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Many writers like them because they seem to have made both costly and cheap signals to show that they are on the side of writers: (1) they say they are "anti-c

by lhnz 5y ago

Many writers like them because they seem to have made both costly and cheap signals to show that they are on the side of writers: (1) they say they are "anti-censorship" and won't evict writers from their "private platform" (2) they let the writer own their audience / mailing list (so they can leave with their audience, if they want to) (3) they advanced money to popular writers These things with the addition of a simple writing/reading/subscription platform that isn't overrun with adverts gives writers confidence that substack is aligned with their interests and will make money while being on their side (this is true at least for now). Additionally, the financial success of many writers on the platform has raised the status of creating a substack. I think this is an important secondary effect -- you can disparage this as "pseudo-intellectual" but there are people that are winning from it and doing well is always cool. --- *Edit*: Put another way, Substack's success is due to realism. They've made a realistic attempt to incentivize excellent writers to writing on their platform. They incentivize even those that are already very popular, by not locking them in and by giving them control of their audience. They have even gone as far as giving very significant upfront financial incentives to get the most famous writers on the internet onto their platform. Other platforms try to own their writers and treat them like commodities producing SEO content. This was obviously not an attractive offer to talented or independent writers, let alone writers that have already grown huge audiences.

superbaconman 5y ago
Another interesting thing is that they don't rank what's "popular" by clicks. Crazy good idea IMO
- lhnz 5y ago
  Yes, it's very well-executed. I took a step back while writing my comment and realised that it must seem kind of like random success to some people. I don't think it is at all. Other startups tried to create "blog platforms" and worked on the product/technology/UI, but the founders of Substack took a look at "what will make good quality writers sign-up" and executed on this. It shows me that even when an idea looks simple and like it has been done before with no success, if your thinking isn't clouded by what has gone before and you actually have a new perspective and are able to understand the market incentives better than others you have a chance to do much better.
dmurray 5y ago
> they say they are "anti-censorship" and won't evict writers from their "private platform" "Anti-censorship" is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days. It's close to being a dog whistle for the alt-right. I'm surprised this is a stance that would attract more "excellent writers".
- lhnz 5y ago
  It's not surprising if you think the non-mainstream intellectual community is large enough to contain excellent writers that were currently under-utilized and under-financed. Excellent writers could have been ignored by the mainstream market previously if they were outside of the norm and sometimes found in baskets with bad apples (e.g. "alt-right"). The non-mainstream is actually a collection of smaller minority groups -- it tends to be the mainstream that is more homogenous. It doesn't surprise me that Substack has found success by not treating the non-mainstream as equally worthy of scorn. It also won't surprise me when they start to attract more writers from the mainstream. The mainstream can sometimes appear to be totally homogenous in their hatred of liberal content policies but this is mostly due to the efforts of a small minority. If the offering is good, others will slowly come aboard. As another commentator noted (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31084791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31084791), Substack's policy is politically more in line with neoliberal complaints of censorship than the complaints from those in the alt-right. (Their comment is better than mine since it is a more direct response to the core of your comment, which could be read as suggesting that use of Substack points towards sympathy for the "alt-right".)
- slg 5y ago
  People are pushing many indepedent flavors of "anti-censorship" at the moment. Some of them clearly are dog whistle's for the alt-right by people who just want to say bigoted things without repercussions. The Substack version is more inline with the neoliberal complaints of censorship. This letter from Harper's Magazine[1] from a couple years back is a great example of this thinking. Whether the signees of this letter are "excellent writers" is certainly up for debate, but most of these clearly aren't alt-right thinkers. [1] - https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
farmerstan 5y ago
Everyone who is responding doesn’t understand the core benefit of Substack: the writer owns the relationship between them and their subscribers. Substack has no such ownership. Substack doesn’t take payments from the subscribers and then pay the writer. The subscribers directly pay the writer and the writer is charged a fee by Substack. It is VERY easy for writers to drop off Substack. They own their subscription lists and if they want to move to Patreon they can. But Substack’s incentive is to make their product so good that the writers stay. That is how the company is set up. They could have created a moat where Substack owns the subscribers but they chose to flip it so that it is very easy for writers to leave. Literally writers can leave Substack with the click of the button and they can take their subscribers with them, and that’s a core value of the company. I think the company values are amazing and new and something you don’t see anymore. I actually applied to the company last year but didn’t pass the interview which was very disappointing but I plan on trying again this year. It’s a company I firmly believe in and I love the mission.
- infogulch 5y ago
  THE business plan for every new company created in the last two decades is exploitative by design, and people are fed up with it. The problem is that the relationships between the person consuming, the person producing, and the business is organized wrong. The plan is for the business to insert itself between people and extract a tax on their interaction instead of collecting a fee for providing a service. Technology has accelerated this trend by reducing the cost of this automated relationship management. This is a gross inversion of normal relationships between people. I hope that Substack's model becomes more popular and people choose to eject exploitative mediators and force them to be third party service providers where they belong. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30420113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30420113

