Saturday, 2 August 2025
Among the many handful of oft-discussed issues with Substack:
- Their 90/10 subscription income break up isn’t usurious, but it surely’s excessive in comparison with competing platforms — particularly when you attain a fair mid-tier degree of recognition.
- The one method this impartial publishing sport works, by any credible definition of “the long term”, is to construct your individual viewers. Substack has indies satisfied that they construct an viewers for you thru some kind of secret-sauce community results, however I’ve seen no proof that’s true. Writers with established reputations and readerships becoming a member of Substack are serving to construct Substack’s model, not their very own.
- The entire, you realize, Nazi factor.
Much less commented upon however simply as unhealthy is the branding lure. Substack is a rattling good title. It seems good, it sounds good. It’s quick and crisp and distinctive. However now they’ve gotten individuals to name publications on Substack not “blogs” or “newsletters” however “substacks”. Don’t name them that. And as I griped again in December, even the way in which nearly all Substack publications look is intentionally, if subtly, Substack-branded, not per-publication or per-writer branded.
Contemplate Paul Krugman. Krugman was an op-ed columnist for The New York Occasions from 2000–2024. However final 12 months the Occasions wished to chop him again from writing two columns every week plus his Occasions-hosted weblog/publication to writing only one column per week and killing the weblog. In an interview with Columbia Journalism Overview early this 12 months, Krugman additionally revealed that after over 20 years, he’d began butting heads together with his editors over type, tone, and even subject material:
“I’ve at all times been very, very evenly edited on the column,” he
stated. “And that stopped being the case. The enhancing turned
extraordinarily intrusive. It was very a lot firming down of my voice,
firming down of the texture, and loads of stress for what I
thought-about false equivalence.” And, more and more, makes an attempt “to
dictate the topic.”
So Krugman rightfully and righteously informed the Occasions, politely, to fuck off and struck out on his personal. Studying Krugman this 12 months, on his personal web site, has been like rediscovering cane sugar Coca-Cola after consuming the cheaper-to-produce corn syrup variant for a number of years. That is The Actual Factor — the unadulterated tart-tongued and sharp-elbowed Krugman I keep in mind devouring throughout each the Bush and Obama administrations. The one hitch: Krugman frolicked his impartial shingle at Substack — which makes it a shingle below a shingle.
My suspicion is that for a sure class of writers and media commentators who, heretofore, have spent their careers at big-name publications — newspapers and magazines relationship again to the print period, TV networks from the cable-is-king period — they really discover consolation writing below the auspices of Substack. See additionally: Terry Moran, who bounced to Substack after ABC Information declined to resume his contract — regardless of 28 years on the community, together with this current basic — due to a tweet decrying Donald Trump and White Home ghoul Stephen Miller. I think Moran, and maybe even Krugman, understand Substack as conveying a kind of badge of legitimacy. Self-published books, for instance, was the refuge for kooks and no-talent hacks. I believe some who spent their careers working at status shops — particularly these like Krugman and Moran, who’re a bit older (than me) — really feel a bit bare with out one. However there’s no actual status at Substack and by no means will probably be. I, for one, am fantastic with Substack’s liberal philosophy of letting anybody write there, however which means, nicely, anybody can write there.
Right here’s a current instance of the Substack branding lure that irks me — grating like fingernails on a chalkboard — and which I believe proves my level. Krugman final month was interviewed by Steve Inskeep at NPR, relating to Trump’s “grotesquely unlawful” tariffs levied on Brazil. Introducing Krugman, Inskeep describes Krugman’s present work thus:
The individuals watching the tariff debate embrace Paul Krugman. He’s
a author and economist, previously for The New York Occasions, now
writing independently on Substack, which is the place I typically discover
him. And since he’s in america, I pay no tariff. Mr.
Krugman, welcome to this system.
Thus far, so good. That’s a good description. However, concluding the five-minute interview, Inskeep goes with this:
Paul Krugman writes for Substack, previously with The New York
Occasions. Thanks a lot.
Paul Krugman doesn’t “write for Substack”. Nobody would say that Jason Snell “writes for WordPress”, or that Jason Kottke or yours really “writes for Movable Sort”. Nobody says Molly White, Casey Newton, or Craig Calcaterra “writes for Ghost”, or that Oliver Darcy “writes for Beehiiv”. Solely with Substack does anybody understand creator branding as being subservient to the platform — one thing that should be seen merely as an interchangeable CMS — like that.
That isn’t by happenstance. It’s a lure and it’s by design. It’s precisely what Substack desires, and precisely what impartial writers and content material producers mustn’t.
