Sounds like a great idea and just from this post I've added several books to my inordinately large To Read list.
Regarding this point: "It is a terrible business plan. The Substack algorithm tells me I could likely double the income from the newsletter if I put material behind a paywall"
I just finished Cory Doctorow's book Information Doesn't Want to Be Free and he presents a similar case to what you talk about in your linked post from last year except with a focus on the harms of current digital copyright law. I especially liked the foreword by Amanda Palmer where she talks about how she was able to have a stable income as a street performer even though so many people were able to enjoy her performances for free. I think that is a good analogy to the possibilities of the internet - you can have a reach of thousands or millions of people, but to expect all of those people to value your work enough to pay for it (and have the means to do so) seems to be a false assumption behind a lot of the "lost revenue" arguments made by the platforms that control distribution. All that to say, you may not be missing out on as much as Substack says, and there's a huge value to what you do currently and I agree with many of your points about the limitations of market-style thinking. Here's hoping you are able to expand your reach while maintaining the same model.
I tend to think of it in short term v. long term gains. Short term, there's likely at least a decent bit more revenue to be had if I put up a paywall of some kind. Paid subscribers are maybe 7% of the total number of subscribers, which is rather low comparatively.
But...to your point, I think there's probably a long term benefit in keeping the work accessible. Maybe it'll lead to some opportunity down the road (or maybe not, but maybe!) or someone with a big platform will notice my work that boosts me in ways I couldn't foresee.
And even more importantly for me, I like the idea that there's an audience building organically without the restriction of people having to pay. It's motivating to me to keep thinking and producing. One of the reasons I posted for a full year before turning on subs was to see if the outlet itself was sufficient to keep me going, and it was for that year. I won't say the subscription revenue is a pure bonus - I've come to rely on it to some degree as part of my work portfolio - but it isn't driving the train. I think that's important for my own psyche.
It seems to me, as a newcomer with fairly poor computer skills, that Substack, while beneficial overall, is seen as primarily a way of making money from lots of subscribersbut it has enough genuine serious hardworking writers such as Justin Demming, Jimmy Domain, Ann,and some surprisingly midlist to pretty famous writers such as two of my favorites- Etgar Keteret and Sherman Alexie who are among the few along with Justin and Jimmy who actually post creative work,can take some honest crtique pro and con and are more concerned wth Smaking their/our stories better than " building a platform" which a few people have mentioned while posting half done writings that peoplle have perenially palmed off as 'work in progress.s"
Also, I think that subscription rates of $50 a month and up are out of line, and unfair. Some ofus, many of us? do not have that kind of money, Andfrm what many of you are showing ( or not showing) it is genuinely not worth it. SO THERE IS A WHOLE MONEY GRUBBING ASPECT TO SUBSTACK THAT I FIND DISTASTEFUL. But so far I have been lucky- a few writers have been generous enough to give me a free sub or purchase a sub of a particular writer whose work we both enjoy. And one last question: I know summer time is considered a time to read what my cousincalls "slackerfiction - easy reads,lightweight crime novels, anythig but serious heavy or weirdo poetry such as Vi Khi Nao's umbilical Hospital andOh God Your Babies Are So Delicious Daniel Borzutsky's The Murmur of TheCarcass In TheRottig Economy, or i Book Of The Other, a deTruong Trans dvasta elderle ting poeticdocumentaion about the racist explosions towards Asianss particularly elderly woman
for someone who purports to likes and wants to all cosy and sharing,John, and Derek, I am still primarily smelling people out for money- with all due respect. But dig this, my friends, I been around the block more than a few times and have met my share of people Bessie Smith so pithily described "They got a whole of gimme, and a mouthful of - much obliged."
