I Like Substack. But the PR Is Getting Ridiculous.

Substack money

I subscribe to more than 100 Substacks. I even pay for a handful. I think it’s a great platform and I recommend it often to clients. That’s not so much because I love Substack the company, but because I believe in email. And Substack, if anything, makes it easy for non-tech people to harness the power of email, whether free or paid.

I myself have published a free newsletter for a decade (Electric Speed); I launched a paid newsletter, The Hot Sheet, before Substack existed, which now brings in six figures per year.

So I have a lot of reasons to believe the hype around Substack. But the PR and media coverage it’s getting is all out of proportion to reality. Journalists are falling for Substack’s PR machine without an ounce of critical thinking. Let’s take a look.

Serialized books are a burgeoning business at substack (Publishers Weekly)

This article is about a nonfiction book traditionally published in 2014 that the author wants to revisit and re-promote. The publisher, Norton, doesn’t see sufficient benefit to releasing a new edition or designing a new cover. So to pacify the author, Norton has granted the author permission to serialize the first two chapters on Substack.

That’s it. A “burgeoning business”? No. As Guy Gonzalez tweeted, Publishers Weekly confuses a story about a traditional publisher not knowing how to market a minor backlist title into a story about Substack.

So let’s move on to the next article; this one’s about an author who is in fact serializing a new, original work.

Substack signs ex-Forbes writer as it seeks to disrupt book publishing (New York Post)

Substack paid an advance to author and entertainment writer Zack O’Malley Greenburg to serialize a book, We Are All Musicians Now, on Substack. Each week a new installment drops to paid subscribers. Greenburg told the New York Post that he opted to go the “Substack route” because it offered him more financial upside, although the terms of the deal were not disclosed. He said, “All in all, with the advance money being in the same ballpark, I’d rather go to a place where I can be my own boss with a higher upside than try to force it through an old business model that I think is broken.”

The New York post headline claims that Substack seeks to “disrupt” book publishing, but later the article acknowledges that serialization isn’t a new model. In digital media, for 20 years, authors have serialized and market-tested their work on blogs, podcasts, and email newsletters; on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook; through creator platforms like Patreon, Kickstarter, and Wattpad; and even through Kindle, particularly when Amazon Publishing had a clunky serials program (nothing like Vella) in 2012.

There’s also nothing new about a startup luring a creator away from an established player with cash and/or freedom. Lots of Internet companies, established businesses, and startups have done this. Amazon. Spotify. Apple. Etc.

Most important, the market for a serialization and the market for a book are not the same. I learned that when talking to Amazon years ago about their serialization program. More than half of the revenue arose from book sales after the fact. And I’ve seen that same dynamic play out for other authors in both nonfiction and fiction. Some people like the serialization experience, and some people like books—and the overlap between the two is smaller than you might think. So I hope that Greenburg negotiated his deal carefully.

Why writers are turning down lucrative deals in favor of Substack (The Guardian)

This article was written today, now that Salman Rushdie was lured in by a Substack offer. Yes, Salman Rushdie! So what will he do there? He says, “Just whatever comes into my head, it just gives me a way of saying something immediately, without mediators or gatekeepers.” (Wait, is he not on Twitter?) More formally, Rushdie says he will serialize a 35,000-word novella, and I have to wonder if his publisher refused to take it.

I find this akin to Margaret Atwood working with Wattpad some years ago. Sure, it was neat. But it did not change the fortunes of Wattpad. A bunch of A-list writers didn’t migrate over to the platform as a result. Wattpad’s business model remained the same. Is Atwood doing any work now on Wattpad? No. I doubt Rushdie will continue on Substack in any meaningful way beyond his first year.

Substack is clearly trying to spread its wings, but will it work?

After getting $65 million in funding in March, Substack must be under pressure to grow. With its focus now turned to fiction as well as comics, Substack may be trying to compete with the likes of mature and developed creator-publishing platforms such as Wattpad, Tapas, or Webtoon.

But this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, given what really stands out right now on Substack: political commentary, opinion, and various types of journalistic content. Perhaps Substack can honestly be called a disruptor for a certain type of writer: op-ed columnists, professor-pundits, political journalists, or people in news-adjacent industries.

I’m the least surprised by its success in that realm. When I worked at the Virginia Quarterly Review (a very literary journal), I learned something critical on the first day of the job: fiction and poetry sank like a stone in terms of online traffic. Only nonfiction gained traction. Our audience simply did not read fiction online. They read books—usually print books.

Who does read fiction online, particularly on mobile devices? If you look at the established demographics of Wattpad, Tapas, and Webtoon, they’re all quite similar: young, diverse readers who consume comics, manga, graphic novels, and genre fiction. There are also sites like Radish and Royal Road (and now Vella), where you’ll find troves upon troves of genre fiction—lots of romance, science fiction and fantasy, and RPG stuff. It is possible to make money on those sites, but you are writing in established corners for established interests. It is not the same as going off to your Substack garret to pen the Great American Novel.

As far as I can tell, Substack has a different core audience than Wattpad, Webtoon or Tapas. They currently reach the type who also visit independent bookstores, probably know about LitHub and Bookshop, and prefer and maybe fetishize print. We shall see if Substack can successfully push beyond this literary type.

That brings me to Elle Griffin, a writer who has spent this past year analyzing how writers make money by publishing fiction, through her own Substack newsletter (but of course). She started a Discord server, Substack Writers Unite, where people gather to talk about how to build their author platform and get subscribers. Her work has garnered a lot of attention and sharing, as it should—it’s valuable insight for anyone who wants to know how authors today earn a living outside of the traditional publishing path. But her motivation, as she’s made clear all along, is to accomplish one thing: launch her paid Substack serialization of her upcoming novel.

