4 ms·

I think once the novelty wears off and people start seeing how many subscriptions they are on, they will move to consolidated packages covering multiple writers

I think once the novelty wears off and people start seeing how many subscriptions they are on, they will move to consolidated packages covering multiple writers, like Netflix for writing. Which already exists in the sense of Medium.com Everything reverts to the mean and your point is valid - we shouldn’t expect one form of writing to have abnormally high returns to effort ratio for too long, unless there is a general shift in the value of writing by the population at large. Which given current trends towards video and higher stimulation, I would assume is less likely? Unless one could argue there’s a huge untapped latent market of bookworms. I think there is some market to a degree as people get burned out on other forms of media, but I’m not sure if it’s large enough for substacks model to work for a significant period in the future

ghaff 6y ago
I could absolutely see an aggregator model, where the quasi-publisher maybe even provides some degree of editorial support at the copyediting level. The question then becomes though if the $100 or so/year which still seems to me to be the ceiling for something like this is sufficient to support a stable of writers.
- abhinav22 6y ago
  I guess how different will that be to the current subscription model for premium newspapers like WSJ, NYT, FT etc? Perhaps it could result in the rise of “micro magazines” where a few writers combine and create their own joined content vs being forced to being part of a larger bureaucratic organization. Or readers could pick and choose a selection for their bundle. Definitely can expect to see some disruption in the market!
  - ghaff 6y ago
    It's different in that there's a different level of editorial control--though it's not that different from the op-ed page. There are other examples, albeit ad-supported ones. One of the tech pubs used to have a blog network of outside writers. (They eventually dropped this as they became less and less comfortable with outside people writing under their brand; this was also a period when orgs were pulling back from their own people having strong personal brands on their sites.) Back to the print days, many tech pubs had a stable of regular columnists. A lot of Forbes blogs are third-parties. It's not an unreasonable model. The question, as with many things, is what the economics look like.

ghaff 6y ago

I could absolutely see an aggregator model, where the quasi-publisher maybe even provides some degree of editorial support at the copyediting level. The question then becomes though if the $100 or so/year which still seems to me to be the ceiling for something like this is sufficient to support a stable of writers.

abhinav22 6y ago
I guess how different will that be to the current subscription model for premium newspapers like WSJ, NYT, FT etc? Perhaps it could result in the rise of “micro magazines” where a few writers combine and create their own joined content vs being forced to being part of a larger bureaucratic organization. Or readers could pick and choose a selection for their bundle. Definitely can expect to see some disruption in the market!
- ghaff 6y ago
  It's different in that there's a different level of editorial control--though it's not that different from the op-ed page. There are other examples, albeit ad-supported ones. One of the tech pubs used to have a blog network of outside writers. (They eventually dropped this as they became less and less comfortable with outside people writing under their brand; this was also a period when orgs were pulling back from their own people having strong personal brands on their sites.) Back to the print days, many tech pubs had a stable of regular columnists. A lot of Forbes blogs are third-parties. It's not an unreasonable model. The question, as with many things, is what the economics look like.