I'm skeptical. I'm pretty confident the income curve for Substack writers looks a lot like the Authors Guild survey for book income that I cite in the post. Purely guessing, but seems likely that around 10% of newsletter authors could make a living from their Substacks, there's another chunk that makes "meaningful" income (a threshold I just barely clear), and then the vast majority that make relatively token amounts. Substack is happy to take their cut from the long tail, but the vast majority of their revenue comes from that top 10% and so they put the majority of their own promotion efforts into that group, or into projects that they think have a chance of joining that group. Maybe a rising tide lifts all boats, but there's not a lot of evidence for that and there's not much I can see that Substack does to try to create the conditions for a sustainable middle class. It's really just another place to come peddle your wares that has an easy-to-use interface, nice design, is low-friction overall, and run by a couple of guys who don't mind promoting white nationalists provided the white nationalist's newsletter draws enough eyeballs/subscribers. I don't think we can expect a platform to do the job of an institution. You've got me thinking, though, what something that could sustain a middle class might look like.
John, I hear you and share your view, although perhaps "meaningful" income is a suitable goal for me. I want to continue diversifying my income streams, gradually earning something like 10% of my income here, give or take. If it goes higher than that, that's great.
I could see Substack as being one part of a "middle class" income, but you'd also need to hustle more than most folks are capable of doing right now.
If you want to talk more openly about this stuff, feel free to reach out - I'm here to help think through stuff like this, and I really appreciate you opening a useful dialogue here.
I think that kind of goal is pretty reasonable, though I'm also wary (and wearied by) a system that requires this sort of cobbling by individuals as opposed to finding ways where we (both writers and readers) benefit from being bundled together. The limits of a platform of individuals are pretty significant. The amount of subscription money may scale as more people come to the platform, but the distribution is always going to skew to the top earners.
On a platform like this, at least to some extent, writers are in a zero-sum competition with each other for subscriptions. I try not to think that way and spend a good amount of time promoting the newsletters I read and enjoy, but at some point, how many annual subscriptions to individual writers can someone tolerate? I'm a paid subscriber to 12 newsletters. I wouldn't do it if I couldn't afford it, but in a different time, I could get those 12 newsletters bundled together in a periodical for a year for the price of one or two subscriptions. This structure obviously benefits Substack the most, the writers at the top of the curve the next most - they earn much more than they would bundled together - with another group to which I belong, that makes money, but less than I would were I bundled.
I think you've got me thinking my way into a future post.
I guess: what's a better alternative? I haven't found one yet, at least not one that lets me publish the way I want to. I've worked on a few other platforms, but probably nowhere near as many as some folks here. Still, my feet have gotten wet in the past, and I have a feeling about what else is out there: not a ton.
Sadly, I think the alternative is to invent a time machine and travel backwards and make sure that newspapers and magazines remain viable places for writers to publish their work and get paid reasonably for it. I think this is about as good as it gets for individuals now provided they have the drive to keep writing and some way to spread the word about their work. The website Deadspin is an alternative for writers who want to band together and create essentially a worker's collective where everyone gets enough to do their work, but there's no superstars. A number of Deadspin writers of high profile probably could go solo at a newsletter and make much more than they do now at Deadspin, but they made a different choice. That choice was bold and not at all destined for success, but they've made it work.
It does require some infrastructure for editing/production that being solo doesn't necessarily need, though many of the big newsletters with enough revenue have some kind of staff that they pay to help keep things moving.
When I was 15 (1985) if you'd told me that I was writing a weekly column for the Sunday Chicago Tribune (as I've been doing for over a decade) I would've assumed that was my "job" and it would be how I make my living. I'm grateful for the space to write there, but the money is just one of the blocks that I need to fit together to make an income. That labor is worth maybe 1/5th of of what it was paid in the past. I guess the question to keep wrestling with is how to make that labor something that brings in income that allows that labor to continue. For pretty much the entirety of my career, that mechanism has only been degrading, with a few stopgaps (like Substack) that allow a handful of people to rescue themselves, but which don't arrest the larger fall.
It does seem like we are experiencing the "best of the worst" here. Let me know if you make any progress on that time machine, though! Writing professionally 30 years ago sounds amazing.
30 years ago, I was 18, and I was self-publishing everything: zines, music, you name it. My reach was tiny and my content was lousy, but it got better over the ensuing decades.
Unfortunately, I think I'm only just now beginning to make work worthy of pay, and now the competitive landscape is brutal. That being said, I am all right with steady income from a variety of sources. That's the message the universe has pounded into my brain as much as any other over the last several decades: thou shalt have multiple income streams.
Could Substack operate as a wedge into creating a new "writing middle class"? Is that possible?
