Nice to connect Alysha! And yes that's - to my mind - what's really great about this space. It's a wide open door. That means that there are some of the very top writers on the planet right alongside people who identify as "brand new writers." Nothing like that has really ever existed before, and it's truly worth celebrating and enjoying.
Excellent to read your thoughts here. It's a dizzying place, but (mostly, anyway) for all the right reasons. I'm glad to be part of it and always glad to read the medley of Substack Reads choices because they pull from so many different areas that I might not normally encounter.
I wanted to say that "hey, I'm a young writing trying to find my place here" and then I remembered that I'm no longer objectively young. That's not going to stop me from feeling that way though ;)
Thanks so much for the generous sharing. A few writers had commented that substack felt different, vaster. A feeling thing. So nice to know the reality of it.
Thank you Peter! Yeah, it's pretty overwhelming. Like a hyperobject or something. It's a bit understand what Substack is exactly - it's kind of like social media but then also like the blogosphere all rolled into one. It's kind of on the verge of being its own publishing industry. Anyway, it's far more than just a "site" or even "platform" in the way that we usually think about that.
Thanks for sharing these valuable insights. My main takeaway is the idea of finding one’s place within the vast landscape of Substack. We were taught in architectural history class that Greek city-states were limited to 50,000 because it’s a manageable size for people to get along in community. If the population grew beyond that, a group would crack off to go and found a new city-state. Or maybe it’s more like niches and eco tones, suited to the variability of place and weather.
Thank you Julie! Yeah, there is a bit of that feeling. Once you get to a certain critical mass, you're no longer a community and it's difficult to form a coherent structure. Substack may have blown past that point. So, right, it's more like living in New York than living in classical Athens. You wouldn't expect to know everything that's going on. You kind of find your place within it.
I experienced a similar ego check the first time I attended the AWP conference. It felt kind of typical of academia in general: a firehose of production, but very little consumption (nobody could possibly have been reading all the books I saw at those display tables). The effect was to make me (temporarily) want to stop writing altogether, because it seemed almost obscene to contribute more to that glut of content.
But Substack feels quite different. You can belong to a neighborhood and be a provincial in that way while also remaining in conversation with the big city. Your work on the small scale can be meaningful and sustaining in its own way without ever needing to be "discovered." My main challenge is to not give my creative energy ENTIRELY to Substack, because those immediate rewards can be powerful enemies to the incubation periods that books and longform work require.
I'm most interested in your recognition that there is a formula that seems to work, but that you don't plan to do anything differently. It's a good reminder that optimizing content for the platform is not why many of us brought our writing lives to Substack.
Ohh I’ve been thinking about that incubation lately. My inputs have atrophied primarily due to work, but also with the fun of being at this place which encourages more production.
I was at a book fair once and it was just a nightmare. You lose all sense of specialness in the activity that you're doing. It's one of these Being John Malkovich experiences that probably no one should have to go through.
Totally agreed on your points about being in the niche but also visiting the city. And then the difficult balance of not getting too sucked into Substack. It IS hard to concentrate on longer-form work knowing that that may well never seen the light of day when there is so much support and positive-feeling on Substack for shorter-form type pieces.
Yeah, I joined Substack with this feeling that I cared about writing in the way that I wanted to write and nothing else - that there would be some things given to readers and the community but no compromises. It seemed silly having made that decision in my life - which also meant paying much less attention to publications and editors - to then compromise for the sake of Substack growth.
I honestly didn't envy you being asked to curate Substack Reads for many of the things you mention in this piece. There is so much on the platform and most of us just know the little microcosm we swim in. Even if your plan was just to promote your microcosm, there likely wouldn't be enough room. I admire the rigor and open-mindedness with which you approach most topics. I never know what I'm going to get from you in my inbox, but I know it's going to be sound and thoughtful.
Thank you for such an insightful post, Sam. Will do my best to encourage any young writers I meet to think about starting their own Substack. I may not be young myself (ahem!) but I'm as keen as a toddler in finding my way around on this site, & your post shows different, fun ways of exploring it.
Thank you Ann! It's hard to imagine a better way to start a career - to write a lot and have people actually read it. I have no idea how young writers do it with the maze of small literary magazines that take like one submission out of 300 and have a turnaround period of a year or so.
