
AMA with Substack and Matt Taibbi about a new business model for journalism - internet_jockey
We’re Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie, the founders of Substack (YC W18), and Matt Taibbi, a journalist and author who has written four best-sellers and is a contributing editor to the Rolling Stone. Substack is a tool that makes it simple for a writer to start a paid newsletter – but we’re also experimenting with other models for online publishing. For instance, Matt is using Substack to serialize a novel called The Business Secrets of Drug Dealing: Adventures of the Unidentified Black Male, which you can see here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;taibbi.substack.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;taibbi.substack.com</a>.<p>Matt has so far published six chapters in the book. The serial is an experiment for him, too, but even when it’s done he intends to keep publishing his independent work through Substack. We thought it might be interesting to bring Matt into a Hacker News discussion about this model, other things that might be tried, and the state of online publishing generally.<p>Last time Substack was involved in a discussion here on HN, we got a ton of great feedback (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16326411" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16326411</a>). We’d love to hear your thoughts about online publishing and how tech can (or cannot) help journalism!
======
ilamont
I've been wondering about the "one man band" publishing outfits based on daily
blog posts or newsletters or whatever. Some literally have one person behind
them (Stratechery, Timmerman Report, as well as some of the examples on your
website) while others have an editorial lead, an editorial assistant, and a
small business team (Endpoints). Over the years I've seen founders of earlier
blogs and vlogs burn out after nonstop, sustained effort to keep engagement up
and churn down. What happens when founder fatigue hits the newsletters, and a
mere week-long break won't cut it, and there is no editorial backup like in a
traditional newsroom? How have the founders of your earliest paid newsletters
handled this?

I also have an observation to share: Having attempted a paid newsletter before
on the topic of industrial IoT using other tools (Mailchimp + Chargebee) I
found that moving people from free to paid is a huge challenge. The cost to
readers has several elements: the subscription cost and the time cost, because
when people pay they are also making a commitment to read, which takes time
out of their already extremely time-constrained days. What sort of advice do
you give to newsletter creators about making this transition and convincing
their free readers to sign up for the paid tiers?

Good luck with your experiment.

~~~
internet_jockey
Good questions.

To answer the burn-out point: I think this is something writers have to take
into account when they're starting their publishing businesses. Running a
publication is definitely a demanding exercise and it is often under-
estimated. That said, I think Ben Thompson, for example, handles this problem
well: he makes it clear to Stratechery's subscribers that he regularly takes
some time off to recharge, and he lets them know well in advance when he's
going to take a break.

This is one of the areas we hope Substack can be helpful in, actually. We are
building up a knowledge base of best practices, informed by the people who are
publishing with our tools, so we can help all kinds of writers succeed. Part
of the advice we offer relates to content strategy, pricing, cadence, etc, and
part of it relates to less tangible stuff, like how to manage your own time
and expectations.

And yes, converting readers from free to paid is a huge and unending
challenge! We focus a lot of our effort on solving this very problem. One
small piece of advice we offer is for a writer who is contemplating going paid
to clearly signal the transition in advance to their readers, then give them
incentives to subscribe early – like a special charter price, for instance.
More broadly, Neil Cybart from Above Avalon shared some useful thoughts on the
subscriber model recently. This comment stood out:

"Going from a scenario in which all content was public to one in which only a
fraction of content is public can be jarring. Most sites have handled this
transition by keeping content free and instead giving paid subscribers a very
marginal amount of exclusive content. In essence, sites are treating
subscriptions and memberships like donations. This is not sustainable for or
attractive to subscription-based models."

What Neil is saying there is that it is better to set the expectation that the
bulk of your content be available only for paying subscribers.

------
jawns
Former magazine/newspaper editor here. (Disclosure: I briefly worked as a copy
editor at a Rolling Stone sister publication, but never met Matt.)

One potential criticism of this sort of subscription business model is that it
increases the echo-chamber effect, where people only subscribe to writers
whose opinions they agree with. How do you answer that criticism?

