Alas, Substack, Where from Here?

Substack has been a great success, but its greatest innovations may become its greatest limitations.

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

I don’t often make unqualified statements, but here is one: Substack is a great success.

Most serious and established writers have left other platforms and now write exclusively on Substack. Many novice writers have found a place to develop their voice, and some of them have attracted loyal readers. But I have concerns about its future. Not in terms of its survival, but I fear that its original innovations may become its greatest limitations.

This will not be gripe session. I have been writing on Substack for about a year, and I have been generally pleased with the format and policies. Its greatest strength, in my experience, is the way it integrates its Notes function (something like the old Twitter) and its article function (something like standard blogging platforms).

I do, however, have some concerns about its future.

Subscribe or Follow, re Paying Authors

The founders of Substack wanted to build a platform that allows authors to be paid. This is a laudable goal.

Substack’s approach was to allow readers to directly pay authors. Once authors create a paywall, readers who want full access to their work must subscribe (rather than follow) by paying as little as $5 a month.

The request to chip in $5 is reasonable: For about the cost of a cup of coffee, you can support an author you love and have full access to the author’s archive, live-chats, etc.

Yes, reasonable. But also unconvincing for most readers. Here are the problems:

Most readers are already paying for hundreds of dollars of subscriptions to magazines, streaming services, data storage, etc. All of these subscriptions are just a few dollars a month. All of them seem to offer a good product for a reasonable price, but the subscriptions add up. When someone says “just $5 a month,” I hear “another $5 a month.”

If I pay $5 a month to follow an author ($60 a year), I am actually paying a lot of money to follow one author. I could subscribe to a magazine for about that price and gain access to dozens of writers, who have been vetted and edited.

Paying $60 a year to follow one author is actually expensive for most people. I subscribe to a few authors, but I cannot afford to subscribe to all of the authors I want to read.

I believe that, as the platform grows, as competition among authors also grows, it is going to become increasingly difficult to find subscribers.

It might be time for Substack to consider other options for paying authors.

They could, for example, allow readers to give a writer a bonus for a good article. You like the article, send the author a tip—a buck or two. Another option would be to start posting ads and share the revenue, a more traditional model.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with creating more than one path to paying authors.

Subscribe or Follow, re Algorithms

When developing the platform, Substack wanted to circumvent the limitations of algorithms—also an admirable goal. We have all witnessed the problems associated with algorithms, especially how they reward what was once considered anti-social and anti-democratic behavior.

Substack’s solution was to allow readers to subscribe (with a payment, allowing access to all the author’s work) or follow (for free, allowing access to only selected articles, those published to all readers). When the author publishes an article, a notice and link appears in your inbox.

Here is Substack’s rationale: This allows the author to develop a direct connection to a group of readers.

Here is the problem: Most of us don’t want to clog up our inboxes.

I am retired, so I am not a typical reader. I no longer receive an overwhelming number of emails. Even so, most of my inbox consists of notices from authors I follow on Substack. I rarely read an article from my inbox. I usually read articles by going to the Substack app, which allows me more control in seeking out what I want to read.

I am considering un-following writers, not because I dislike their work, but because I spend too much time, each morning, deleting emails from Substack. I have also become reluctant to follow new authors. If I were still working, still receiving gobs of emails all day long, I would be even more reluctant to follow an author on Substack.

This approach is author-based. It needs to be more reader-based. The best way to take care of author is to take care of readers.

Substack needs, at the very least, to provide readers with options for how they want connect with authors.

I would appreciate the option of following authors (so that their articles show up in my feed on the app) without receiving email notifications.

More options. More focus on readers.

Short-Form Journalism

The platform seems to be designed for short-form journalism. It seems best suited to short articles, opinion pieces that run 500 to 800 words, which are written fairly quickly and have a relatively short lifespan. The most successful authors seem to post short pieces often, maybe several times a day.

With many local newspapers failing, this format serves a clear need. However, it means that the platform is not well suited to longer articles or books.

I assume that there are journalist on Substack who want to focus on longer articles that might take months to research and write, but this means that they have less exposure on the platform and have a harder time cultivating followers.

If Substack is going to supplement the loss of newspapers, especially at the local level, they will also need a way to embed financial support for investigative journalism. A reporter can easily spend six months researching an article. Without the support of a newspaper, research will be severely limited. Investigative journalism will become more rare, especially at the local level.

Substack could embed something like a go-fund-me option. Journalists—maybe even other kinds of writers, like novelists—could make a pitch for a particular project and ask for financial support.

Thinking Beyond Journalism

I am a retired professor, and I tend to write longer posts. Some of these, if I were still in an academic position, would certainly evolve into books.

When I post longer articles (some of my early posts were around 4,000 words), they do not attract much attention. I have tried to break these longer articles into separate posts (I wrote a ten-part series on Trump’s gilded escalator speech), but having “Part 1” in the title seemed to turn off most readers. I have also tried adding a short, italicized section at the beginning of articles to frame a series (I did this for a series on propaganda), but this seems to be a barrier between the reader and the beginning of the article. I have also tried embedding links to articles that build an extended argument. This is less intrusive, but I don’t think many readers take the time to open the links.

