All of this is a risky game, with potentially chaotic results that we can't predict.
Any kind of algorithmic way of sorting newsletters opens up a deep rabbit hole which may or may not have spikes at the bottom.
At the moment there is no real 'ranking' of Substacks against each other. My Substack is in total isolation from your Substack. In fact, that we are both writing on Substack is largely incidental to readers: they're just reading our newsletters/blogs. The platform recedes into the background, each writer being a defined island and avoiding the trap of traditional social media pseudo-'networking'.
The exception is around recommendations and direct linking from one article to another. This isn't in any way algorithmic, though. It's 100% curated and driven by writer choice. That gives those networked links proper value. I'd rather Substack stuck to that kind of connection-forming, but we'll see how this all plays out...
Substack has so far done this wonderful job at walking the thin line between being the newsletter company that they started off as and becoming a social media platform. Even now I remain impressed with how deftly they’ve navigated things because there are downsides to being a social media company. And, as you rightly pointed out, there are downsides to algorithmically controlled content. But, there’s a real tension, isn’t there?
The tension exists because every writer wants discoverability and the only way that happens is if you or your content are able to pop up in some unexpected, but still relevant space thereby presenting a potential reader with the opportunity to further investigate your publication. It’s difficult to introduce those opportunities without becoming a full-blown social network. That’s why recommendations and direct linking articles is so powerful. That and the fact that each of those represent human-curated content. Do badges represent the opportunity for similar discoverability? Honestly, it doesn’t seem that way, but the point I wanted to make with my article was about how if you want to do something like badges it’s better for focus on strengthening the base. Build from the bottom up. As I said in the article, it’s far easier to replicate several newsletters with 1000 paid subscribers than it is for those newsletters with 100k or a million subscribers. I think Substack would experience far more gain if they focused on trying to have A LOT of little to mid-sized successes rather than trying to build from the top down which is how the current best seller badge kind of feels.
It is an interesting problem and a great opportunity. I’m sure they’ll figure things out.
And also, I still struggle to understand the hate. 100 paid subscribers to get a checkmark is not that outrageous. It’s not even a part time job. It’s not like it says “this person is a big celebrity and thus should get even more followers.” It just says “other people like this newsletter enough to pay for it and they are starting to gain momentum.”
It doesn’t matter to me if they keep the checkmark or not. But I was surprised at the reaction. Substack is just trying to find ways to add social cues, to say “people like this newsletter you might too,” and it’s not like they are making that bar unreachable.
I don't think the checkmarks are a big deal, but I can see why some people find them dispiriting. That's just the nature of writers in general. Ultimately though, I think Substack needs to do what's best for their platform. Obviously part of that involves not upsetting their user base, but I believe they will find a balance.
Id love to see it become empowering instead of dispiriting. Authors helping authors earn their first 100? I do believe every author has their audience. And Substack is making that easier to find by the day!
Exactly so! That's why I was trying to come up with some suggestions to make the idea of amplifying already successful publications more acceptable to ones that haven't yet achieved velocity. I do think there is potential here. Maybe it's from different ideas than the ones I've proposed, but doing something to make the people just starting out feel that they are receiving help would really ameliorate some of the outright rejection we see in some of the comments on the announcement post.
I think it was unfortunate timing, too. Everyone is hyper-sensitive about stupid social media antics at the moment, for obvious reasons, and this hit a nerve. I almost thought it was a joke at first!
What you said, Simon! I'm SO TIRED OF TRYING TO BEAT ALGORITHMS. And I'm pretty burnout from all things marketing so Substack gave me a break from worrying about them.
Elle, I am a follower of your Substack, and I love what you write, but I'm going to be blunt here. I know what you did to get your paid subscribers, the posting, the sharing, the research, the ad dollars. As a person who battles brainfog on the regular, I can't compete with people like you who are productivity machines. Doing so would burn me out and turn off my creativity. I also don't have funds to toss thousands into advertising to get new followers. It's not that easy to get 100 paid subscribers if you can't do all the things or get promoted by media outlets. It's going to be VERY dispiriting for most writers like me who are starting out and don't have the resources to compete.