~~~
MattTaibbi
I think the exact opposite is true. The problem with the “one click free”
universe of tons of free content is that the reader naturally will search out
- or be sought out, by algorithms - material he or she agrees with. That
consumer takes less time to investigate alternative views and has less
patience - something less mentally taxing is just a click away. When you pay,
you’re making a commitment, and I think people both have higher expectations
and are making a more reasoned, careful choice. We’ll see how it goes, but I
think the subscription model is more likely to produce cool/experimental
material than any model that tries to game Google/FB algorithms

~~~
cjbest
One thing I'd add to this: the algorithm actually selects for stuff you agree
with _or hate._ So sometimes instead of an echo chamber you get a war chamber,
which I'm not sure is better.

We think that people should choose what they read. Stepping back and thinking
about what you want to subscribe to -- instead of doing one more scroll --
helps.

~~~
naravara
>So sometimes instead of an echo chamber you get a war chamber, which I'm not
sure is better.

I think the "war chamber" basically reinforces the echo chamber. You never see
the reasonable people within the camps you hate, you only ever see the most
ridiculous, most absurd shit the internet has to offer that inhabits that
camp.

I noticed this a lot during the whole GamerGate thing. It's like those people
had just been seeing endless streams of tweets and Tumblr posts from verbally
abusive (or more often, satirical and sarcastic) feminists and strung them
together to create a narrative about being "under siege." Never mind that what
they were seeing was not at all a representative sample of the group they're
talking about, it's their idea of what the group looks like and there's no way
to recalibrate them once they dig in.

~~~
cjbest
Exactly. This is an emergent consequence of 1) prioritizing "engagement" and
2) the mechanics of "retweet with comment"

This can happen on social media even if almost everybody would prefer that it
didn't. The way to fix it is to change the rules :)

------
clarkevans
Matt, What is your take on how Journalism might be some sort of Platform
Cooperative ([https://platform.coop/](https://platform.coop/)), where
leadership is subject to the user community - either subscribers, journalists,
or both. Even non-profits can be a problem in this regard if the board of
directors is locked. Should Journalism focus on maximizing investor return?

Would Substack think that perhaps they could get investor "exit" to a
community of journalists or subscribers rather than to Google or Facebook
buyout? For example, [https://www.stocksy.com/](https://www.stocksy.com/) In
this model, investors might sell to a cooperative structure and get a note
payable from a percentage of net revenue.

~~~
cjbest
Chris from Substack here not Matt. The great thing about the Substack model is
that it is a big financial opportunity. We help writers get paid, and we take
a cut of that so that we're aligned.

What that means is that if we are successful, we get to build a sustainable
company that does this important thing.

------
ilamont
Have you been in contact with any of the independent publications that were
dumped by Medium last month (see [https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/medium-
publication.php](https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/medium-
publication.php))? They really harmed a lot of indie publishers doing good
work. Your product might be a good fit.

~~~
internet_jockey
Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, we've given a lot of thought to that.

------
danso
Hi Matt, thanks for taking questions. You've been around media since its
"olden" days and have had success on a variety of traditional and online
platforms. How does Substack -- or more generally, newsletters -- compare to
other ways you've tried to self-publish, such as blogging? Both in terms of
finding/engaging an audience, to the creation/production process.

~~~
MattTaibbi
So I started my career in "traditional" journalism, working for a nice little
newspaper called the Moscow Times, but the problem there was they wouldn't let
you write with humor or break certain formats. So I quit and ended up several
times self-publishing by putting out newspapers, which is hilarious in context
-- these days people just need to type something and upload it, but we used to
have to painstakingly design every page, create huge metal plates, print off
them, make giant stacks of newspapers, distribute them (I've even done the
distribution on my own, in cars), just to be "self-published." Also I had to
sell ads back in the day! With the internet came blogging, which is obviously
much simpler but the problem, again, always comes back to representing a
larger financial outlet, not wanting to clash with an editor or advertisers
over material, having to haggle over what to write about and when. Substack is
basically just the writer and the reader and it's very painless. I think in
the future you'll see a lot of writers and media personalities breaking off
and using this kind of format.

