I'm Publishing My Next Book on Substack

In other words, you are proving that our initial takeaway from the opening sentence was valid.

How egotistical, to publish your book in a unconventional way, explain that you are doing so, proclaim you are a little like Walter White. How could one not judge the whole thing?

So what’s the critique here? Maybe there’s a better way to fucking say stuff. And one should, especially if you are literally in the business of expressing yourself.

Why doesn’t he tell the truth? Would a publisher even publish it? Would a paperback even get to a store? Does he have a better chance at marketing and broadcasting the book in digital form? Probably right?

But no, he’s little like Walter White.

What’s truly meme status now days is self aggrandizement and constant exercises in vanity and patting one self on the back. It has scaled to ridiculous levels, and the overwhelming waves of it drowns valid criticism.

No, you shouldn’t write this article at all. You should publish your book, evaluate it’s success and failure, and then write your analysis.

They comprehend that the first few words that you present, will set the tone and understanding for what follows. That any nuance created, flows onwards from the context that you have first presented.

Some random writing on Twitter, or in their own little blog, should be afforded more sympathy than just their first sentence, because they probably don't have a clue what they're doing. That is not the same context as someone who intends to present a literary work, that can hold itself, on its own value.

Much like how we would hold a CEO more responsible for his words, than a warehouse employee. Both may be representing the company, within their context, but one comes with a set of expectations and responsibilities that the other would never encompass.

The author of this article makes the point that Substack pays ~90% in revenue, versus traditional publishers which do ~10%.

While this is true, I do think the author seems to deliberately avoid mentioning the self-publishing platforms like Gumroad, Podia etc which allow authors to keep 95-96.5% of revenue when publishing books, and also have a direct connection with people who bug the books through emails. I say this as someone who published through one of these platforms. (Also, there are other newsletter providers which charge even less of a commission, like Revue charging 5% or Ghost or ConvertKit charging a monthly fee based on the number of subscribers, which could come out to below 5%)

A real (financial) pull of publishing a book via a monthly, paid newsletter is the higher revenue per customer. A customer won’t pay more than, say, $40 for a book. But they’ll more likely pay ~$120 by paying $10/month for a year. See also how Steven Sinofsky is publishing his book series Hardcore Software on Substack with the option to pay up to $300/year to get a final, printable PDF edition of the series once finished. I paid $100 to read this series for a year and one of my friends went for the $300 option.

Holding on to publishing rights is a huge difference when going self-publishing or newsletter-first. When I worked with a traditional publisher, only then did I realize I have no rights to publish my words without publisher consent: this was when I asked if I can share drafts of my writing in public, and the publisher said this is down to approvals on their end. This realisation was a reason I ended up self-publishing instead. As the author of the article notes, by keeping publishing rights, it’s always an option to sign a contract with a publisher for a print book.

What is not written in the article is how self-publishing makes a lot more (financial) sense once:

1. You have enough of a reach to not benefit much from the - sometimes surprisingly little - marketing that a traditional publisher does

2. The association with a publisher brand is no longer a priority.

3. You don’t need a publisher helping you finish a book pushing you with deadlines (they sure help!)

4. You are ok paying for - or doing yourself - editorial things (development editing, copyediting, proofreading)

He moved to a platform after decades of traditional publishing which got him the position he is in. It's like Taylor Swift starting her own record label and wondering why she keeps so much money now.

Small creators rely on distributors for advertisement, management, organizing events, networking and so on, none of which Substack does and none of which Ted needs. I don't think going down that route is good advice for anyone who isn't already extremely big. It's like going from being a member of the actors guild to becoming a Twitch streamer. If you're really famous you can likely carry your readers over, otherwise you may have a problem.