Elizabeth, yes, Elle did do a lot of experimenting along the way, but I’ve read some of her articles where she says up front that many of the things she tried didn’t work out or provide meaningful results.
I do understand how easy it is to let outside factors affect your creativity and output. I’m not saying you’re wrong to battle those things because I really do believe that’s something that every creative person battles on their own way. Some people fight it more frequently than others or feel the battle more intensely, but it is a struggle for everyone. As a 50 year old, I can tell you that I fight it less now than when I was younger. So, things do get better.
From what I have seen of your newsletter, I feel like you’re on the right path. You write great articles and you write well. I’ve been enjoying your novel. I feel like you will get your 100 subscribers. It’s just a matter of persistence.
Are there things you could do to get them faster? Probably. That’s where experimentation can come in… if you want to try that. If you don’t, that’s perfectly fine too. No one is forcing you to run your newsletter in any specific way.
Also, don’t let this whole checkmark thing bother you too much. They may keep it or take it away. Regardless, it’s just a little check mark next to someone’s name. I actually had to go up and hover over it to see what it meant when I saw it next to a person’s name on launch day. If anything this approach is more muted than when it used to say, “Hundreds of Paid Subscribers” on someone’s newsletter.
Just keep putting your content out there for your current subscribers and be ready when an opportunity presents itself.
I guess I could be overreacting, but I'm worried as I've seen this happen over and over again on various social media channels. Call me pessimistic, but I have no confidence that Substack will prioritise visibility for writers over money concerns. I hope they prove me wrong, however!
About my creative output - it's tough and I struggle with it intensely, mainly because producing even one article takes a LOT out of me. Like, I'm literally paralysed with mental exhaustion after producing something and I can't write for days afterwards. Over the years, I finally discovered the reason for this mental fatigue, and it's been liberating to know that my limitations is not due to laziness but due to a really real reason and I should be kinder to myself.
I've created workarounds for myself, and that has helped me produce more consistently, but I'll never be able to match the level of activity necessary to please the algorithms so that I can be visible, and that has been a source of sadness and frustration for me. Fortunately, there is Substack, and I'm confident that slowly I'll be able to grow it to a nice level.
I suppose this update made me panic. I finally found something that could work for me, only to have it change on me. I hope it'll continue being the wonderful place it currently is, but let's not introduce algorithms to promote money makers.
PS: Thanks for your kind words about my writing :)
I hear you, and I certainly don't think everyone needs to do what I did. But I also don't think we really need to anymore. Thanks recommendations, cross-promotions, and mentions, we don't have to market ourselves as much, we just need to share one another's work! That's the beauty!
And I agree with everything John said. I do not think we are competing—not with each other, not with algorithms. We are each creating our own thing and we will each attract our own readership. There will be some people with a million readers and some people with 100, but that doesn't mean that one writer is better than another writer. We are all at different stages, we are all doing different things, we all have different goals for our newsletters, and we are doing things our way.
In my mind, the checkmark is irrelevant in this equation. It's not like people subscribe to a newsletter based on whether they have a checkmark or not. And anyway, if you wanted to get to 100 subscribers I definitely believe you could—in fact, you could do it while learning from my mistakes and avoiding spending all the money and time I did! As John pointed out, most of the things I tried didn't work 🤣
I love how fast you got on writing about this. I noticed the badges are already appearing on Substacks I subscribe to. Also seeing complimentary paid subscriptions which I didn’t know you could do.
All the shifts in social media and tech are happening so fast I’m getting a nose bleed. New platforms, new AI, new third party tools, changes to old platforms, algorithm updates. It’s a lot. Or I’m just old.
Yeah, the ability to gift someone a paid subscription has been around for a while, but you had to do some digging to find it.
