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Sovereign writers and Substack

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Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#91

Post by coldtea »

purple_ferret wrote: post #86
jger15 wrote: post #2

"...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

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 effo…

>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.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#92

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#94

Post by mc32 »

pessimizer wrote: post #79
mc32 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

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?

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#95

Post by abhinav22 »

fra wrote: post #87
abhinav22 wrote: post #30

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 eventua…

> 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…

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).

Most of the examples you have are very advanced software and I agree with you that having them readily available for all companies is a net positive. Perhaps sales force could be replicated, the rest require serious programming chops and investment.

I basically agree with you but want to share a few more data points on uncommon cases to show the angle I’m coming from. My belief is substack is in this set of uncommon cases.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#96

Post by Traster »

tarkin2 wrote: post #67

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.

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.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#97

Post by fra »

abhinav22 wrote: post #95
fra wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 mo…

> 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!

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#98

Post by glennismyfren »

coldtea wrote: post #91
purple_ferret wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 effo…

> 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…

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

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#99

Post by jimkleiber »

Meekro wrote: post #76
jameshart wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 jo…

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?

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#100

Post by [deleted] »

coldtea wrote: post #91
purple_ferret wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 effo…

> 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…

[deleted]
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