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Sovereign writers and Substack

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Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#121

Post by obiefernandez »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #17
slibhb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

That's what the music world has become. And it fucking sucks.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#122

Post by hdhdbeupphw »

mdoms wrote: post #78

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.

The world already has enough clickbait and hot takes. Substack will probably make a lot of money, but it won’t increase the quality of journalism in the US. We need less opinion in our news diet not more.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#123

Post by haberman »

jimkleiber wrote: post #99
Meekro wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Glenn Greenwald gets into this a lot. As one recent example, WaPo misquoted Trump's comments on his infamous phone call with the Georgia secretary of state and this was not corrected until two months later when the Wall Street Journal obtained a recording of the call: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-do-big-media-outlets-so...

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#124

Post by jdsully »

mc32 wrote: post #57
WJW wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably different audiences will prefer different writers, as they always have.

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?

Regardless of whether Doritos are more profitable we still have millions of acres of staple crops grown each year. There is no shortage of good writing but it may not come in microwaveable packets. If the majority of the people don't care then that's the downside to living in a free society where each has their choice.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#125

Post by Lazare »

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…

> - 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

I've subscribed to three Substack newsletters. A lot of other people have too. A 90% cut of the fee is netting some writers - including some not super-popular writers - a living wage, and for very popular writers, a *LOT* of money. Writing is not generally well paid; at a 90% cut, it doesn't take a lot of $5/month subscriptions to exceed what traditional media can pay.

> - 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

Onlyfans has a stigma of being for porn, Patreon has a host of problems, takes a pretty high cut as well, and has a poor UI for this. Substack is objectively much better. You're right that it would probably make sense for the super-stars to jump to a cheaper platform, but there's also wide scope for them to negotiate better deals.

> So I really don’t get Substack’s model and how it can be successful long term unless it truly becomes the landing page

Taking 10% of a bunch of money for a pretty lightweight tool seems like a good business model to me. Can they keep those margins going? It's not implausible. The 10% Substack takes for, essentially, hosting is really high if you compare it to the $X/month you'd need for a hosted blog or VPS + Cloudflare, but it's very, very low when you compare it to the cut a traditional publisher takes.

As so often, a lot depends on framing and how people compare the deal being offered.

> I’m much more of a fan of the Medium model

I've never paid Medium money, I will never pay Medium money, I don't understand why people pay Medium money, and I don't know anyone who has, is, or likely will pay Medium money. The Medium model, to me, seems to be an attempt to copy the traditional non-working model, without even an attempt to fix it. I can see why people might be fans of the concept, but it seems crystal clear to me that it represents the dead past, currently kept alive as a shambling zombie by VC money.

Substack, maybe, is the future. And contrary to your assertions, does NOT seem to be burning VC money to bring it about. They seem to be coming out ahead on the Substack Pro advances, after all.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#126

Post by [deleted] »

mdoms wrote: post #78

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.

[deleted]

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#128

Post by karaterobot »

> First, Substack is going to have a serious problem retaining its most profitable writers unless it substantially reduces its 10% take.

This is the part I'm having trouble understanding. 10% doesn't seem like a high percentage for a distributor, even if they're just hosting text and images. Of course Substack also provides comments, notifications, admin/moderation, and some degree of marketing and aggregation effects (not Aggregation in the strict Ben Thompson sense, just people going to a well-known website because they know there are things to read there).

None of that is super hard to set up, but If I was Matthew Yglesias, and I was making $775k next year on Substack, how much incentive would I have to leave and pay someone to create and/or manage a new site for me? Even assuming there's no lock-in whatsoever from Substack, or that Substack does not increase its value proposition for content creators by then, it seems like I'd probably just stay where I was and collect my $700k, and be pretty thrilled about it.

It's possible I'm wrong about that in some cases, but would it happen in so many cases that it poses an existential risk to Substack? Seems like a stretch!

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#130

Post by Eridrus »

karaterobot wrote: post #128

> First, Substack is going to have a serious problem retaining its most profitable writers unless it substantially reduces its 10% take. This is the part I'm having trouble understanding. 10% doesn't seem like a high percentage for a distributor, even if they're just hosting text and images. Of course Substack also provides comments, notifications, admin/moderation, and some degree of marketing and aggregation effect…

Everyone likes easy cash. Adding 50k/yr at the click of a button seems pretty compelling, and consider that the mere existence of alternatives may force Substack to renegotiate contracts woth high profile writers. But even if you ignore this, it's still a nascent space, Substack has not captured all the writers out there, and I think the fee will definitely be part of the package that writers care about.

Substack should try to provide more value, but if it can't, this seems like it will be a problem for them since there is little competitive moat here.

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