Yes - I remember how elated I felt when my very first pitch was accepted, then despair when the editor changed her mind. Nowadays I tend to have more resilience, and being on Substack means editorial control too.
Loved these reflections, thank you. On the young writers thing, I should say that it was actually an early-20s writer who encouraged me to start mine. I didn't know anyone else who knew what Substack was, and when I said I was thinking of doing one they said immediately something along the lines of "most of the people I know with Substacks started theirs before they had a logo, etc -- they just started writing." It made Substack seem possible and normal, and I gather that it's part of the writerly conversation in those circles.
I was just on a zoom call with a few of my middle aged friends about xanga. I’m the only one still writing…and I practically yelled at them to start again on Substack. I think it’s the best way to start trying to making sense of our neurotic mid life crises.
The Xanga comment took me way way back! I remember there being a divide between Xanga and LiveJournal (cool kids were on the former, nerdy kids on the latter and the content seemed to reflect that) and I wonder how those platform perceptions collapsed as big tech got bigger
Thanks Linnesby! Although I guess another interesting point of this platform is that I often have no idea how old anybody is. Sometimes I can guess from the content, but gender, race, age are often totally opaque to me - it's really nice to just deal with content.
Yes! Isn't that wonderful? I love it too. (I realized after I put in that comment that I should have mentioned that I'm not a young writer myself. ). When I started to write here I deliberately didn't include any of that info on the profile or aboit page. Eventually I changed the ”about” page from ”person who writes” to ”woman who writes,” though I don't remember why now. But it feels marvelous to write without any of that as the first thing that a reader encounters.
Brilliant Sam. I appreciated your thoughtful approach to being a guest editor and I love this follow-up. I think we are really on the leading edge of something beautiful here on Substack. It can be both daunting and exhilarating. Thanks.
As you noted each of us only knows our own little slice of substack. With that acknowledgement, I totally feel that (except for big political opinion celebs) this is a social media site for middle aged folks working through stuff. Of course I’m among that cohort, which is why I love it here.
In the same way that streamers are re-creating cable by bundling their services, I suspect that substack will recreate magazines by bundling writers into substack magazines. Writers will eventually get paid by the article to contribute to newsletters that readers subscribe to with pieces from many writers per issue. Then advertisers will be introduced, as they are on Amazon prime, and we will be back to the glory days of glossies.
My substack is a newborn babe, but I have finally transferred over my writing from my blog (that was getting lost) to here, in the hopes of making it my main content platform.
I cover thought-provoking aspects of our material culture and how it affects human society.
I was highly discouraged by several old-school bloggers from getting onto Substack. There is a real bias towards the implication that we should produce thoughtful content, rather than fun or entertaining. A trend for young people that is hard to break out of.
Welcome to Substack and nice to find your work! Curious what the old-school bloggers have to say against Substack? I just kind of missed this whole cultural phenomenon - in part because I didn't have the tech wherewithal to set up my own blog and in part because the blogosphere was just so disparate that I found it impossible to navigate around. I find Substack to be an obvious improvement, but I'd enjoy hearing from the bloggers: I suspect they feel that they're like early 90s punk and Substack is a boy band?
I'm not much in the blogosphere, but I'd bet hard cash that ownership would be the root cause of their concern about substack. They would argue that Substack might let you own your the content, but you don't own the platform so it isn't "real".
Having grown up in the halcyon EFF libertarian internet days of the late 90's, I totally grok that attitude....which is what I double post on Substack and on my personal wordpress self-hosted site.
Since seeing this post, I have been mulling over writing something about the difference between my experience as a reader of blogs vs substack. As a partial answer to your question I would recommend this podcast episode with Jill Filipovic (an old-school blogger who is now on substack) about the strengths and limitations of the blogosphere: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/04/oral-history-of-the-blogosphere-part-11-jill-filipovic
Nice to connect Alysha! And yes that's - to my mind - what's really great about this space. It's a wide open door. That means that there are some of the very top writers on the planet right alongside people who identify as "brand new writers." Nothing like that has really ever existed before, and it's truly worth celebrating and enjoying.
Excellent to read your thoughts here. It's a dizzying place, but (mostly, anyway) for all the right reasons. I'm glad to be part of it and always glad to read the medley of Substack Reads choices because they pull from so many different areas that I might not normally encounter.
