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.
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.
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.