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Sovereign writers and Substack

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Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#21

Post by bhupy »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #3

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 w…

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...

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#22

Post by pydry »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #3

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 w…

>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.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#23

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

danpalmer wrote: post #18

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 e…

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.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#24

Post by slibhb »

bhupy wrote: post #21
ceilingcorner wrote: post #3

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 w…

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...

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.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#25

Post by ceilingcorner »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #23
danpalmer wrote: post #18

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 e…

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.

Blogspot is a weird example too, because there are some very fringe, extremist people using that domain.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#26

Post by michaelt »

> [...] 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 £34 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 £10 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 £86 ($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.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#27

Post by pydry »

capableweb wrote: post #10
ceilingcorner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of a use-case for Bitcoin, no?

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.

Not exactly future. It happened in 2014 when MasterCard and visa banned payments to wikileaks. Wikileaks continued to take Bitcoin.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#28

Post by danpalmer »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #23
danpalmer wrote: post #18

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 e…

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.

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.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#29

Post by BurningFrog »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #3

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 w…

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.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#30

Post by abhinav22 »

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.

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