I wanted to say that "hey, I'm a young writing trying to find my place here" and then I remembered that I'm no longer objectively young. That's not going to stop me from feeling that way though ;)
Thanks Nathan! And it's been very nice to come across your writing recently. Hope to stay connected!
Thank you, Sam. Likewise!
Great tip on the explore page. Enjoyed this essay.
Thank you David!
I'm going to have to read this a few times too really get it.
Lol!
Thanks so much for the generous sharing. A few writers had commented that substack felt different, vaster. A feeling thing. So nice to know the reality of it.
Thank you Peter! Yeah, it's pretty overwhelming. Like a hyperobject or something. It's a bit understand what Substack is exactly - it's kind of like social media but then also like the blogosphere all rolled into one. It's kind of on the verge of being its own publishing industry. Anyway, it's far more than just a "site" or even "platform" in the way that we usually think about that.
Thanks for sharing these valuable insights. My main takeaway is the idea of finding one’s place within the vast landscape of Substack. We were taught in architectural history class that Greek city-states were limited to 50,000 because it’s a manageable size for people to get along in community. If the population grew beyond that, a group would crack off to go and found a new city-state. Or maybe it’s more like niches and eco tones, suited to the variability of place and weather.
Thank you Julie! Yeah, there is a bit of that feeling. Once you get to a certain critical mass, you're no longer a community and it's difficult to form a coherent structure. Substack may have blown past that point. So, right, it's more like living in New York than living in classical Athens. You wouldn't expect to know everything that's going on. You kind of find your place within it.
That’s a perfect analogy. You make your own niche within the larger ecosystem.
For those of us who suffer from FOMO, it can be nerve-wracking.
I experienced a similar ego check the first time I attended the AWP conference. It felt kind of typical of academia in general: a firehose of production, but very little consumption (nobody could possibly have been reading all the books I saw at those display tables). The effect was to make me (temporarily) want to stop writing altogether, because it seemed almost obscene to contribute more to that glut of content.
But Substack feels quite different. You can belong to a neighborhood and be a provincial in that way while also remaining in conversation with the big city. Your work on the small scale can be meaningful and sustaining in its own way without ever needing to be "discovered." My main challenge is to not give my creative energy ENTIRELY to Substack, because those immediate rewards can be powerful enemies to the incubation periods that books and longform work require.
I'm most interested in your recognition that there is a formula that seems to work, but that you don't plan to do anything differently. It's a good reminder that optimizing content for the platform is not why many of us brought our writing lives to Substack.
Ohh I’ve been thinking about that incubation lately. My inputs have atrophied primarily due to work, but also with the fun of being at this place which encourages more production.
It is a concern!
Josh, agreed with all of that.
I was at a book fair once and it was just a nightmare. You lose all sense of specialness in the activity that you're doing. It's one of these Being John Malkovich experiences that probably no one should have to go through.
Totally agreed on your points about being in the niche but also visiting the city. And then the difficult balance of not getting too sucked into Substack. It IS hard to concentrate on longer-form work knowing that that may well never seen the light of day when there is so much support and positive-feeling on Substack for shorter-form type pieces.
Yeah, I joined Substack with this feeling that I cared about writing in the way that I wanted to write and nothing else - that there would be some things given to readers and the community but no compromises. It seemed silly having made that decision in my life - which also meant paying much less attention to publications and editors - to then compromise for the sake of Substack growth.
Good for you for sticking to your guns!
I honestly didn't envy you being asked to curate Substack Reads for many of the things you mention in this piece. There is so much on the platform and most of us just know the little microcosm we swim in. Even if your plan was just to promote your microcosm, there likely wouldn't be enough room. I admire the rigor and open-mindedness with which you approach most topics. I never know what I'm going to get from you in my inbox, but I know it's going to be sound and thoughtful.
Thank you Ben! Same goes for you. I've been reading you regularly, really liking the thought and creativity you bring to everything.
Very helpful context.
Brilliant reflection as usual, Sam.
Thank you Adrian!
Thank you for such an insightful post, Sam. Will do my best to encourage any young writers I meet to think about starting their own Substack. I may not be young myself (ahem!) but I'm as keen as a toddler in finding my way around on this site, & your post shows different, fun ways of exploring it.
Thank you Ann! It's hard to imagine a better way to start a career - to write a lot and have people actually read it. I have no idea how young writers do it with the maze of small literary magazines that take like one submission out of 300 and have a turnaround period of a year or so.
