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Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

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Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#31

Post by sails »

seemslegit wrote: post #25
pembrook wrote: post #19

Substack has been successful in creating buzz among the media crowd, and there's definitely a business there riding the trend toward subscriptions in the media biz, but unfortunately taking on $17M in VC money has set them up for a disappointing end. Here's how this plays out. The successful writers on Substack will eventually leave the platform for more control over their audience and lower fees (there's a reason Be…

> Here's how this plays out. The successful writers on Substack will eventually leave the platform for more control over their audience and lower fees (there's a reason Ben Thompson isn't on Substack). Except the entire model of substack is based on writers not having access even to their audience's mail addresses.

Substack writers do have access to their signups and can easily export them.

https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037465992-...

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#33

Post by chinathrow »

seemslegit wrote: post #25
pembrook wrote: post #19

Substack has been successful in creating buzz among the media crowd, and there's definitely a business there riding the trend toward subscriptions in the media biz, but unfortunately taking on $17M in VC money has set them up for a disappointing end. Here's how this plays out. The successful writers on Substack will eventually leave the platform for more control over their audience and lower fees (there's a reason Be…

> Here's how this plays out. The successful writers on Substack will eventually leave the platform for more control over their audience and lower fees (there's a reason Ben Thompson isn't on Substack). Except the entire model of substack is based on writers not having access even to their audience's mail addresses.

> Except the entire model of substack is based on the writers not having access even to their audience's mail addresses.

Is that correct as of today?

https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037465992-...

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#34

Post by johnonolan »

klelatti wrote: post #30
pembrook wrote: post #19

Substack has been successful in creating buzz among the media crowd, and there's definitely a business there riding the trend toward subscriptions in the media biz, but unfortunately taking on $17M in VC money has set them up for a disappointing end. Here's how this plays out. The successful writers on Substack will eventually leave the platform for more control over their audience and lower fees (there's a reason Be…

I think what Ghost (as you mention) is trying to do here with v 3.0 is interesting - seems to have most or all of the features of Substack - easy to set up on their hosted option plus full ownership of the email list and open source / potentially self hosted. Interesting that "The Browser" is on Substack (one of the top 5 newsletters) but the affiliated and more recent "The Viewer" is on Ghost. Of course Ghost still…

Hey! John from Ghost here - yes, TheListener and TheViewer are already on Ghost, and TheBrowser is the next that will be migrating :)

We're still in relatively early stages with our memberships and subscriptions features (they're officially still 'beta') but we're shipping updates and new versions every single week, and working toward making the product easier to get started with and less technical to setup.

We'll have a larger release later this year, but Ghost is already powering many thousands of paid memberships in the wild.

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#35

Post by seemslegit »

chinathrow wrote: post #33
seemslegit wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's how this plays out. The successful writers on Substack will eventually leave the platform for more control over their audience and lower fees (there's a reason Ben Thompson isn't on Substack). Except the entire model of substack is based on writers not having access even to their audience's mail addresses.

> Except the entire model of substack is based on the writers not having access even to their audience's mail addresses. Is that correct as of today? https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037465992-...

I'm not sure, their Publisher Agreement seems to also have been very recently revised to remove some very strong prohibitions against trying to gather your subscribers data on your own so maybe they realized it's a bad idea - do you know what information is included in the csv ?

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#36

Post by roadbeats »

In bigger picture, this is a natural move from quantity to quality. The free content on internet feel like eating garbage. I follow a few really good newsletters (e.g Craig Mod's) and every episode feels like a chapter in a good book.

What I don't enjoy about newsletters is the e-mail clients themselves. They're bulky, filled with features I never use. I wish there was a way to hook my newsletters subscriptions up with Kindle. I can customize the fonts, sizes, spacing for my best reading experience, and the writer can forget about styling and just can focus on the writing.

Which makes me fantasize myself creating a subscription based reading platform with its own device :)

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#37

Post by e_carra »

roadbeats wrote: post #36

In bigger picture, this is a natural move from quantity to quality. The free content on internet feel like eating garbage. I follow a few really good newsletters (e.g Craig Mod's) and every episode feels like a chapter in a good book. What I don't enjoy about newsletters is the e-mail clients themselves. They're bulky, filled with features I never use. I wish there was a way to hook my newsletters subscriptions up wi…

It is very easy to convert HTML to ePub, you could create simple script that converts every newsletter into ePub and adds it to your library. I don't know if it would work for Kindle devices, but you could always install custom firmware that has support for Dropbox synchronisation.

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#38

Post by mikro2nd »

patio11 wrote: post #24
fxtentacle wrote: post #15

Can those people actually make a living wage from it, or are they "entrepreneurs" like all those Instagram "influenzas"?

Some people are (book) authors professionally, some people are authors recreationally, some people are authors professionally exclusively , and some people are authors professionally but their primary monetization engine is elsewhere. If one believes that writing books generally isn't a sustainable occupation, I think that belief is likely under-nuanced. (Ditto e-books or similar information products, by the way.) Tu…

Thanks for a more nuanced take on the model. The question in my mind is: How much time/energy gets eaten up in marketing a newsletter (or other paid subscription information product)?

I suspect that lack of interest or skill in marketing is much more the limiting factor that sets an upper bound on how many people can pull it off to derive a realistic income this way.

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#39

Post by yoshuaw »

pembrook wrote: post #19

Substack has been successful in creating buzz among the media crowd, and there's definitely a business there riding the trend toward subscriptions in the media biz, but unfortunately taking on $17M in VC money has set them up for a disappointing end. Here's how this plays out. The successful writers on Substack will eventually leave the platform for more control over their audience and lower fees (there's a reason Be…

> Prior to taking on a16z riches, Substack was a cool indie brand.

The name "Substack" was co-opted from James "Substack" Halliday [1][2], a well-known hacker in the Node.js community. It wasn't an indie-brand-turned-corporate; it's a person.

The way substack.com has used VC money to take over someone's identity and feed off their reputation is incredibly scummy.

[1]: https://github.com/substack

[2]: https://twitter.com/substack

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#40

Post by input_sh »

e_carra wrote: post #37
roadbeats wrote: post #36

In bigger picture, this is a natural move from quantity to quality. The free content on internet feel like eating garbage. I follow a few really good newsletters (e.g Craig Mod's) and every episode feels like a chapter in a good book. What I don't enjoy about newsletters is the e-mail clients themselves. They're bulky, filled with features I never use. I wish there was a way to hook my newsletters subscriptions up wi…

It is very easy to convert HTML to ePub, you could create simple script that converts every newsletter into ePub and adds it to your library. I don't know if it would work for Kindle devices, but you could always install custom firmware that has support for Dropbox synchronisation.

ePub in general doesn't work on a Kindle (you have to convert them to mobi), but you can create your own "Kindle magazines" (don't know their exact name) using calibre.

One use case of that is that you can feed RSS feeds to your calibre's news feature and schedule them to be sent to your @kindle.com email address at a specified day / time of the week. Essentially DYI magazine filled with whatever blogs you want.

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