I wish Griffin every success and I hope it works out. But so far she has established an audience for writers who want to learn how to make money writing. And that is not the same audience who reads fiction online. Sure, there could be some overlap, but it’s a well-known problem among writers that blogging about writing and becoming an expert on publishing doesn’t translate into readers for your fiction. You end up in an echo chamber.

The gritty reality for Substack’s middle class (Simon Owens)

Here is an article that speaks the truth, finally. Journalist Simon Owens has been trying to achieve lift-off on his own paid newsletter effort. He harbors no ill-will toward Substack, but like me, he’s a little tired of the hype.

Many aspiring creators have this fantasy that they’ll be able to work on their newsletter as a side hustle and then quit their full-time jobs at the exact moment that the newsletter revenue replaces their full-time income.

This scenario is known to happen sometimes, but it’ll be difficult to achieve for most. Why? It all ties back to growth.

While we’d all like to say that content quality is the biggest driver of growth, the truth is that publishing consistency often plays a much bigger role. You can produce the most brilliantly-research[ed], well-written newsletters, but if you’re only publishing twice a month, you’re not going to grow very fast, at least without a large following on some other platform or a sizable marketing budget. All things being equal, a daily newsletter will grow much more quickly than a weekly newsletter, even if the daily newsletter is slightly lower in quality.

What does this mean in practice? That embarking on a newsletter career requires a leap of faith — a departure from full-time work so you can increase your content output, even though you’re not yet generating enough income to replace your salary. In other words: you need some sort of financial cushion.

For my own paid newsletter, it took me a couple years to hit what I’d call “salary replacement income.” And that was with (1) 100,000 visits to my website, (2) more than 20,000 free email newsletter subscribers, and (3) 200,000 followers on Twitter. Now that I’m six years in, I might be able to hit six figures if I put aside other work in favor of it. As of today, the majority of my income is from online classes.

None of these projects I’ve discussed here are foolish or bad—nor am I against people using Substack. I applaud innovation and experimentation. I love seeing new paths and opportunities open up for writers. But Substack is just one option among many. And let us not forget Substack is a VC-funded enterprise, just as Medium was. Remember The Atavist? Byliner? Vook? Pronoun? Oyster? No? That’s because they’re buried very deep in the graveyard of publishing “disruptors.” Keep your eyes wide open.

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Michelle

Thank you for this sensible article on Substack! I’ve noticed so many fiction writers promoting their Substack and Patreon newsletters on twitter, and a well-meaning former student suggested it was the best way to “stay relevant,”but after looking under the hood I decided it wasn’t the best use of time right now. I’ve been publishing a completely free newsletter for years, and people who like the writing advice and inspiration in my newsletter often sign up for online writing classes. I find that reaching a wide audience of writers through my newsletter, and then selling a highly interactive, high-quality writing class to a small percentage of them, is a more effective use of time than trying to get thousands of people to pay for my newsletter. It sounds as though you have found success in doing both a paid newsletter and courses. I am definitely interested in seeing where substack is going, particularly in the serialization space.

Last edited 2 years ago by Michelle
Anne Janzer

Wonderful, thoughtful write-up. I’ve been bemused by all the hype.

Elizabeth West

Even blog posts are a struggle for me. I don’t know how anyone does a newsletter. I feel like I have nothing to say.

Roslyn Reid

Me too! I say it all in my books!

Joyce Reynolds-Ward

Eh, I’m serializing a work-in-progress on Substack. Will it attract attention for the book? Who knows? It’s the last of several related works in a series, and might get more attention than it would otherwise by doing so.

Alex

An insightful counterpoint to the Substack hype. As an unpublished author, I couldn’t see what benefits it offers compared to other platforms, and its future is far from certain.

David Biddle

Great insights Jane. Thank you so much for all you do! I’ve been watching SubStack from the edge of the field. So much of everything in the self-pub realm requires the insanity of marketing energy (truly insanity for many writer-types). It also tends to mean working without the net of objective editorial support. I went through all of that in small doses for years as a contract writer, freelancer, and early adopting self-publishing novelist.

The main question I always come to about “revolutions” in the publishing industry is whether some magical means of increasing the number of Real Readers is part of that revolution. Certainly, SubStack and everything else on top of all the social media already out there seems to me a weird path to take for novelists and poets and essayist even.

I’m for it all and everything else experimental that comes along for writers who have copious quantities of jazz and spunk.

Last edited 2 years ago by David Biddle
Ed Iannuccilli

Superb piece. I’m beginning to understand Substack because of what you have written. Thank you.

JoAnna Lamb

Jane, thanks for this timely article. I’m about to start serialising my fantasy series on Substack. Why? Because I’m fed up with social media and the big beast of Amazon and the lemming approach that us indie authors are continually told to follow. I would rather spend my time building and connecting with my email subscribers and trying something different, rather than follow the crowd. Will it make me lots of money? Probably not, but that’s not my goal. Do I want to get paid for my work? Well, yes but that isn’t guaranteed either with the current self publishing options. I’m happy to take the risk, I have nothing to lose.

Roslyn Reid

Ikr? I get almost 1 email a day from Substack promoting some service or feature of theirs…& I haven’t even had a chance to post anything yet!

TY for this helpful article, Jane.

Rebecca Lawton

Thanks for the article, Jane! I was about to leap to Substack with my long-time newsletter, taking perhaps a new tack. As I studied the learning curve to go to Sub, I decided not to put myself through all that again. It was quite a thing getting my wordpress.org, MailerLite, and bookfunnel triumvirate to work together awhile ago—at the moment nothing is broken, I just need new energy for it/in it. So I’ll take another look at what I can do to go deeper with the writing in my newsletter, rather than spend time leveling up on a new platform. I appreciate your wise advice at this moment in time.