I understand what you’re saying about all of the changes to social media. It wasn’t that long ago when I realized that there are things out there that I just don’t want to bother learning. It’s not really that I don’t understand TikTok or that I couldn’t figure it out, it’s just that I’m at a point where I don’t care to do so. That might be the moment when a person starts to get old. If it is, then, I’m ready for it.
Yep! I read the BEST essay about this. Let me find it real quick.
Though the person didn’t tell me they were gifting the subscription, so I actually thought Substack or me had made an error and paid for one I hadn’t wanted to buy yet. So then I went in and checked what was going on. Prob best to let people know in advance. Lol.
I love the username oldster. What a great name for a Substack. I read the article and I empathize with her points, but I'm not sure that writers have to stay on top of all of the latest events to remain relevant. In fact, I kind of think that being a bit of an iconoclast would give you a unique voice that would stand out amid all of the TikTok clones.
Oldster is great! And I totally agree with you. More and more I'm pruning back my social media endeavors. Just also shared a lengthy interview with a TikTok author on my Substack, and it seems very difficult for most authors to grow an audience on TikTok.
TikTok is the lottery version of social media. Follower counts don't mean anything. It's almost entirely probabilistic. There are no meaningful levers that afford. you control over visibility of your content. It's great if the algorithms favor you, but short of that it's just a time sink.
What drew me to Substack in the first place was the opportunity to write about things I am genuinely interested in, with the hope that the material will find its audience, or an audience will find their way to what I write. I try to resist the very real temptation to produce content I don't actually care about, to try to draw subscribers.
I don't what metrics Substack could use to determine which writers to highlight- but I do agree that basing it solely on ability to draw subscribers seems insufficient, and a little "twittery".
Building social proof into a product is very basic level of gamification. It astounds me that Substack only has Leaderboards and best-seller badges at this point. I invite any of you to do your due diligence on researching on how apps scale. If anything Substack is too old-school, not appealing to young consumers enough.
Jan 19, 2023·edited Jan 19, 2023Liked by John Ward
Thanks for the article, John. I'm late to discovering it, but I was on the front and in the discussion when the news was first announced.
I think Substack has (or had) the right idea by not showing number of followers / subscribers, like most platforms do. They have (or had) a wonderful opportunity to do something different, not just in the realm of tech, but in the realm of human behavior.
Generally, people let other people tell them what to like. As Oscar Wilde said, most people’s thoughts are other people’s opinion. Everywhere you turn, someone is taking advantage of this widespread tendency:
Most Popular Posts. Best Seller! Many People Are Saying. Millions of Views! And now, badges.
I’ve often wondered what people might do if platforms did not take aim at this human tendency. People might have to make up their own mind. That could be something.
Now, as a realistic idealist, I understand that one platform doing things outside the norm isn’t in itself going to flip the world. But it would be a start. Instead of basing reading decisions on subscriber metrics, which are skewed due to fear of missing out and the desire to be part of the group, readers could read a few articles and come to their own conclusion.
I like your thinking here. I, too, recognize why Substack did it and why they are looking to become ever more sustainable by showing investors how many paid subscribers they have at a glance but I think it does leave a lot of folks behind. I like many of your suggestions for how newsletters could be badged or described in other terms besides paying subscribers.
We are all here for different reasons. I, for example, am looking to build readership for my novel and other work and decided not to charge subscribers but to focus on engagement and growth. I may shift that at some point but for now, I'm happy with this. I would like to be more discoverable and your ideas could help with that.
Have you considered serializing a novel here on Substack? Elle, from The Novellist, is serializing her novel and has built up quite a following. That approach doesn't work for everyone, but if you're the type of author who can pull it off, it might be a great approach.
Thank you, John, and yes, I am very familiar with Elle’s work and have learned a lot from her and others about how I might do that depending on what the publishing world looks like when the novel is done. I definitely would charge for that or any fiction I put up here at some point.
I really liked this post. I was saddened by yesterday’s revelation. I’ve been thinking about the economics of this a lot since yesterday. It reminded me of when I worked for one of the mega bookstores in the mid-‘90s.