------
throwaway5752
Hi Matt, this is something that has interested me for personal and
professional reasons. I've see a range of solutions from podcasting, youtube
channels, self publishing, patreon, and independent companies (thinking TPM
and their subscription model). It seems like a lot of the problem is the ad
based revenue model, and the absolute bottom falling out text ad pricing
combined with the unsuitability of video format to deeper/long form
journalism. So I am happy for this. But as someone here noted, discoverability
seems weak and - more generally - media benefits from networking effects. To
not go on too long:

1\. Presuming you buy into the networking argument, is Substack going to do
any curation to ensure that the "Matt Taibbi" brand isn't hurt by "random
crank pushing chemtrail mind control" content on the same site? That may be a
bit extreme, but the same general phenomenon as FBA 3rd party seller
counterfeiting hurting all sellers there or how Forbes blogs have gone
downhill.

2\. Is Substack going to enable cross-publishing to push content to other
destinations/media? It's seems like it will be impossible to acquire the same
number of eyeballs that is possible on ITunes, et al for audience acquisition.

~~~
walterbell
(random HN commenter opinion)

“Networking” and “cross pollination discovery of authors and readers” ==
community.

Community and free speech works with balanced diversity, where no one group
can overwhelm another’s speech, especially during early childhood phases of a
community’s development, before norms have emerged for the community to defend
itself against threats external or internal.

~~~
intended
Diversity of what?

Opinions ? Facts ? Beliefs?

~~~
walterbell
Anything

~~~
intended
We can have diversity of hate speech. That would obviously be bad right?

In case I’m being overly obtuse - my point is that we are not allowed the
generality of previous thinkers she. Discussing free speech and human
communication.

Diversity is a great term, but it’s too broad since all
positions(intersect)contexts are not equal.

We do not have the ability to touch upon ideas in some Newtonian or conceptual
space. We have to very much work on them with human brains and their limits
and weaknesses.

So when we say diversity - what diversity do we mean? Otherwise it’s the same
as political speech where they want equality/growth/fairness and so on.

~~~
walterbell
_Community_ means a limited, bounded context, by definition. Language, speech
and norms are community specific. There are geographical and, thanks to the
internet, non-geographical communitites.

To provide a contrived response to your contrived example, diversity of
historical and fictional hate speech could be appropriate in an academic
_community_ focused on those topics.

To connect the topic to this AMA, many communities will emerge among the
writers and readers of Substack and they will change over time due to audience
growth and feedback loops within and between Substack communities.

------
cyrilsam
1\. How scalable is the pivot to subscriptions and how does it effect
democracy? 2\. Can the news-media organizations continue with the kind of pre-
internet organization that they continue to do? What are the changes required?
3\. What does a news-media organization look like in the age of hyper
connectivity and real time information exchange? How is it different from the
pre-internet news organization? What is the new model that you're proposing?

~~~
cjbest
I can give the Substack take on this.

1\. We think it's very scalable. The value of attention has flipped - you used
to get bored and need to fill your time, now your time is the last scarce
resource, so it makes sense to pay to use it more wisely. We see early
adopters doing this happily now, but we think it will become the norm.

We also think it will be good for democracy. The incentives of ad supported
social media encourage clickbait, cheap outrage, and hyper-partisanship.
Subscriptions reward thoughtfulness and deep value.

The one thing I worry about is too much exclusivity. If we landed in a place
with really high subscription prices and only the privileged few getting
access to good information that wouldn't be ideal, but that is avoidable.

2\. Mostly they will have to change. Some will be successful.

3\. The new model is readers paying writers directly. The difference at
internet scale is that you can reach everybody in the world, and therefore you
can be more successful with a much more specific topic/audience. Also because
of software, you can start doing it as an individual writer in an afternoon.

~~~
vln
Can't readers just unsubscribe if they disagree with whatever the writer is
saying? This just changes who pays the bills. Ultimately, I think the writer
will cater to their audience with subscriptions being a far stronger signal
than clicks. I don't see how this is better for Democracy, but I'd love to be
proved wrong. We need better access to better news, not more paywalls.

------
Quigley13
Question: Why is the price of a subscription significantly higher than the
price of a book? Serious question. I read the first chapter and found it quite
interesting and I have been considering subscribing, but one of the main
reasons that I did not subscribe was that it seemed like the price would end
up being much higher than the price for a book. I do like the fact that most
of the money goes to the author.

