The way they used our search library is kind of interesting. They could've
copied the code locally and modified it to work with the Substack API, but I
guess Substack doesn’t have an API?
Substack doesn't have an API. Their editor is laughably primitive compared with other solutions. Their visual look hasn't changed at all since their inception. They don't have discoverability. Can anyone tell me what Substack is doing with all the millions of dollars of funding they've taken? We joke about Twitter being massively overstaffed, but Substack, to me, looks just as bloated, organizationally.
Maybe you have something else in mind when you say "discoverability", but.. https://substack.com/discover Seems they do have it.
As for the bloat, I can't really comment, but would note that Substack did substantial layoffs like everyone else.
As for what they're doing: they built mobile apps, adding podcasting and video, etc, better discoverability.
I can't say whether they've done "enough" to satisfy you, but I also don't think we should pretend Substack hasn't done any new product development work since inception.
Those are all fair responses. I guess I just haven't seen much uptake of those new features among the Substack writers that I follow. When they do podcasts, they're hosted by ACast, SimpleCast, or one of the other podcast hosting platforms out there. Videos are hosted on YouTube (like everyone else's).
I would prefer if Substack spent more resources on improving its "core" newsletter/blog experience, but I can understand, given their status as a home for controversial writers, their desire to be a self-contained service.
My understanding is that these days most technical people are wary of being locked into a single platform, so even though substack is making a pretty compelling walled garden anyone with knowledge of recent SV history is hesitant to dive head first into it. As once they get big enough they’re pretty much guaranteed to do something anti-competitive that is against the interests of their customers/users who now have no choice as the cost of leaving has grown too large.
I help with podcasts at Substack. Substack is a podcast-hosting platform like the others you describe (although in my biased opinion we have a number of other great features that set us apart). Most of the podcasts on Substack are hosted and distributed by Substack. A few Substack podcasts do point back at other platforms, but this isn't the norm.
Writers can embed youtube videos in their posts. When they do, those are hosted on youtube.
It would be sad if these, who are very tame, and not long ago would have been considered doing a mighty fine job to the side they're now rejected by, were the "biggest contrarians". Would imply a total lack of actual contrarians, and an overencompassing uniformity and party line-ism...
Then again that's what you get when you build two bipartisan monocultures of echo chambers...
"Mainstream Media" especially in contexts like these is meaningless. You seem to mean many PEOPLE don't like them. There's an argument to be made that for the average person, being attacked by a number of Substack's writers would make that average person less likely to explore their other writers offerings. Fewer readers means less revenue.
"Mainstream media" is certainly not meaningless. A good proxy would be any organ considered an "authoritative source" by Facebook: NYT, WaPo, CNN, Politico, AP, etc.
As for "fewer readers" I don't know what you mean. The "readers" are paying their money, aren't they?
Meaningless in that the phrase is used almost exclusively in the way you use it, and yet you (and others) aren't able to construct a coherent definition. Regarding your examples, Facebook was a weird choice of authority when viewership/readership are easily researched numbers. I bring this up partially because the only thing that you believe is "media" is news sources but the most popular news sources aren't "mainstream media"? There is clearly something specific you're filtering for but are unwilling to say. Until you do the term means nothing.
Wow, you're really going to elaborate lengths of pedantry here, aren't you?
"Please define 'mainstream media' and no, I'm not satisfied with your definition."
Why is this important? You could make a list of 100 news sources and ask a random sample of 1,000 people to check Yes/No on "is this mainstream media?" You would get a very high level of agreement. It's not my responsibility to give you a definition you're happy with. This isn't a scientific debate.
Your definition differs from the results offered as evidenced by your examples differing from other examples: i.e. of The Big Five[1] you picked on only the smallest, not even focusing on journalisitic enterprises because one of the larger organizations literally called "News Corp" didn't have a single of its publications make your list of news outlets. Curious.
Exhibit A: Alex Jones. Whacky conspiracy theory and snake oil peddler. It's literally in nobody's interest he be published anywhere, apart his own personal financial one.
In most cases there's probably a good reason for someone to be shunned by everyone "mainstream".
No one is worth reading solely because the “mainstream media” doesn’t like them. People who jabber complete fiction are disliked in that way. Doesn’t mean they’re worth the time.
Glenn Greenwald in particular depresses me. The days of his blockbuster stories feel like distant memories, now he just posts poorly edited (or more likely not edited at all) opinion pieces powered by nothing but rage. I genuinely don’t get why people would pay for it.
They don't have "paid gigs" there. They bring in tons of subscription revenue, and Substack gave them advances against that subscription revenue. In each case, they quickly earned out the advance.
In addition to advances they will sometimes just pay a writer to move to Substack.
> But the advances also had limitations. On a per-deal basis, we could never really do better than break-even. A Substack advance was effectively an interest-free loan that would never be paid back if a publication failed.
> With Substack Pro, we pay a writer an upfront sum to cover their first year on the platform. The idea is that the payment can be more attractive to a writer than a salary, so they don’t have to stay in a job (or take one) that’s less interesting to them than being independent. In return for that financial security, a Pro writer agrees to let Substack keep 85% of the subscription revenue in that first year. After that year, the deal flips, so that the writer no longer gets a minimum guarantee but from then on keeps 90% of the subscription revenue
Depending on the payment it's possible that a writer could lose money on this, because they would have made more from subscriptions than they did from Substack, but I'm guessing for very big names Substack is paying quite a bit more than they would have made from their first year of subscriptions.
Also, this wasn't public for a while and there's probably more that is still not public.
> We haven’t said anything about Substack Pro in public until now because we have been in a “figuring it out” phase, seeing what resonates with writers and how the deals perform over time.
> On a per-deal basis, we could never really do better than break-even. A Substack advance was effectively an interest-free loan that would never be paid back if a publication failed.
They made a ton of money on Matt Yglesias's advance. His advance was ~$250k, and he brought in two or three times that in revenue (the terms of his deal were: he gets 250k upfront, they get his first year's revenue). I'm not aware of any other writers who've published their numbers, but Greenwald, Sullivan and Taibbi all have a TON of subscribers.
Scott Alexander didn't give a number, but reported the advance was less than he would have made if he just did the default system, as of March 2022[0].
He also points out that Taibbi says "Every one of the Substack Pro writers I know would have made more money not taking the advance", which obviously includes Taibbi himself.
On the surface that’s a better deal than many publishing houses give actual book authors - some major percentage of books never “pay back” the advance and it rarely gets to be heavily author-favoring.
Yeah I don't think there's anything wrong with this kind of arrangement, writers getting paid is good. I do think it's possible that Substack is spending more than a sustainable amount on acquiring big name writers because they want to show results and growth to their investors.
Are you sure that any of those three got an advance from Substack? They don’t appear in any of the articles listing authors with paid advances except in providing commentary about the existence of such a system. They might have all even joined before Substack had its advance program.
You are otherwise correct about them not having a “paid gig”. They each built their own large paid subscriber base from which Substack takes a 10% cut. They pay Substack for the service, not the other way around.
But how else are they going to advertise that horribly full of themselves writers with subjects as interesting as How The Silicob Valley Accepted Me As Its Child And How I Made My First Million (contents: a load of self serving crap oh and also my dad is a millionaire and used his connections for me) are now writing on Substack?
It's just another Medium, except for some reason the writers there are _even more_ pompous and full of themselves.