I always wondered why there weren’t more of these kinds of bookstores. It seemed like such an awesome idea and that people would be jumping on the bandwagon. Even then my managers told me it wasn’t a bandwagon but a sinking ship. Even before the advent of Amazon.com the shop I was working for had been struggling with constant changes taking place in the publishing industry: Do we sell more magazines? Do sell more CDs, DVDs, board game? Can we get any local bands or poets that won’t cause too much noise throughout the shop but draw in more customers? I was like, “Why not more books? You’re a bookstore!”
Well, one of the problems was managing inventory based on where the shops were located. A branch of the store in San Francisco might have three shelves of nothing but computer manuals, which in those days cost about $50 each, but the manuals had a shelf life of just a few months. If your branch was in a college town where you had a lot of humanities majors, you could probably get by ordering 10 copies of the Arden edition of Shakespeare’s works at about $100 a pop and you’d probably sell out. But let’s say you were the in Greenwood, Indiana, where I happened to be. You might have made a mistake when you ordered fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of obscure dual language philosophical works, so you’d be waiting and hoping that one of your sister locations requested the book be to their site or that a third party would enquire if they could purchase it from you at a markup.
In the end I realized that this flourishing literary community of scholars sipping coffee and sitting in leather comfy chairs for hours on end in a climate-controlled space while discussing works of literature against a soundtrack of mellow jazz was ONLY sustainable if the employees at the registers were ringing up enough receipts to pay the rent and utilities for it. It all came down to the realities of economics. Tastes changed. You’d hear comments like, “I realize that *** sci-fi magazine has been a favorite since the 1960s, but we’re selling no more than 3 copies a month, so we’re only going to order 2 copies a month unless that trend changes.” Then when phenomena happened like the Harry Potter books, the entire store would literally be walled with copies of it.
I’m not going to lie, I don’t like the badge idea. But I agree with you that I’d like to see Substack around ten years from now and if that means making changes so that the platform can pay its rent, that’s worth it for me to be able to enjoy this virtual literary salon.
I remember buying several of those big computer books. They were hefty. Any one of them could have easily served as an improvised weapon.
Also, the 90's (and even the late 80's) were fantastic times for bookstores. I have so many great memories of spending Saturdays at B. Dalton or Waldenbooks and then later at Barnes and Noble or Borders. I think you're on to something when you equate that experience with what it feels like to find a great community here on Substack. I wonder if there are ways that publications could lean into replicating that? Certainly the chat feature can be part of it, but it seems like there's still some missing part. Any thoughts?
One of the ways Tik Tok blew up was because it gave people with small followings a big chance of growing viral. It was basically easy to be seen. And you're right - how lovely it'll be if Substack promoted NEW Substacks that need audiences?
I have to say my heart sank when I read your post. I was like, great, now I have to try to get the badge to be seen, is that it? I've always been terrible at getting followers - at least in the numbers that would deem me "worthy" or popular. Mostly because I hate manipulating people and also because I can't do *ALL THE THINGS* to be successful on all platforms. (I have limited mental bandwidth and am aggressive at protecting myself from burnout.) I hope Substack doesn't roll with this and consider our voices.
I think things will sort themselves out. I still like Substack and feel like it’s the best venue for people wanting to make it as a writer. Just hang in there.
I'm so mad at this you won't believe lol. And I was about to write a post extolling the virtues of Substack to a small writer group I am a part of. As a writer who treats writing as an artform, I don't want to be pressured to get more subscribers, money etc. I want to be free to experiment without penalised. Will we see the rise of "How I earn XXXXX a month on Substack" listicles? Like what Medium is right now, full of content "teaching" you to be a top Medium writer? I've left blogging on my website because of Google's increasingly draconian SEO mandates and I gave up on Medium after one week. Substack was the only place I felt any peace as a writer.
All of this is a risky game, with potentially chaotic results that we can't predict.
Any kind of algorithmic way of sorting newsletters opens up a deep rabbit hole which may or may not have spikes at the bottom.
