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Summer Brennan's avatar

"I’ve been talking with a friend/colleague who’s in a similar boat, and we both feel a need to start at least occasionally publishing some work outside of this environment." I too have been thinking about this. It is hard, once you start making a living on Substack, to try to pitch to legacy media again when the landscape has shifted so much, so many of the editors I worked with have been fired/laid off or moved on and then fired or moved on again, started their own magazines and then had those closed by idiot money people. And then on top of that, publishing there usually will make like 10% what a Substack post will bring in for me. But you are right. It is a strange and slightly scary moment. I live in fear of Substack being destroyed somehow.

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Amanda B. Hinton's avatar

Oof. I feel and relate to much of the angst you describe here, Sari. It hurts to think that writing and reading something isn't enough anymore.

Just last night I was telling my husband (a tech/software/integrations guy) that I'm enjoying the process of stepping into the role of "publisher" more and more these days and I also want to start looking into how tech can help me diversify what I'm publishing. (Just writing that sentence makes me woozy!) But the reality is that even the nature of Substack is becoming a mixed bag and it makes me a little nervous because we're all using the same tools and hoping our inputs are better than the other writing they might read first.

How long before readers tire of reading personal essays on their iPhones? Or discussion threads, where it turns into a cacophony of who said what, and where was my comment and how can I find what so-and-so said? The messiness is going to ask for (and inevitably produce) a streamlined solution. At least, that's what happens in software: the clunky, good-enough products are gobbled alive by the thing that does something better/faster/with fewer resources.

I think you're asking the right questions, however heartbreaking they might be. Can we standalone publishers give readers something they can't find anywhere else? Does the ad-free reader-driven publishing experience have enough legs to stand the test of time? More importantly, what the hell do readers want these days? From the sounds of it, it's anyone's guess.

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