Yes - I remember how elated I felt when my very first pitch was accepted, then despair when the editor changed her mind. Nowadays I tend to have more resilience, and being on Substack means editorial control too.
Loved these reflections, thank you. On the young writers thing, I should say that it was actually an early-20s writer who encouraged me to start mine. I didn't know anyone else who knew what Substack was, and when I said I was thinking of doing one they said immediately something along the lines of "most of the people I know with Substacks started theirs before they had a logo, etc -- they just started writing." It made Substack seem possible and normal, and I gather that it's part of the writerly conversation in those circles.
I was just on a zoom call with a few of my middle aged friends about xanga. I’m the only one still writing…and I practically yelled at them to start again on Substack. I think it’s the best way to start trying to making sense of our neurotic mid life crises.
And also serious literary aspirations! Not that those two can’t overlap.
The Xanga comment took me way way back! I remember there being a divide between Xanga and LiveJournal (cool kids were on the former, nerdy kids on the latter and the content seemed to reflect that) and I wonder how those platform perceptions collapsed as big tech got bigger
What the hell is xanga lol?
hehe it was an early blog site. I must have been writing on it around 2001 and 2002.
Thanks Linnesby! Although I guess another interesting point of this platform is that I often have no idea how old anybody is. Sometimes I can guess from the content, but gender, race, age are often totally opaque to me - it's really nice to just deal with content.
Yes! Isn't that wonderful? I love it too. (I realized after I put in that comment that I should have mentioned that I'm not a young writer myself. ). When I started to write here I deliberately didn't include any of that info on the profile or aboit page. Eventually I changed the ”about” page from ”person who writes” to ”woman who writes,” though I don't remember why now. But it feels marvelous to write without any of that as the first thing that a reader encounters.
Brilliant Sam. I appreciated your thoughtful approach to being a guest editor and I love this follow-up. I think we are really on the leading edge of something beautiful here on Substack. It can be both daunting and exhilarating. Thanks.
Thank you Matthew! Cheers to that.
As you noted each of us only knows our own little slice of substack. With that acknowledgement, I totally feel that (except for big political opinion celebs) this is a social media site for middle aged folks working through stuff. Of course I’m among that cohort, which is why I love it here.
Haha! That may be way more true than I'm prepared to recognize.
Embrace the crisis!!!
In the same way that streamers are re-creating cable by bundling their services, I suspect that substack will recreate magazines by bundling writers into substack magazines. Writers will eventually get paid by the article to contribute to newsletters that readers subscribe to with pieces from many writers per issue. Then advertisers will be introduced, as they are on Amazon prime, and we will be back to the glory days of glossies.
I think that's really smart Sean. That matches my intuition as well. I think that's what's going to happen.
A young writer here!
My substack is a newborn babe, but I have finally transferred over my writing from my blog (that was getting lost) to here, in the hopes of making it my main content platform.
I cover thought-provoking aspects of our material culture and how it affects human society.
I was highly discouraged by several old-school bloggers from getting onto Substack. There is a real bias towards the implication that we should produce thoughtful content, rather than fun or entertaining. A trend for young people that is hard to break out of.
Welcome to Substack and nice to find your work! Curious what the old-school bloggers have to say against Substack? I just kind of missed this whole cultural phenomenon - in part because I didn't have the tech wherewithal to set up my own blog and in part because the blogosphere was just so disparate that I found it impossible to navigate around. I find Substack to be an obvious improvement, but I'd enjoy hearing from the bloggers: I suspect they feel that they're like early 90s punk and Substack is a boy band?
I'm not much in the blogosphere, but I'd bet hard cash that ownership would be the root cause of their concern about substack. They would argue that Substack might let you own your the content, but you don't own the platform so it isn't "real".
Having grown up in the halcyon EFF libertarian internet days of the late 90's, I totally grok that attitude....which is what I double post on Substack and on my personal wordpress self-hosted site.
Since seeing this post, I have been mulling over writing something about the difference between my experience as a reader of blogs vs substack. As a partial answer to your question I would recommend this podcast episode with Jill Filipovic (an old-school blogger who is now on substack) about the strengths and limitations of the blogosphere: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/04/oral-history-of-the-blogosphere-part-11-jill-filipovic