by lhnz 5y ago

superbaconman 5y ago

Another interesting thing is that they don't rank what's "popular" by clicks. Crazy good idea IMO

lhnz 5y ago
Yes, it's very well-executed. I took a step back while writing my comment and realised that it must seem kind of like random success to some people. I don't think it is at all. Other startups tried to create "blog platforms" and worked on the product/technology/UI, but the founders of Substack took a look at "what will make good quality writers sign-up" and executed on this. It shows me that even when an idea looks simple and like it has been done before with no success, if your thinking isn't clouded by what has gone before and you actually have a new perspective and are able to understand the market incentives better than others you have a chance to do much better.

dmurray 5y ago

> they say they are "anti-censorship" and won't evict writers from their "private platform" "Anti-censorship" is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days. It's close to being a dog whistle for the alt-right. I'm surprised this is a stance that would attract more "excellent writers".

lhnz 5y ago
It's not surprising if you think the non-mainstream intellectual community is large enough to contain excellent writers that were currently under-utilized and under-financed. Excellent writers could have been ignored by the mainstream market previously if they were outside of the norm and sometimes found in baskets with bad apples (e.g. "alt-right"). The non-mainstream is actually a collection of smaller minority groups -- it tends to be the mainstream that is more homogenous. It doesn't surprise me that Substack has found success by not treating the non-mainstream as equally worthy of scorn. It also won't surprise me when they start to attract more writers from the mainstream. The mainstream can sometimes appear to be totally homogenous in their hatred of liberal content policies but this is mostly due to the efforts of a small minority. If the offering is good, others will slowly come aboard. As another commentator noted (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31084791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31084791), Substack's policy is politically more in line with neoliberal complaints of censorship than the complaints from those in the alt-right. (Their comment is better than mine since it is a more direct response to the core of your comment, which could be read as suggesting that use of Substack points towards sympathy for the "alt-right".)
slg 5y ago
People are pushing many indepedent flavors of "anti-censorship" at the moment. Some of them clearly are dog whistle's for the alt-right by people who just want to say bigoted things without repercussions. The Substack version is more inline with the neoliberal complaints of censorship. This letter from Harper's Magazine[1] from a couple years back is a great example of this thinking. Whether the signees of this letter are "excellent writers" is certainly up for debate, but most of these clearly aren't alt-right thinkers. [1] - https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

farmerstan 5y ago

Everyone who is responding doesn’t understand the core benefit of Substack: the writer owns the relationship between them and their subscribers. Substack has no such ownership. Substack doesn’t take payments from the subscribers and then pay the writer. The subscribers directly pay the writer and the writer is charged a fee by Substack. It is VERY easy for writers to drop off Substack. They own their subscription lists and if they want to move to Patreon they can. But Substack’s incentive is to make their product so good that the writers stay. That is how the company is set up. They could have created a moat where Substack owns the subscribers but they chose to flip it so that it is very easy for writers to leave. Literally writers can leave Substack with the click of the button and they can take their subscribers with them, and that’s a core value of the company. I think the company values are amazing and new and something you don’t see anymore. I actually applied to the company last year but didn’t pass the interview which was very disappointing but I plan on trying again this year. It’s a company I firmly believe in and I love the mission.

infogulch 5y ago
THE business plan for every new company created in the last two decades is exploitative by design, and people are fed up with it. The problem is that the relationships between the person consuming, the person producing, and the business is organized wrong. The plan is for the business to insert itself between people and extract a tax on their interaction instead of collecting a fee for providing a service. Technology has accelerated this trend by reducing the cost of this automated relationship management. This is a gross inversion of normal relationships between people. I hope that Substack's model becomes more popular and people choose to eject exploitative mediators and force them to be third party service providers where they belong. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30420113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30420113