This is the point I wish to make: Substack should not be so focused on one genre that it limits developing new forms of publishing—or reviving old forms of publishing.

For example, the serial novel. In the late nineteenth century, as daily newspapers and pulp magazines expanded, editors needed content. They began to publish novels a chapter at a time. Most of Dickens’ novels were published serially in newspapers.

Substack could be a vibrant format for publishing novels, if there were some way of tying the chapters together. This might be as simple as creating a Table of Contents function to help readers begin at the beginning and maneuver through chapters in the right order.

This kind of function would also serve academics who might want to use the platform to either post drafts of a work-in-progress or publish a finished project. Due to cuts in the budgets of university libraries and university presses, the publishing of academic books has become difficult, often impossible, especially in the Humanities. If an academic is lucky enough to find a publisher, the book typically costs so much that it will have a severely limited audience. Substack could become a much needed open-source platform for the publication of academic books.

For academics, the primary advantage of publishing on a digital format is that their work could come out more quickly. An academic book, even after completed, can easily take two years or longer to reach publication. By the time the book is published, it is often dated, which raises another advantage. The digital book could be corrected and updated continuously. For example, a 1.0 version, then a 1.1 version, or a 2.0 version. Revised versions rarely happen with traditional academic publishing.

A problem with this approach is that, for tenure and promotion, academics need peer-reviewed publications. Without peer-review, the publication will typically not be considered for tenure and promotion. Substack could create a different kind of comment function for academic publications. For example, once a publication is posted, scholars could logon, cite their qualifications, and then post an evaluation that is longer than a typical comment. This might also more fully integrate academic debate into the site of publication, which is limited in journals and almost nonexistent with books.

Here is the major point I wish to make: If Substack begins to think more broadly about genres and forms of publishing (not just newspapers, but magazines, books, popular presses, academics presses, etc.), they can develop functions that will support a broader range of publications.

This might seem like too much to ask, but maybe not. If Substack created a “Novel” subsection, the only modification needed might be a Table of Contents function. If Substack created an “Academic” subsection, the only modification might be a peer review function.

Notes and Algorithms

While I agree with Substack about the limitations and dangers of algorithms, I assume that they still resort to an algorithm to run the Notes function. This provides Substack with an opportunity to create an algorithm that is more equitable and less of a threat to democracy.

The problems with social media algorithms are well know: They encourage click-bait posts, they can become addictive, and they reward our worst behavior. They are also easily manipulated by bots. All of this is bad for individuals and corrosive to our body politic.

An often overlooked danger of algorithms, however, is that they are proprietary. How they work, thus, is kept secret. If Substack continues to approach funding in nontraditional ways, they will be less reliant on seeking revenue from click-bait posts and they would be less inclined to make the platform addictive. They will have more freedom to develop an ethical algorithm. They could be more open about how their algorithm works and ask for ways to improve it.

I would also like to see them experiment with ways to promote new authors.

It is my sense that most of the authors who have gained a large following on Substack fall into one of the following categories: (1) they are already well known, that is, a journalist, an established author, a politician, or a celebrity, (2) they publish short pieces frequently, that is, publishing on Substack is their full-time job, or (3) they tend to publish frequent and entertaining rants.

I might be wrong, but it seems to me that Substack thinks of readers in general rather than about types of readers. If this is true, it is understandable, given that the platform is relatively new. As the platform develops, however, I hope the designers will begin to think about different types of readers and find ways to shape the platform to meet their diverse needs.

Substack might, for example, refine the algorithm through a short interest survey. Readers could take the survey when they create their Substack account. The questions in the survey might be items like this: “I don’t want to read rants.” Or, “I am willing to read longer articles.” Or, “I want to connect with poets.” Or, “I am interested in reading the following genres . . .”

I personally would also like to see an algorithm that has built in serendipity. It might, for example, occasionally give readers something they would not typically seek out on their own—something that might challenge their beliefs rather than reinforce them, or something that might push them in new directions.

Even though algorithms are having a significant and complicated impact on our lives, maybe on the very future of democracy, we should realize they are still in their infancy. It is important for Substack and other platforms to continue to experiment with them. Rather than searching for ways to make a platform more addictive, they should try to make it more human and humane.

A Final Suggestion

I have tried to find a way to send suggestions to the inner circle of Substack, whoever that might be. I have not found it. Maybe this is my fault, but I would like to see a mechanism for sending suggestions for improvements to Substack. This could even be a function that would group-source suggestions. This would allow a suggestion to be tested and refined by users.

As I said, I am relatively new to Substack, so I might be wrong about everything. I am just hoping to open a dialogue. I am hoping to make Substack better—a long term home. Please, share your thoughts.