At the moment there is no real 'ranking' of Substacks against each other. My Substack is in total isolation from your Substack. In fact, that we are both writing on Substack is largely incidental to readers: they're just reading our newsletters/blogs. The platform recedes into the background, each writer being a defined island and avoiding the trap of traditional social media pseudo-'networking'.
The exception is around recommendations and direct linking from one article to another. This isn't in any way algorithmic, though. It's 100% curated and driven by writer choice. That gives those networked links proper value. I'd rather Substack stuck to that kind of connection-forming, but we'll see how this all plays out...
What a great comment! Thanks for chiming in.
Substack has so far done this wonderful job at walking the thin line between being the newsletter company that they started off as and becoming a social media platform. Even now I remain impressed with how deftly they’ve navigated things because there are downsides to being a social media company. And, as you rightly pointed out, there are downsides to algorithmically controlled content. But, there’s a real tension, isn’t there?
The tension exists because every writer wants discoverability and the only way that happens is if you or your content are able to pop up in some unexpected, but still relevant space thereby presenting a potential reader with the opportunity to further investigate your publication. It’s difficult to introduce those opportunities without becoming a full-blown social network. That’s why recommendations and direct linking articles is so powerful. That and the fact that each of those represent human-curated content. Do badges represent the opportunity for similar discoverability? Honestly, it doesn’t seem that way, but the point I wanted to make with my article was about how if you want to do something like badges it’s better for focus on strengthening the base. Build from the bottom up. As I said in the article, it’s far easier to replicate several newsletters with 1000 paid subscribers than it is for those newsletters with 100k or a million subscribers. I think Substack would experience far more gain if they focused on trying to have A LOT of little to mid-sized successes rather than trying to build from the top down which is how the current best seller badge kind of feels.
It is an interesting problem and a great opportunity. I’m sure they’ll figure things out.
Everything Simon said 👆🏻😍
And also, I still struggle to understand the hate. 100 paid subscribers to get a checkmark is not that outrageous. It’s not even a part time job. It’s not like it says “this person is a big celebrity and thus should get even more followers.” It just says “other people like this newsletter enough to pay for it and they are starting to gain momentum.”
It doesn’t matter to me if they keep the checkmark or not. But I was surprised at the reaction. Substack is just trying to find ways to add social cues, to say “people like this newsletter you might too,” and it’s not like they are making that bar unreachable.
I don't think the checkmarks are a big deal, but I can see why some people find them dispiriting. That's just the nature of writers in general. Ultimately though, I think Substack needs to do what's best for their platform. Obviously part of that involves not upsetting their user base, but I believe they will find a balance.
Id love to see it become empowering instead of dispiriting. Authors helping authors earn their first 100? I do believe every author has their audience. And Substack is making that easier to find by the day!
Exactly so! That's why I was trying to come up with some suggestions to make the idea of amplifying already successful publications more acceptable to ones that haven't yet achieved velocity. I do think there is potential here. Maybe it's from different ideas than the ones I've proposed, but doing something to make the people just starting out feel that they are receiving help would really ameliorate some of the outright rejection we see in some of the comments on the announcement post.
I think it was unfortunate timing, too. Everyone is hyper-sensitive about stupid social media antics at the moment, for obvious reasons, and this hit a nerve. I almost thought it was a joke at first!
Yeah. That’s valid. Substack has been trolling Twitter pretty hard recently.
What you said, Simon! I'm SO TIRED OF TRYING TO BEAT ALGORITHMS. And I'm pretty burnout from all things marketing so Substack gave me a break from worrying about them.
Yeah that totally makes sense.
Elle, I am a follower of your Substack, and I love what you write, but I'm going to be blunt here. I know what you did to get your paid subscribers, the posting, the sharing, the research, the ad dollars. As a person who battles brainfog on the regular, I can't compete with people like you who are productivity machines. Doing so would burn me out and turn off my creativity. I also don't have funds to toss thousands into advertising to get new followers. It's not that easy to get 100 paid subscribers if you can't do all the things or get promoted by media outlets. It's going to be VERY dispiriting for most writers like me who are starting out and don't have the resources to compete.
