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Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#131

Post by ohwellhere »

cjbest wrote: post #124

I'm one of the Substack founders. My (obviously biased) view is that we are trying to do something that is genuinely important, and that we're willing to sweat the details in service of the people who use Substack. I'll try to give that quick barbell of lofty vision and practical details. Big picture: we believe that what you read matters, and that therefore great writing (and great intellectual culture in general) i…

A common criticism in this thread -- and elsewhere -- is the accumulation of subscription fees to authors. I can justify $10/month for my favorite writer's weekly work, but not another $90/month for my next 9 favorite writers' biweekly or monthly work.

What are your thoughts on handling this aspect of the economic piece of the content puzzle?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#132

Post by slg »

Georgelemental wrote: post #120
slg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's unpopular with left-leaning mainstream audiences It is truly wild how HN often frames censorship as something coming purely from the left while ignoring the laws coming out of conservative state legislatures across the country. There is a wide spectrum of people both pushing for censorship and pushing against it.

Name a single such law passed in the past 4 years in the US? (Laws regulating the curricula of state-funded public schools don't count. Not using taxpayer money to support a view ≠ impinging on the right of private citizens and organizations to express that view with their own resources and funds)

I will ignore the bizarre exception you are making for "Laws regulating the curricula of state-funded public schools" because I can still point to other examples. Here is a law that passed this month in Florida that dictates what topics employers can discuss in diversity training programs.[1]

[1] - https://www.natlawreview.com/article/florida-s-stop-woke-act...

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#133

Post by kyrra »

bigmealbigmeal wrote: post #122
dmurray wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they say they are "anti-censorship" and won't evict writers from their "private platform" "Anti-censorship" is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days. It's close to being a dog whistle for the alt-right. I'm surprised this is a stance that would attract more "excellent writers".

Do you have any sources that indicate anti-censorship is “hugely unpopular” with the mainstream intellectual community? For example, esteemed scientists speaking out against it? It may be important here to separate journalists and political activists from the intellectual community. Not to say that they aren’t intellectuals, but the issue could be limited to that set of intellectuals in particular.

See NYT "hit" pieces on substack:

* https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/business/media/substack-n...

* https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/business/media/substack-g...

Along with one of Substack's founders responding to it: https://twitter.com/lulumeservey/status/1514318085083340807

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#134

Post by baggy_trough »

cjbest wrote: post #124

I'm one of the Substack founders. My (obviously biased) view is that we are trying to do something that is genuinely important, and that we're willing to sweat the details in service of the people who use Substack. I'll try to give that quick barbell of lofty vision and practical details. Big picture: we believe that what you read matters, and that therefore great writing (and great intellectual culture in general) i…

Desperately need a bundle type offering. I wouldn't pay $5 x 5 different subscriptions, but I'd do a $10 bundle for 4 newsletters, or the like.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#135

Post by temp8964 »

dmurray wrote: post #83
lhnz wrote: post #8

Many writers like them because they seem to have made both costly and cheap signals to show that they are on the side of writers: (1) they say they are "anti-censorship" and won't evict writers from their "private platform" (2) they let the writer own their audience / mailing list (so they can leave with their audience, if they want to) (3) they advanced money to popular writers These things with the addition of a si…

> they say they are "anti-censorship" and won't evict writers from their "private platform" "Anti-censorship" is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days. It's close to being a dog whistle for the alt-right. I'm surprised this is a stance that would attract more "excellent writers".

> "Anti-censorship" is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days.

I don’t know where did you get this idea? What did you mean “mainstream intellectual community”? Do you have any evidence like mass signatures supporting censorship from mainstream intellectuals?

People consume too much Reddit / Twitter sometimes live in an alternative reality.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#136

Post by slg »

eterevsky wrote: post #119
slg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's unpopular with left-leaning mainstream audiences It is truly wild how HN often frames censorship as something coming purely from the left while ignoring the laws coming out of conservative state legislatures across the country. There is a wide spectrum of people both pushing for censorship and pushing against it.

Left and right censorship are applied to very different media. In the case of online platforms, the most visible attempts of censorship are coming from the left. At least I haven't heard of any opposite examples.

When one form of censorship is coming from private companies and the other form of censorship is coming from the government, I am definitely more concerned about the latter than the former.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#137

Post by simonsarris »

I wrote a short thread about that noting the differences between wordpress/blogger. It begins:

An example of a product that's JOYOUS to use is Substack. It feels beautiful to write and format. There aren't tons of distracting non-features. The product team seems to consistently look for how people are using it and make sure they can use it in those ways better.

It's especially incredible in a world where Blogger and WordPress both languished for years, never bothering to simply make the authoring process pleasant. Medium was able to do this, and had a good start because of it, then (inexplicably) found 5000 ways to drop the ball.

thread: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1514400886365302784

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#138

Post by skybrian »

notahacker wrote: post #47
skybrian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They signed a contract of their own free choice because it was a good deal for them. This isn't hidden. There's no reason to hide it any more than a musician would hide getting signed by a record label.

Sure, but it was a good deal for them because Substack advanced them a lot of money. Substack's platform features and general content creator revenue model may be better than most but are incidental to why those heavy hitters chose to join. Musicians complain a lot about Spotify being a poor deal for them financially, but there's no doubt it was an excellent deal for Joe Rogan.

We know that for writers, Substack normally charges 10% of subscription revenue. Also, some writers said they would have made more money taking the normal deal over the Pro deal.

However, a guaranteed paycheck for the first year is lower risk, so they took the deal.

This all depend on your own efforts building an audience and it's still the case that most authors won't make much. But it seems like better terms than Spotify for moderately successful authors.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#139

Post by biztos »

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #31

Substack was really good at getting writers with dedicated followings on their platform and properly monetizing their skills. Take a look at someone like Freddie deBoer. He was a very popular blogger, had written for all the prestigious publications, and was about to accept a $15/hr manual labor job before substack offered him a contract. Now he's making 200k+ a year. Once enough popular writers were on the platform,…

> No ads, no nonsense, just the text.

I tried it out and was kind of shocked by the formatting lock-in and all the embedded tracking... I couldn't make it just default to plain text and I wasn't sure what the GDPR implications would be, i.e. whether I as an EU resident can do a Substack newsletter for EU subscribers and if so what do I have to ask them to agree to exactly.

But yeah if you don't care about that stuff it's pretty frictionless and I will probably give it another try if I get my newsletter act together. And I like that I can save Substack articles (the web versions) to Pocket for plain-text reading offline, a lot of sites don't support that.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#140

Post by jiscariot »

farmerstan wrote: post #112
slg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's unpopular with left-leaning mainstream audiences It is truly wild how HN often frames censorship as something coming purely from the left while ignoring the laws coming out of conservative state legislatures across the country. There is a wide spectrum of people both pushing for censorship and pushing against it.

What is insane is when people frame anti-censorship as an alt-right value. That offends people like me who are staunchly liberal but completely anti-censorship to my core.

The other odd thing is to see so many journalists who have walked away from supporting free speech. They used to be some of the strongest supporters.

The cynical take is that free speech is great when you're the institutional gate-keeper, but not so much when the plebs can publish what they want.

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