In other words, you guys sound good and wanting to share and full of good ideas and all the good right good will substack will be this great place for writers and readers but over and over and over again it seems there are these request and mild suggestions that those of us who are"free" subscribers should REALLY TRY to either get paid subscriptions or as the constant blue neon in the top right corner keeps flashilng UPGRADE TO PAID, and why does that keep on popping up? I dont think you folks are being on the up and up here when the only thing I seeing thats on the "UP and UP' is the constant dunning to readers for us to pay for- good question- what arewe paying for- I can send in three minutes to you folks and hundreds of readers, maybe thousands if my monthly SS money comes in and thin pension but who knows when Illneed it afterI blowup and send a necessary diatribe about the exorbitant antics going on that pose a a funforall but wound up like Altamount where a pyched up sick motor cycle Hells Angel fascist gang hired by supreme narcississtnn beat to death a 2O year African American with pool sticks while they were completely Zooted on lsd, Red Mountain wine, cocaaine andpills in endlelss brown paper bgags brimming with speed,
So just know this. If you want to talk about culture and books, youregonna haveto be a littlemore specific. For example, Ive already stated on subsack ( when Im not being cut off) that I have eight page reading list of some of the best international authors in the world and not the pap,pop and pablum from most of the socalled reading lists the bigs put out as if they are giving birthto boxes of mayonaise and cheap white sugar and bowling ball sylel llVelveeta cheese. Im talkingabout the greats- Ousmane Sembene ofSenegal, Ben Okri of Nigeria,, Roberto Blanco, Pablo Neruda, Isabel Allende and the emergncy antipoet ofChile Nicanor Parra, and our own greatet poet of the bigurban centters Gwendolyn Brooks of Chicago and some of the greatest writers of not the Harlem Renaissance which only produced four or five amazing writers Jean Toomer,Zora Neale Hurston,Sterling a. Brown, and Nella Larson, but the long playing Chicago African American fiction renaisance of Gwendodllyn Brooks, Richard Wright, Margaaret Walker, James Farrelll and the StudsLonigan trilogy, Nelson Algren, Carl Sandberg, Patricia Smith , Frank London Brown. That's only ONE are. When are you going to talk about two of the most brilliant and experimental writers in the world the South Korean poet Hyesoon Kim, and the immigre Vietnam to America poet Vi Khi Nao who writes circles around the thin idols such as John Ashbury, Eliot, Elizabth Bishop etc. Ive offered my reading lists to more than a few substack people and have yet to hear a syllable from anybody. I just saw a horrifing comment the other day somewhere out there in the substack junglel, some......... dont know what actually call her exept she's CLAIRE BRAGGING that nowadays she doesnt even have to read. She has the audio tapes and the pod casts. So she is as snug as a bug in a rug but then who would want to ring the bell of some smug bug sellmugged by her inner thug in a filtlhy rug so worn and so a-fraid she terrifies even the shade where her future that is not all that bright is enlaid and so weirdly displalyed in such a pitiful charade.
Sounds like a great idea and just from this post I've added several books to my inordinately large To Read list.
Regarding this point: "It is a terrible business plan. The Substack algorithm tells me I could likely double the income from the newsletter if I put material behind a paywall"
I just finished Cory Doctorow's book Information Doesn't Want to Be Free and he presents a similar case to what you talk about in your linked post from last year except with a focus on the harms of current digital copyright law. I especially liked the foreword by Amanda Palmer where she talks about how she was able to have a stable income as a street performer even though so many people were able to enjoy her performances for free. I think that is a good analogy to the possibilities of the internet - you can have a reach of thousands or millions of people, but to expect all of those people to value your work enough to pay for it (and have the means to do so) seems to be a false assumption behind a lot of the "lost revenue" arguments made by the platforms that control distribution. All that to say, you may not be missing out on as much as Substack says, and there's a huge value to what you do currently and I agree with many of your points about the limitations of market-style thinking. Here's hoping you are able to expand your reach while maintaining the same model.
- From a new subscriber.
I tend to think of it in short term v. long term gains. Short term, there's likely at least a decent bit more revenue to be had if I put up a paywall of some kind. Paid subscribers are maybe 7% of the total number of subscribers, which is rather low comparatively.
But...to your point, I think there's probably a long term benefit in keeping the work accessible. Maybe it'll lead to some opportunity down the road (or maybe not, but maybe!) or someone with a big platform will notice my work that boosts me in ways I couldn't foresee.
And even more importantly for me, I like the idea that there's an audience building organically without the restriction of people having to pay. It's motivating to me to keep thinking and producing. One of the reasons I posted for a full year before turning on subs was to see if the outlet itself was sufficient to keep me going, and it was for that year. I won't say the subscription revenue is a pure bonus - I've come to rely on it to some degree as part of my work portfolio - but it isn't driving the train. I think that's important for my own psyche.
