Substack: Independent Wri ng Has Never Been So Easy

SUBSTACK:

Independent Writing has Never Been so Easy

Journalism is witnessing the rise of a new business model — and the newsle er pla orm Substack is right in the center of it. Substack, an email list platform for writers, which recently celebrated its 3rd birthday, has quickly drawn a en on from the media industry for its simple promise: “making it easy to set up a subscrip on and collect payment from readers,“ which sounds extremely “ cap va ng for authors. What is more, Substack makes it easier than ever for writers to leave tradi onal publica ons behind and mone ze their own wri ng directly. “I think writers have always realized their own value; there just weren’t a lot of op ons in the post-2008 recession for how to make good on it,” says Anne Helen Peterson, one of the top-writers at Substack. “But all of this feels very cyclical to me. The economy tanks, writers get laid off from their publica ons, writers go freelance, writers fi nd success with scrappy publica ons, mainstream publica ons hire those writers, scrappy publica ons

die, mainstream publications get big, then the economy tanks again. So I’m trying to fi nd something akin to stability, which is certainly a shared sen ment amongst the other journalists I know.” Substack was founded by developers Christopher Best, Jairaj Sethi, and journalist Hamish McKenzie back in 2017. Commenting on the very beginning, McKenzie remembered that “put off by the social media algorithms that controlled news distribu on, they wanted a pla orm that would allow each client to build a “mini-media empire” around their mailing lists.” Basically, Substack allows anyone to launch a free newsle er, while also offering a premium tier, typically star ng from $5 a month. The platform takes a 10 percent fee on subscrip on revenues, while 3 percent go to Stripe, which handles payments. Therefore, the writer receives the other 87 percent. To make the whole process as easy as possible, the pla orm also provides newsle er publishing tools, such as easy-to-use edi ng so ware that can handle the simultaneous publica on of stories and newsle ers for a payment solu on that makes subscriptions intuitive and manageable for both publisher and reader. Substack also shares features that allow stories to fi nd large audiences outside the paywalls and design templates so that publishers can create beau ful reading experiences. The year 2020 has been extremely successful for Substack: since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of readers and ac ve writers on Substack has doubled. What is more, the pla orm has a racted some big names on its list: Rolling Stone’s Ma Taibbi, New York Magazine columnist Andrew Sullivan, and Buzzfeed’s Anne Helen Petersen have all recently quit high profi le publishers to launch their own publica ons on Substack. Other notable hits on the platform include China expert Bill Bishop, the liberal poli cal writer Judd Legum, as well as journalist Luke O’Neil, who noted that he is expec ng to gross more than $100,000 annually for his newsle er ‘Hell World’. Commen ng on the numbers, McKenzie noted that “The top writers on Substack are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And there’s a rapidly growing middle class, with writers and podcasters ne ng incomes that range from pocket money to high five figures. There are now well over 100,000 paying subscribers to Substack publica ons. ” Speaking about the future, Best noted that Substack has entered into a new phase now, adding that “The fi rst phase was to a ract writers with exis ng audiences to move to Substack. Now Substack wants to bring on new voices.“ Interes ngly, one thing that Substack promises regarding the future is no ads, ever. “Any me you’re doing ads, it’ s all about the lowest common denominator of engagement: clicks,” Best said.