On Substack Centralization

https://notes.ghed.in/posts/2022/substack-centralization/

by rpgbr • 4 years ago

12 10 4 years ago

notes.ghed.in

The biggest immediate downside for writers of Substack's centralization IMO is that they've started introducing some subtle lock-in with their reader app. Substack is quick to say that you can always export your email list and move to a different newsletter provider. But if your readers have built a habit of reading things in the Substack app instead of their email inbox, then moving your email list somewhere else means your readers will be less likely to engage with your newsletter.

If Substack actually cares about preserving writers' independence, they should provide a way for writers who switch platforms to continue delivering their newsletters to the app. Switching platforms should not force behavioral changes on readers. For example, they could give app users an @inbox.substack.com (or whatever) address. Anything sent to that address will show up in the app. When you export your list of Substack subscribers, you get both their regular address and the @inbox.substack.com address, so you can continue delivering to both their email inbox and the Substack app.

Until they do that, I'll continue to view their claims of putting writers in charge with a measure of wariness. I do think Substack/Substack's founders are sincere, actually. I don't think they're twirling their mustaches, thinking "How can we lock people into our platform?" They're just way too confident in the righteousness of their cause, and as a result I don't think they look inward enough in situations where the interests of Substack, writers, and readers conflict.[1]

(And no, using a paid subscription model instead of ads doesn't magically make all incentive alignment problems go away.)

[1] For example: https://twitter.com/bmorrissey/status/1501568928799244290. When the app was launched, by default they stopped sending emails to people who installed the app, which would hasten the inbox->Substack app behavioral shift I discussed above, strengthening lock-in. They switched it to opt-in after backlash from writers.

pr337h4m• 4 years ago

Think it's wiser for writers to use ghost.org instead (can be self-hosted, extensible, open source, MIT license)

jacobobryant3• 4 years ago

I'm a big fan of ghost (especially for anyone into self-hosting!), but the lack of a free plan makes it harder to use as my default recommendation. (Also the lack of single opt-in signup is a deal breaker for me personally, though I understand many people don't care/prefer double opt-in anyway.)

I think https://beehiiv.com is another good alternative, though the styling isn't as nice as on ghost, and I personally found the editor to be glitchy and infuriating to use. Maybe it's just a problem on Firefox. I'd probably use that as my own recommendation for anyone looking for a newsletter platform and cross my fingers that they have better luck with the editor :).

rpgbr2• 4 years ago

It's a tricky problem indeed, this one regarding their app, although not a surprising one. Last month, Hamish McKenzie (cofounder) wrote[1] that “the trend that Substack is part of is not a newsletter trend, or even the much-hyped creator economy”. So, an app that distance subscribers from e-mail was expected.

Btw, giving a special address would increase the lock-in, IMHO. The newsletter owner would be dependent of Substacks benevolence forever.

As I wrote, I recognize Substack as a force for good, but there are cracks in their promise and considering it's a VC-backed startup, things only tend to get worse in the long run.

[1] https://on.substack.com/p/please-stop-calling-it-the-newslet...

jacobobryant3• 4 years ago

Btw, giving a special address would increase the lock-in, IMHO. The newsletter owner would be dependent of Substacks benevolence forever.

It is possible, but at least writers would have the option of importing those addresses or not. Those who are suspicious that Substack will lock down the app more down the road can always opt to "rip the band-aid off" and not import the Substack app addresses.

Perhaps my main argument is "If Substack doesn't let writers migrate without forcing a behavioral change on their readers, then it is solid evidence that Substack doesn't actually care that much about reducing lock-in." The inverse is not necessarily true, and certainly I'd advise anyone who's already convinced of the consequent to not write on Substack :).

PaulHoule• 4 years ago

It's the other way around. Substack gets almost all of their revenue from two handfuls of creators. If those creators aren't 110% satisfied they can jump ship.

If it's just a matter of email newsletters, Substack is almost trivial to reproduce. Last time I wrote an email newsletter script it took an afternoon to set up in AWS. Adding a payment gateway to that would not be hard. If somebody is making $100,000 a year on Substack it would be very practical for them to go off on their own.

Substack wants to be "more than an email newsletter company" and offer podcasts, and ̶c̶a̶m̶g̶i̶r̶l̶ ̶r̶o̶o̶m̶s̶ video chat, etc. Those look a little harder to me but maybe that's just because I haven't built media delivery systems. They don't have any of the two-sided markets that make social media platforms so hard to overthrow.

A thought experiment: many of Substack's best authors are right-wing. Suppose substack got caught up in the culture wars. A right-winger could create a Substack clone that is a "safe space" for them and creators could switch to that with a business model that works from day one. No pesky advertisers, content moderation or the other problems that make something like Truth Social so hard to get off the ground.

Substack's business is not as bad as Uber's but they have no moat.

rpgbr2• 4 years ago

Yeap. Sendy[1] costs USD 69 (one-payment purchase) and sending messages via AWS is peanuts. It's a far cry from Substack's polish, but it works great with some HTML/CSS knowledge.

The problem will arise when those two handfuls of creators leave or aren't enough.

user_named• 4 years ago

This reminds me of the "Dropbox is just a shell script" or whatever the exact comment was.

blockwriter• 4 years ago

I make use of Substack for posting literary fiction. I've been noticing feature creep on Substack. I appreciate that there is an impetus to drive reader interest by continually improving, but it seems all but impossible that they will get this exactly right for my purposes. Substack, it seems to me, was never optimized for fiction, which is understandable, because news and similarly transitory content is where they likely see the most engagement. I'm not hopeful that any subsequent improvement to the app will circle back and address my issues with the platform elegantly.

adrice727• 4 years ago

  address my issues with the platform

What are your issues? What could Substack be doing better for fiction writers?

On Substack Centralization

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