Elizabeth, yes, Elle did do a lot of experimenting along the way, but I’ve read some of her articles where she says up front that many of the things she tried didn’t work out or provide meaningful results.
I do understand how easy it is to let outside factors affect your creativity and output. I’m not saying you’re wrong to battle those things because I really do believe that’s something that every creative person battles on their own way. Some people fight it more frequently than others or feel the battle more intensely, but it is a struggle for everyone. As a 50 year old, I can tell you that I fight it less now than when I was younger. So, things do get better.
From what I have seen of your newsletter, I feel like you’re on the right path. You write great articles and you write well. I’ve been enjoying your novel. I feel like you will get your 100 subscribers. It’s just a matter of persistence.
Are there things you could do to get them faster? Probably. That’s where experimentation can come in… if you want to try that. If you don’t, that’s perfectly fine too. No one is forcing you to run your newsletter in any specific way.
Also, don’t let this whole checkmark thing bother you too much. They may keep it or take it away. Regardless, it’s just a little check mark next to someone’s name. I actually had to go up and hover over it to see what it meant when I saw it next to a person’s name on launch day. If anything this approach is more muted than when it used to say, “Hundreds of Paid Subscribers” on someone’s newsletter.
Just keep putting your content out there for your current subscribers and be ready when an opportunity presents itself.
I guess I could be overreacting, but I'm worried as I've seen this happen over and over again on various social media channels. Call me pessimistic, but I have no confidence that Substack will prioritise visibility for writers over money concerns. I hope they prove me wrong, however!
About my creative output - it's tough and I struggle with it intensely, mainly because producing even one article takes a LOT out of me. Like, I'm literally paralysed with mental exhaustion after producing something and I can't write for days afterwards. Over the years, I finally discovered the reason for this mental fatigue, and it's been liberating to know that my limitations is not due to laziness but due to a really real reason and I should be kinder to myself.
I've created workarounds for myself, and that has helped me produce more consistently, but I'll never be able to match the level of activity necessary to please the algorithms so that I can be visible, and that has been a source of sadness and frustration for me. Fortunately, there is Substack, and I'm confident that slowly I'll be able to grow it to a nice level.
I suppose this update made me panic. I finally found something that could work for me, only to have it change on me. I hope it'll continue being the wonderful place it currently is, but let's not introduce algorithms to promote money makers.
PS: Thanks for your kind words about my writing :)
I hear you, and I certainly don't think everyone needs to do what I did. But I also don't think we really need to anymore. Thanks recommendations, cross-promotions, and mentions, we don't have to market ourselves as much, we just need to share one another's work! That's the beauty!
And I agree with everything John said. I do not think we are competing—not with each other, not with algorithms. We are each creating our own thing and we will each attract our own readership. There will be some people with a million readers and some people with 100, but that doesn't mean that one writer is better than another writer. We are all at different stages, we are all doing different things, we all have different goals for our newsletters, and we are doing things our way.
In my mind, the checkmark is irrelevant in this equation. It's not like people subscribe to a newsletter based on whether they have a checkmark or not. And anyway, if you wanted to get to 100 subscribers I definitely believe you could—in fact, you could do it while learning from my mistakes and avoiding spending all the money and time I did! As John pointed out, most of the things I tried didn't work 🤣
I love how fast you got on writing about this. I noticed the badges are already appearing on Substacks I subscribe to. Also seeing complimentary paid subscriptions which I didn’t know you could do.
All the shifts in social media and tech are happening so fast I’m getting a nose bleed. New platforms, new AI, new third party tools, changes to old platforms, algorithm updates. It’s a lot. Or I’m just old.
Yeah, the ability to gift someone a paid subscription has been around for a while, but you had to do some digging to find it.
