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Sovereign writers and Substack

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Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#161

Post by rchaud »

inglor_cz wrote: post #34
analyte123 wrote: post #8

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.

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.

Numerous people have been removed from popular social media platforms, and I've yet to see any of them make a comeback, let alone go up against Twitter/YT/FB etc.

It is unlikely we will ever even hear about Stripe openly leveraging their influence. They will talk to Substack, who will bring the issue to their investors, who will tell Substack that Stripe is higher up in the food chain than the writers.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#162

Post by pier25 »

baud147258 wrote: post #118
pier25 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

perhaps it's easier to entice readers to click on a link to medium.com rather than randomjoedev.com

Back then, my articles were published on medium.com. Not on randomjoedev.com as they are now :)

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#163

Post by rchaud »

michaelt wrote: post #26

> [...] 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 pap…

This is why I feel subscription-based commerce does not take consumer psychology into account. They've seen it work for Netflix, so why shouldn't it be exactly the same for words on a screen?

Like you, I'm happy to pay for a physical product that creates a sense of wholeness. A book is time-bound and content-bound. It has a start and an end. A magazine subscription is similar. A physical product, plus you know what you'll be getting over a one-year timeframe. That kind of bounded-ness helps me mentally assign value to a product.

A Substack subscription on the other hand feels like a monthly retainer for a service I don't attach the same kind of value to.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#164

Post by detaro »

baud147258 wrote: post #118
pier25 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

perhaps it's easier to entice readers to click on a link to medium.com rather than randomjoedev.com

There is at least some of a reverse effect by now. Because medium.com in a link already tells you to expect to get hassled about paying them just to read some marketing fluff piece.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#165

Post by jimkleiber »

Meekro wrote: post #108
jimkleiber wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Rather than annoy the HN mods by derailing this conversation into politics, I can answer in detail to you directly. If you want that, could you update your bio on HN to include your email address?

I appreciate that both for helping me keep it non-politics on HN and also for being willing to reach out.

I've updated my email in my bio, hope to hear from you soon.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#166

Post by exolymph »

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.

It has always meant that.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#167

Post by x0x0 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #46
x0x0 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Someone was doing it on behalf of the journalist. There's no particular difference between the journalist doing it or their publication.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#168

Post by tomaskafka »

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?

Majority people's staples are now junk. I expect the same thing to happen in media.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#169

Post by coolgeek »

Lazare wrote: post #150
bosswipe wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate this "elite" framing. The substack writers are media stars with megaphones powerful enough to influence politics and thus our lives. They are rich and powerful, in other words they are elites. On the other hand, the employees engaged in PC warfare on corporate slack channels, or the social media mobs annoying advertisers, are mostly not the elites. In another framing you would call them populists.

> The substack writers are media stars [...] They are rich and powerful The vanishingly small minority of Substack writers who are media stars , and who are rich and powerful, yes. That's not true of the overwhelming majority of Substack writers. Also, even the handful of media stars has traditionally been utterly powerless in comparison to our corporate media. What power, eg, Greenwald may have pales utterly in comp…

> That's not true of the overwhelming majority of Substack writers

The majority, then, are writers who can't get a job in paid media - either because they're not good enough, or there aren't enough paid slots available to accommodate them.

IOW, Substack is the 2020s version of Blogger, except that it has a payment/compensation system built in.

As with "content producers" on YouTube, "influencers" on InstaGram, etc, there is vastly more supply than there is demand or available compensation.

I'm not saying that there aren't good, original voices on Substack. I'm saying that the vast majority of writers on the platform are categorically similar to, and subject to the same system constraints as, other media/attention platforms.

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