my tech job. What are the odds my blog will start
| generating that kind of revenue? Basically zero. And I can talk
| about things I actually do create on my blog, even if my blog
| is hosted on substack or medium. I just can't point to my
| actual blog hosting itself as something I created. But that's
| fine, because it isn't even a particularly interesting problem
| to solve. I'd be fairly unimpressed if someone was doing
| general purpose programming for a couple of years and couldn't
| throw together a barebones blog.
| tarboreus wrote:
| Network effects. Medium and Substack help discoverability. It's
| trivial to geta site online, but difficult to have people come
| across it.
| pier25 wrote:
| I don't know about Substack, but when I wrote on Medium the
| vast majority of readers came from outside of Medium.
|
| I don't remember the exact numbers, but I had a popular
| article with something like 170k reads of which only 15% came
| from Medium itself.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-22 23:01 UTC)