I understand what you’re saying about all of the changes to social media. It wasn’t that long ago when I realized that there are things out there that I just don’t want to bother learning. It’s not really that I don’t understand TikTok or that I couldn’t figure it out, it’s just that I’m at a point where I don’t care to do so. That might be the moment when a person starts to get old. If it is, then, I’m ready for it.
Yep! I read the BEST essay about this. Let me find it real quick.
Though the person didn’t tell me they were gifting the subscription, so I actually thought Substack or me had made an error and paid for one I hadn’t wanted to buy yet. So then I went in and checked what was going on. Prob best to let people know in advance. Lol.
Found it! https://oldster.substack.com/p/falling-behind
I love the username oldster. What a great name for a Substack. I read the article and I empathize with her points, but I'm not sure that writers have to stay on top of all of the latest events to remain relevant. In fact, I kind of think that being a bit of an iconoclast would give you a unique voice that would stand out amid all of the TikTok clones.
Oldster is great! And I totally agree with you. More and more I'm pruning back my social media endeavors. Just also shared a lengthy interview with a TikTok author on my Substack, and it seems very difficult for most authors to grow an audience on TikTok.
TikTok is the lottery version of social media. Follower counts don't mean anything. It's almost entirely probabilistic. There are no meaningful levers that afford. you control over visibility of your content. It's great if the algorithms favor you, but short of that it's just a time sink.
What drew me to Substack in the first place was the opportunity to write about things I am genuinely interested in, with the hope that the material will find its audience, or an audience will find their way to what I write. I try to resist the very real temptation to produce content I don't actually care about, to try to draw subscribers.
I don't what metrics Substack could use to determine which writers to highlight- but I do agree that basing it solely on ability to draw subscribers seems insufficient, and a little "twittery".
Building social proof into a product is very basic level of gamification. It astounds me that Substack only has Leaderboards and best-seller badges at this point. I invite any of you to do your due diligence on researching on how apps scale. If anything Substack is too old-school, not appealing to young consumers enough.
Thanks for the article, John. I'm late to discovering it, but I was on the front and in the discussion when the news was first announced.
I think Substack has (or had) the right idea by not showing number of followers / subscribers, like most platforms do. They have (or had) a wonderful opportunity to do something different, not just in the realm of tech, but in the realm of human behavior.
Generally, people let other people tell them what to like. As Oscar Wilde said, most people’s thoughts are other people’s opinion. Everywhere you turn, someone is taking advantage of this widespread tendency:
Most Popular Posts. Best Seller! Many People Are Saying. Millions of Views! And now, badges.
I’ve often wondered what people might do if platforms did not take aim at this human tendency. People might have to make up their own mind. That could be something.
Now, as a realistic idealist, I understand that one platform doing things outside the norm isn’t in itself going to flip the world. But it would be a start. Instead of basing reading decisions on subscriber metrics, which are skewed due to fear of missing out and the desire to be part of the group, readers could read a few articles and come to their own conclusion.
I like your thinking here. I, too, recognize why Substack did it and why they are looking to become ever more sustainable by showing investors how many paid subscribers they have at a glance but I think it does leave a lot of folks behind. I like many of your suggestions for how newsletters could be badged or described in other terms besides paying subscribers.
We are all here for different reasons. I, for example, am looking to build readership for my novel and other work and decided not to charge subscribers but to focus on engagement and growth. I may shift that at some point but for now, I'm happy with this. I would like to be more discoverable and your ideas could help with that.
Have you considered serializing a novel here on Substack? Elle, from The Novellist, is serializing her novel and has built up quite a following. That approach doesn't work for everyone, but if you're the type of author who can pull it off, it might be a great approach.
Thank you, John, and yes, I am very familiar with Elle’s work and have learned a lot from her and others about how I might do that depending on what the publishing world looks like when the novel is done. I definitely would charge for that or any fiction I put up here at some point.
I really liked this post. I was saddened by yesterday’s revelation. I’ve been thinking about the economics of this a lot since yesterday. It reminded me of when I worked for one of the mega bookstores in the mid-‘90s.