It seems to me, as a newcomer with fairly poor computer skills, that Substack, while beneficial overall, is seen as primarily a way of making money from lots of subscribersbut it has enough genuine serious hardworking writers such as Justin Demming, Jimmy Domain, Ann,and some surprisingly midlist to pretty famous writers such as two of my favorites- Etgar Keteret and Sherman Alexie who are among the few along with Justin and Jimmy who actually post creative work,can take some honest crtique pro and con and are more concerned wth Smaking their/our stories better than " building a platform" which a few people have mentioned while posting half done writings that peoplle have perenially palmed off as 'work in progress.s"
Also, I think that subscription rates of $50 a month and up are out of line, and unfair. Some ofus, many of us? do not have that kind of money, Andfrm what many of you are showing ( or not showing) it is genuinely not worth it. SO THERE IS A WHOLE MONEY GRUBBING ASPECT TO SUBSTACK THAT I FIND DISTASTEFUL. But so far I have been lucky- a few writers have been generous enough to give me a free sub or purchase a sub of a particular writer whose work we both enjoy. And one last question: I know summer time is considered a time to read what my cousincalls "slackerfiction - easy reads,lightweight crime novels, anythig but serious heavy or weirdo poetry such as Vi Khi Nao's umbilical Hospital andOh God Your Babies Are So Delicious Daniel Borzutsky's The Murmur of TheCarcass In TheRottig Economy, or i Book Of The Other, a deTruong Trans dvasta elderle ting poeticdocumentaion about the racist explosions towards Asianss particularly elderly woman
towards Asian t
This is great - The Secret Lives of Church Ladies was such a highlight of 2022, I look forward to your columns :)
Welcome, Derek, looking forward to your first column!
Derek!!! So glad to have your voice alongside John's in this fabulous Substack feed!
do you have ANY interest in book titles from readers and writers currently using substack such as myself?
for someone who purports to likes and wants to all cosy and sharing,John, and Derek, I am still primarily smelling people out for money- with all due respect. But dig this, my friends, I been around the block more than a few times and have met my share of people Bessie Smith so pithily described "They got a whole of gimme, and a mouthful of - much obliged."
In other words, you guys sound good and wanting to share and full of good ideas and all the good right good will substack will be this great place for writers and readers but over and over and over again it seems there are these request and mild suggestions that those of us who are"free" subscribers should REALLY TRY to either get paid subscriptions or as the constant blue neon in the top right corner keeps flashilng UPGRADE TO PAID, and why does that keep on popping up? I dont think you folks are being on the up and up here when the only thing I seeing thats on the "UP and UP' is the constant dunning to readers for us to pay for- good question- what arewe paying for- I can send in three minutes to you folks and hundreds of readers, maybe thousands if my monthly SS money comes in and thin pension but who knows when Illneed it afterI blowup and send a necessary diatribe about the exorbitant antics going on that pose a a funforall but wound up like Altamount where a pyched up sick motor cycle Hells Angel fascist gang hired by supreme narcississtnn beat to death a 2O year African American with pool sticks while they were completely Zooted on lsd, Red Mountain wine, cocaaine andpills in endlelss brown paper bgags brimming with speed,
So just know this. If you want to talk about culture and books, youregonna haveto be a littlemore specific. For example, Ive already stated on subsack ( when Im not being cut off) that I have eight page reading list of some of the best international authors in the world and not the pap,pop and pablum from most of the socalled reading lists the bigs put out as if they are giving birthto boxes of mayonaise and cheap white sugar and bowling ball sylel llVelveeta cheese. Im talkingabout the greats- Ousmane Sembene ofSenegal, Ben Okri of Nigeria,, Roberto Blanco, Pablo Neruda, Isabel Allende and the emergncy antipoet ofChile Nicanor Parra, and our own greatet poet of the bigurban centters Gwendolyn Brooks of Chicago and some of the greatest writers of not the Harlem Renaissance which only produced four or five amazing writers Jean Toomer,Zora Neale Hurston,Sterling a. Brown, and Nella Larson, but the long playing Chicago African American fiction renaisance of Gwendodllyn Brooks, Richard Wright, Margaaret Walker, James Farrelll and the StudsLonigan trilogy, Nelson Algren, Carl Sandberg, Patricia Smith , Frank London Brown. That's only ONE are. When are you going to talk about two of the most brilliant and experimental writers in the world the South Korean poet Hyesoon Kim, and the immigre Vietnam to America poet Vi Khi Nao who writes circles around the thin idols such as John Ashbury, Eliot, Elizabth Bishop etc. Ive offered my reading lists to more than a few substack people and have yet to hear a syllable from anybody. I just saw a horrifing comment the other day somewhere out there in the substack junglel, some......... dont know what actually call her exept she's CLAIRE BRAGGING that nowadays she doesnt even have to read. She has the audio tapes and the pod casts. So she is as snug as a bug in a rug but then who would want to ring the bell of some smug bug sellmugged by her inner thug in a filtlhy rug so worn and so a-fraid she terrifies even the shade where her future that is not all that bright is enlaid and so weirdly displalyed in such a pitiful charade.