I'm skeptical. I'm pretty confident the income curve for Substack writers looks a lot like the Authors Guild survey for book income that I cite in the post. Purely guessing, but seems likely that around 10% of newsletter authors could make a living from their Substacks, there's another chunk that makes "meaningful" income (a threshold I just barely clear), and then the vast majority that make relatively token amounts. Substack is happy to take their cut from the long tail, but the vast majority of their revenue comes from that top 10% and so they put the majority of their own promotion efforts into that group, or into projects that they think have a chance of joining that group. Maybe a rising tide lifts all boats, but there's not a lot of evidence for that and there's not much I can see that Substack does to try to create the conditions for a sustainable middle class. It's really just another place to come peddle your wares that has an easy-to-use interface, nice design, is low-friction overall, and run by a couple of guys who don't mind promoting white nationalists provided the white nationalist's newsletter draws enough eyeballs/subscribers. I don't think we can expect a platform to do the job of an institution. You've got me thinking, though, what something that could sustain a middle class might look like.
John, I hear you and share your view, although perhaps "meaningful" income is a suitable goal for me. I want to continue diversifying my income streams, gradually earning something like 10% of my income here, give or take. If it goes higher than that, that's great.
I could see Substack as being one part of a "middle class" income, but you'd also need to hustle more than most folks are capable of doing right now.
If you want to talk more openly about this stuff, feel free to reach out - I'm here to help think through stuff like this, and I really appreciate you opening a useful dialogue here.
I think that kind of goal is pretty reasonable, though I'm also wary (and wearied by) a system that requires this sort of cobbling by individuals as opposed to finding ways where we (both writers and readers) benefit from being bundled together. The limits of a platform of individuals are pretty significant. The amount of subscription money may scale as more people come to the platform, but the distribution is always going to skew to the top earners.
On a platform like this, at least to some extent, writers are in a zero-sum competition with each other for subscriptions. I try not to think that way and spend a good amount of time promoting the newsletters I read and enjoy, but at some point, how many annual subscriptions to individual writers can someone tolerate? I'm a paid subscriber to 12 newsletters. I wouldn't do it if I couldn't afford it, but in a different time, I could get those 12 newsletters bundled together in a periodical for a year for the price of one or two subscriptions. This structure obviously benefits Substack the most, the writers at the top of the curve the next most - they earn much more than they would bundled together - with another group to which I belong, that makes money, but less than I would were I bundled.
I think you've got me thinking my way into a future post.
Good! I'll check it out.
I guess: what's a better alternative? I haven't found one yet, at least not one that lets me publish the way I want to. I've worked on a few other platforms, but probably nowhere near as many as some folks here. Still, my feet have gotten wet in the past, and I have a feeling about what else is out there: not a ton.
Sadly, I think the alternative is to invent a time machine and travel backwards and make sure that newspapers and magazines remain viable places for writers to publish their work and get paid reasonably for it. I think this is about as good as it gets for individuals now provided they have the drive to keep writing and some way to spread the word about their work. The website Deadspin is an alternative for writers who want to band together and create essentially a worker's collective where everyone gets enough to do their work, but there's no superstars. A number of Deadspin writers of high profile probably could go solo at a newsletter and make much more than they do now at Deadspin, but they made a different choice. That choice was bold and not at all destined for success, but they've made it work.
It does require some infrastructure for editing/production that being solo doesn't necessarily need, though many of the big newsletters with enough revenue have some kind of staff that they pay to help keep things moving.
When I was 15 (1985) if you'd told me that I was writing a weekly column for the Sunday Chicago Tribune (as I've been doing for over a decade) I would've assumed that was my "job" and it would be how I make my living. I'm grateful for the space to write there, but the money is just one of the blocks that I need to fit together to make an income. That labor is worth maybe 1/5th of of what it was paid in the past. I guess the question to keep wrestling with is how to make that labor something that brings in income that allows that labor to continue. For pretty much the entirety of my career, that mechanism has only been degrading, with a few stopgaps (like Substack) that allow a handful of people to rescue themselves, but which don't arrest the larger fall.
It does seem like we are experiencing the "best of the worst" here. Let me know if you make any progress on that time machine, though! Writing professionally 30 years ago sounds amazing.
30 years ago, I was 18, and I was self-publishing everything: zines, music, you name it. My reach was tiny and my content was lousy, but it got better over the ensuing decades.
Unfortunately, I think I'm only just now beginning to make work worthy of pay, and now the competitive landscape is brutal. That being said, I am all right with steady income from a variety of sources. That's the message the universe has pounded into my brain as much as any other over the last several decades: thou shalt have multiple income streams.