I always wondered why there weren’t more of these kinds of bookstores. It seemed like such an awesome idea and that people would be jumping on the bandwagon. Even then my managers told me it wasn’t a bandwagon but a sinking ship. Even before the advent of Amazon.com the shop I was working for had been struggling with constant changes taking place in the publishing industry: Do we sell more magazines? Do sell more CDs, DVDs, board game? Can we get any local bands or poets that won’t cause too much noise throughout the shop but draw in more customers? I was like, “Why not more books? You’re a bookstore!”
Well, one of the problems was managing inventory based on where the shops were located. A branch of the store in San Francisco might have three shelves of nothing but computer manuals, which in those days cost about $50 each, but the manuals had a shelf life of just a few months. If your branch was in a college town where you had a lot of humanities majors, you could probably get by ordering 10 copies of the Arden edition of Shakespeare’s works at about $100 a pop and you’d probably sell out. But let’s say you were the in Greenwood, Indiana, where I happened to be. You might have made a mistake when you ordered fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of obscure dual language philosophical works, so you’d be waiting and hoping that one of your sister locations requested the book be to their site or that a third party would enquire if they could purchase it from you at a markup.
In the end I realized that this flourishing literary community of scholars sipping coffee and sitting in leather comfy chairs for hours on end in a climate-controlled space while discussing works of literature against a soundtrack of mellow jazz was ONLY sustainable if the employees at the registers were ringing up enough receipts to pay the rent and utilities for it. It all came down to the realities of economics. Tastes changed. You’d hear comments like, “I realize that *** sci-fi magazine has been a favorite since the 1960s, but we’re selling no more than 3 copies a month, so we’re only going to order 2 copies a month unless that trend changes.” Then when phenomena happened like the Harry Potter books, the entire store would literally be walled with copies of it.
I’m not going to lie, I don’t like the badge idea. But I agree with you that I’d like to see Substack around ten years from now and if that means making changes so that the platform can pay its rent, that’s worth it for me to be able to enjoy this virtual literary salon.
I remember buying several of those big computer books. They were hefty. Any one of them could have easily served as an improvised weapon.
Also, the 90's (and even the late 80's) were fantastic times for bookstores. I have so many great memories of spending Saturdays at B. Dalton or Waldenbooks and then later at Barnes and Noble or Borders. I think you're on to something when you equate that experience with what it feels like to find a great community here on Substack. I wonder if there are ways that publications could lean into replicating that? Certainly the chat feature can be part of it, but it seems like there's still some missing part. Any thoughts?
Also, I should have said three AISLES of computer books, not shelves...I hated those books. They were so heavy.
Apologies for the typos...It’s late where I am and apparently you can’t edit your comments in the Substack app. 😂
One of the ways Tik Tok blew up was because it gave people with small followings a big chance of growing viral. It was basically easy to be seen. And you're right - how lovely it'll be if Substack promoted NEW Substacks that need audiences?
I have to say my heart sank when I read your post. I was like, great, now I have to try to get the badge to be seen, is that it? I've always been terrible at getting followers - at least in the numbers that would deem me "worthy" or popular. Mostly because I hate manipulating people and also because I can't do *ALL THE THINGS* to be successful on all platforms. (I have limited mental bandwidth and am aggressive at protecting myself from burnout.) I hope Substack doesn't roll with this and consider our voices.
I think things will sort themselves out. I still like Substack and feel like it’s the best venue for people wanting to make it as a writer. Just hang in there.
I'm so mad at this you won't believe lol. And I was about to write a post extolling the virtues of Substack to a small writer group I am a part of. As a writer who treats writing as an artform, I don't want to be pressured to get more subscribers, money etc. I want to be free to experiment without penalised. Will we see the rise of "How I earn XXXXX a month on Substack" listicles? Like what Medium is right now, full of content "teaching" you to be a top Medium writer? I've left blogging on my website because of Google's increasingly draconian SEO mandates and I gave up on Medium after one week. Substack was the only place I felt any peace as a writer.