The irony here is that Ted Gioia is at the very top of the power law distribution of writers' incomes: he makes a ton of money on Substack and is very vocal abo

The irony here is that Ted Gioia is at the very top of the power law distribution of writers' incomes: he makes a ton of money on Substack and is very vocal about it. He deserves it all, too, just to be clear. However, most writers are way out on the long tail of the curve, making next to nothing. I subscribe free to 100's of them, but "upgrade to Paid"??? Nope, nope. > Nowadays authors at that level would be on Substack, or some other similar platform. That’s because their name would be their personal brand, and they wouldn’t need a periodical—and certainly not a magazine in terminal decline. They ARE on Substack, and a precious few are like you, Ted: making the big bucks. I'd be willing to pay for an aggregate of 100 or so of them, where their output this week is omitted if they've got nothing. The catch is, I wouldn't pay huge money for that. This isn't going to bring back the days of Readers Digest and Esquire. There's just too much on the Web that's free to occupy my attention.