Every Substack an Island?

Reflecting on a year of reading Substack

Sam Kahn (whom I don’t always agree with) has a thoughtful and honest post about his experience curating Substack Reads one week. He discusses some of the thoughts that were prompted by engaging with the vastness of the writing on substack.

But everything has its flip side, and in the case of Substack, it’s that that outpouring of expression and quality work creates a sense of vertigo and is a blow to anybody’s individual sense of specialness. … It’s kind of like thinking that you’re a settler somewhere and discovering that you’re actually in a vast, thriving civilization. I suppose what that should teach you is humility — but who the hell wants that? What the takeaway is for me instead is more of ‘finding my place’ within Substack. With thousands upon thousands  of people writing, Substack virtually is its own publishing industry — with a freedom of writing, community approach, and speed of operation that are a considerable advantage over anything in traditional publishing or journalism. It’s still a new-enough form that it’s very much possible to curate the space that you want within the platform and to find your place in a dizzyingly-expanding society that is to a great extent still looking to find its internal architecture.

and

The money is a challenge. And here just the sheer volume of offerings across Substack is bewildering and works against the monetization structure. I currently subscribe to 300 Substacks. In my week as guest editor, I must have found around 50 more that I really like. They are all totally worthy of my financial support, and there are too many of them for me to possibly pay. What tends to happen in those situations is that people pay for ‘brand familiarity’ — for the writers they know, who also happen to be the people who need the money the least. I’d imagine the way through this is to really lean into the ‘niche’ idea. There’s no way that I would pay for my 300 favorite Substacks, but it is just possible that I would find it in me to pay for my ’top ten literary Substacks,’ especially if somebody has done some conscientious work trying to curate that list and with particular emphasis on lesser-known writers.

It’s been just over a year since I tried notes, which ended up introducing me to the fine folks here. My experience may not be representative, but it connects to some of what Sam is writing about, and I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on it.

Substack can feel vast but flat; it’s easy to explore the immediate area, but difficult to survey the entire terrain. There are big accounts, but they aren’t necessarily representative of a broader ecosystem; you don’t look at them and think, “of course it makes sense that, of all the writers about [topic] that [bigname writer] would be the person to break out.”

For example, when Matthew Yglesias was starting out you could clearly identify him as part of a cohort (including literal roommates), now he seems more like a substack island to himself (his collaboration with Brian Beutler notwithstanding).

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Substack; I had followed a couple of bloggers that I knew when they switched to it. My experience with the writers I’ve encountered and enjoyed on the platform has been generally delightfully low-key. I’ve been happy to find a number of people who are writing about their own experiences and interests and finding ways to do so that are interesting to read and clearly satisfying to them.

A year in, I’ve stopped looking for new writers as much. I know, on some level, that following anyone new would mean cutting back on existing subscriptions. I’m near the practical limit of what I can keep up with as e-mail. For now I’m accumulating a small backlog of unread posts. Eventually I will need to give up an accept that I’m not reading all of them.

That hasn’t felt like a source of stress, other than feeling that, when I do cancel a subscription, I will miss that thread of personal connection with the author. By contrast with the vibe on some social networks, and my own experience when I first discovered the blogosphere, I feel very little FOMO.

I’m sure that there are great writers that I haven’t found yet, and that there are great posts sitting unread in my inbox and yet my experience has mostly been one of a friendly sufficiency. There is plenty to enjoy, and it more often than not feels like a treat rather than something I feel concerned about keeping up with.

That’s partially because, in my experience, the level of interaction is fairly low. I don’t have the sense of, “oh, something just happened (either in the real world or on substack) and everybody is talking about it. I need to catch up on what people are saying if I want to participate.”

Reportedly some of the bigger stacks and some specific smaller stacks are praised for the quality of the comment sections (I was amused to see this Note while working on this post), but in most of my experience comments are friendly and supportive (and it’s obvious that many of the music writers I enjoy read and support each others work) but rarely does a discussion take off and go far beyond the original post.

It can be a nice balance. My primary interest in writing here isn’t building up an audience but just having a space for interaction. Sometimes I wish for more comments and yet, I know that I’m quite happy overall to feel like this space for writing is small and cozy, and that I am comfortable being myself.

It does make me curious how that dynamic will change as Substack gets larger. The growth of social media sites is often driven by network effects — the larger a site gets, the more valuable it is to the users (until it becomes dominated by growth hackers). I’m not sure if that will be the case for substack (and, selfishly, I’m not sure that I would want it to — though I recognize it would be good for authors trying to earn a living on the site). If the number of readers doubled and the number of authors stayed the same that would be a financial benefit to the existing paid accounts. If both the number of readers and writers doubled, does that make Substack a more valuable platform for existing users, or just expand the broad flat plain?

Substack has suggested that Recommendations are a tool to help lift all boats; my own experience of reaching a point where I’m less inclined to explore new stacks suggests that effect may be limited. I had previously quoted Mills Baker talking about balancing the user experience so that people are encouraged to explore and find new writers. I absolutely enjoy Notes showing me a range of people beyond my subscriptions but I also feel like, even if exploration is easy (and it isn’t always), the marginal benefit of finding new writers declines — because it is unlikely to enrich the experience of what I’m already reading; it just adds something new on top of it.

But, perhaps, that’s just my current state of mind rather than a general trend. I’m curious to see what year 2 will feel like.

Diagram of Network Effect