Substack and Me

Wikipedia: Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in San Francisco.

Finding an audience is challenging. When I started writing in public in 1974, letters to the editor were the usual way to get people to read my work. I had vague notions of becoming a novelist, yet found it difficult to break from the exigencies of a life to produce a novel. In 2007, I began blogging and that, combined with social media, satisfied and is satisfying my need for a readership. I have modest needs.

I read a large number of WordPress blogs and the writing is usually good. There are about 60 million WordPress blogs. Regardless, most don’t seem to get much traction. While the static format can and does gain readership, authors yearn for something more.

I can see why Substack is more attractive than a static blog. It harks back to earlier days when everyone had a junk mail, or later, a junk email list. We would send out the same newsletter to everyone on the list. Often recipients replied and you knew they read your writing. The efficacy of that was mixed. I look at my daily stats of emails sent from this blog to email subscribers and less than 10 percent get opened. Can Substack, with email delivery, be any better?

A number of Substack missives find their way into my email inbox. The ones I read regularly can be counted on one hand: Heather Cox Richardson, Laura Rozen, Art Cullen, Liz Mair, and one finger left over. Simple fact is there are too many Substacks, not enough time. Julie Gammack has organized a large number of Iowa Substack writers, and listed 45 of them on a Sunday morning email. There are good writers among them, yet there are so many. It is too much work to pan through them all to find nuggets of gold.

I wonder why a writer like Heather Cox Richardson publishes on Substack rather than being syndicated in a couple hundred newspapers. I suppose there is a benefit to being able to hit send on the computer when the piece is done, rather than meeting a newsroom deadline. Hopefully she has many paid subscribers and is getting rich from her Substack. Her reach and influence is a modern phenomenon. She deserves to be well-paid.

I get asked if I am moving to Substack. I am not. I figure to write in public until the 50th anniversary of my first letter to the editor in 1974. After that, I’ll focus on my unfinished autobiography and hopefully complete it by the time I turn 75… or before my mental capacity wanes. Then I plan to take it easy. God willing my eyes hold up and I’ll read more books written by others. I don’t see myself as an audio book guy. I may take up writing letters to friends, although my cohort is beginning to die off. I will continue gardening.

What has been important is building community, now with a new group of people whose interests intersect with mine. That new group will include many more young people, something I find is happening already on my new micro-blogging account on Threads. That is important as I wind down outside activities and focus on writing. If more young people read my posts, that’s what I want. I am far from cracking the code of any kind of viewership.

People will do what they want regarding Substack. I’m of an age where I don’t want to spend time learning something new, especially when I expect to be at writing in public for less than a year more. Like anything, Substack is no panacea for what ails a writer. As they say, though, not my circus, not my monkeys. I say live and let live… on substack if you please.