Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs • Hacker News Board

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#51

Post by input_sh » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

e_carra wrote: post #49

input_sh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sounds nice! I have a Kobo e-reader, and I use their beta browser or pocket to read this kind of things, but especially the browser is not very convenient.

I've switched from a Kindle to Kobo a few months ago, and it's one of the rare features that I miss. Pocket integration gets me close enough, but Kindle really nailed the magazine approach in my opinion.

On the bright side, Kobo at least makes a distinction between a book and an article, while Kindle just treats everything as a book.

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#52

Post by pembrook » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 11:44 PM UTC

Cenk wrote: post #46

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…

> As this happens, and as the honeymoon PR period dies off, the journalists will turn on Substack, just as they do on every single thing Silicon Valley puts out (see Lambda School). This doesn’t really seem true. Journalists “turn on” every single thing SV puts out? Do you think the reporting on Lambda school is dishonest? Or do you think that journalists reporting on a SV company is in and of itself somehow wrong?

Every single thing in Tech that becomes buzzy and popular begins with uncritical journalists fawning over the hot new thing, and ends with those same uncritical journalists thinking said thing is now evil and dystopian.

Nothing is ever as good or as bad as journalists on twitter think it is.

You can watch this pattern in literally every piece of consumer technology of the past 100 years. For some recent examples:

1999: The internet is going to change everything!

2001: The internet was a scam

2008: Smartphones are our savior!

2018: Smartphones and screen time are ruining everything

2010: Social media is going to connect the world!

2016: Social media is evil

2006: Google is the greatest, most innovative company in the history of the world!

2020: Google is an evil monopolist bent on world domination

2018: Zoom is the best video conferencing tool ever!

2020: Zoom is a massive Chinese conspiracy

2018: Lambda school is going to fix education!

2020: Lambda school is a giant scam

Etc.

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#53

Post by maguay » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 4:03 AM UTC

maguay wrote: post #21

fxtentacle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you had your own domain, their ToS would prohibit you from collecting email addresses of "your" audience. Because in their lawyer's opinion, it's not yours.

Substack’s docs show an option to export email addresses—I would presume that would mean you could move your subscriber list to another email platform if you wanted to?

Followup here: I double-checked with some others who publish with Substack, and [you can export your Substack subscribers](https://capiche.com/q/what-did-you-use-to-start-a-paid-newsl...). At least that keeps the lockdown a bit lower (though of course you would have to get subscribers to pay again at a new site, which would likely lead to high levels of churn).

Re: Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs

#54

Post by jklm » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

yoshuaw wrote: post #50

woah wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think they intentionally chose to collide with someone’s GitHub username???

Sure do. Substack the company was founded in 2017 [1]. At that point Substack the person was already a household name in open source — with 76.000 GitHub stars to his name his projects' popularity were on par with the likes of Mozilla [2]. Naming an upstart company after a household name that isn't protected by copyright is incredibly clever. You get to use an established and trusted name, but can't get sued for usin…

Anecdotally, I’ve never heard of this person until today (despite having heard of the company). I’d guess I’m not alone.