4 ms·

Substack fills an explicitly free-speech need (for now) in an age where the backbone/service providers of the internet's conveniently forgotten why that's impor

Substack fills an explicitly free-speech need (for now) in an age where the backbone/service providers of the internet's conveniently forgotten why that's important. You get a lot more interesting writers on board than Medium in that case. People who stick to the safe areas of thought don't make history (for good or ill).

rchaud 4y ago
"Free speech" isn't a business model, unless the business plan is to sell a story to VCs and get paid a percentage of the term sheet. Substack has to pay the "I'm being cancelled" blowhards huge sums to get them on the platform to begin with. They earn nothing from eyeball traffic; people want to be outraged, but they don't want to pay for outrage. And even if they did, Substack would earn a tiny pittance from their fraction of subscription fees from that demographic.
- skybrian 4y ago
  That's not how it worked. Some authors got paid a big advance in return for giving up all subscription revenue for one year. In at least some cases, authors said they would have made more money taking the regular subscription deal, where Substack gets a cut. So in those cases, Substack provided financing and made money on it in the end. I don't know if that's true on average, though.
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    It is a classic platform bootstrapping model. It worked with new book publishers in the 1800s too. It worked for new video game consoles, etc ... The content creator doesn't fully trust the new publisher/platform, so they need upfront monetary assurance beyond a normal advance/royalty type deal, in case the platform fails. Likewise the platform values exclusives from big names that will drive demand for the platform. So the platform gives up potential upside to secure the exclusivity rights and the content creators get a premium.
  - Lazare 4y ago
    I've seen a fair bit of discussion about this, and so far, every author who I've seen talk about this has said they took the deal and came out behind, or they refused the deal but would have come out behind if they'd taken it, ie, subscription revenue ended up exceeding the offered advance. I imagine there must be some authors out there who didn't mmet Substack's expectations, but they're apparently few and far between.
- Lazare 4y ago
  That's the opposite of what happened. You may want to double check this. :) > people want to be outraged, but they don't want to pay for outrage Some prominent Substacks have tens of thousands of paying subscribers. Glenn Greenwald is apparently clearing (after Substack's fees), something like $100k USD/month. Matt Taibbi has even more paying subscribers, so will make even more; Andrew Sullivan is close behind. Last year Substack announced they had over 1 million paying subscribers (generally around $5-10/month), and the top 10 newsletters were at that point generating over $20m in revenue/year (ie, averaging over 2m each). As it turns out, a non-trivial amount of people are willing to pay for writing, whatever the reason is.

rchaud 4y ago

"Free speech" isn't a business model, unless the business plan is to sell a story to VCs and get paid a percentage of the term sheet. Substack has to pay the "I'm being cancelled" blowhards huge sums to get them on the platform to begin with. They earn nothing from eyeball traffic; people want to be outraged, but they don't want to pay for outrage. And even if they did, Substack would earn a tiny pittance from their fraction of subscription fees from that demographic.

skybrian 4y ago
That's not how it worked. Some authors got paid a big advance in return for giving up all subscription revenue for one year. In at least some cases, authors said they would have made more money taking the regular subscription deal, where Substack gets a cut. So in those cases, Substack provided financing and made money on it in the end. I don't know if that's true on average, though.
- jacobr1 4y ago
  It is a classic platform bootstrapping model. It worked with new book publishers in the 1800s too. It worked for new video game consoles, etc ... The content creator doesn't fully trust the new publisher/platform, so they need upfront monetary assurance beyond a normal advance/royalty type deal, in case the platform fails. Likewise the platform values exclusives from big names that will drive demand for the platform. So the platform gives up potential upside to secure the exclusivity rights and the content creators get a premium.
- Lazare 4y ago
  I've seen a fair bit of discussion about this, and so far, every author who I've seen talk about this has said they took the deal and came out behind, or they refused the deal but would have come out behind if they'd taken it, ie, subscription revenue ended up exceeding the offered advance. I imagine there must be some authors out there who didn't mmet Substack's expectations, but they're apparently few and far between.
Lazare 4y ago
That's the opposite of what happened. You may want to double check this. :) > people want to be outraged, but they don't want to pay for outrage Some prominent Substacks have tens of thousands of paying subscribers. Glenn Greenwald is apparently clearing (after Substack's fees), something like $100k USD/month. Matt Taibbi has even more paying subscribers, so will make even more; Andrew Sullivan is close behind. Last year Substack announced they had over 1 million paying subscribers (generally around $5-10/month), and the top 10 newsletters were at that point generating over $20m in revenue/year (ie, averaging over 2m each). As it turns out, a non-trivial amount of people are willing to pay for writing, whatever the reason is.