~~~
MattTaibbi
Well, you'll probably end up getting two books over the course of the year, or
something on the order of it -- This book is likely to be finished by
September, and then I'll be starting on something new (I have a couple of
projects I'm working on now). So over the course of 12 months, it will work
out to be quite a lot of stuff. Thanks in any case for taking a look.

~~~
Quigley13
I appreciate your response. I will think again about subscribing. I would love
to get hooked on books the way that I seem to get hooked on mediocre
television like Game of Thrones and Westworld. I think it would definitely be
better than reading the news every day.

------
adora
Have you finished the whole novel already (and just publishing chapter by
chapter) or are you writing and changing as you go?

Also, this might make more sense for non-fiction work but what are your
thoughts on letting a book evolve over time? So the writer updates and changes
the content as s/he learns new things (and obviously lets readers know when
edited).

~~~
MattTaibbi
I would say we're more than half done. We still need to power through a big
chunk of the story. It's kind of a high-wire act but we're both enjoying it.

I think letting a book evolve can have varying consequences. In reality you
want it all to be stylistically consistent. But you can't publish 200 pages,
see a problem, and change it on the fly. (Dostoyevsky appeared to do this in
"The Possessed," changing from first to third person and back). On the other
hand, the pressure of having to meet deadlines might make it more intense. So
it could go either way. A lot of great, great books have been serialized and a
lot of them had an hard-driving feel to them (In Cold Blood, I think, wss one,
as were the Fear and Loathing books).

~~~
emodendroket
The Idiot is also famously muddled largely because it was written for
serialization and he left himself a bunch of loose ends he could pick up if he
didn't know what to do with the story.

------
geverett
Hey Matt, I've been a reader since the days of the Exile. Just digging into
your new book on Substack thanks to this thread!

Chris and Hamish: do you plan to introduce a discovery option (like the App
Store) for people to find who is on Substack, or are you expecting the writers
to market their work independently?

~~~
cjbest
Re discovery: Yes!

We want the writers to succeed, and while it's ultimately up to them to write
something good enough that people want to subscribe, getting discovered is
something we can help with.

Having a place to feature them will help with this (though it's less important
right now than e.g. helping free posts get shared.)

In fact, we have a super basic version of this that we wrote in 20 minutes
here: [https://www.substack.com/discover](https://www.substack.com/discover)
but we have a ton of plans on how to make it better - most importantly by
focusing on the author & publication as the key element rather than the post.

------
tptacek
What business relationship, if any, exists between Mr. Taibbi and Substack?

~~~
cjbest
Matt is a publisher on the Substack platform. We take a 10% cut of his
subscription revenue.

Because he is an established author, and we're really excited about this new
format of serialized fiction, we have also been putting extra product
development and publicity effort behind his publication. We think of this as
Doing a Thing that Doesn't scale, as in
[http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

~~~
tptacek
Thanks for answering! Does Substack compensate him in any other way besides
tailoring features to his work?

~~~
cjbest
On Substack, readers pay writers directly. The writers are independent. We
take a cut of the subscription revenue, which is the same in this case as for
others.

We think this aligns our interest with the writers interest, the same way that
the subscription model aligns the writer with the reader.

~~~
tptacek
Ok, so he's not a partner or advisor or anything like that? I guess I'm just
curious about the level of the endorsement you're getting here. Thanks again
for answering these questions!

~~~
cjbest
Nope, just an awesome writer using our tools.

------
masfjo
Follow up, how does Substack improve on what Patreon is doing?

~~~
cjbest
We think Patreon is awesome. It's a great general purpose tool for supporting
creators, and the fact that it is so successful shows that people are willing
to pay for stuff they value.

Substack is focused on letting writers start their own publication - top to
bottom - with subscriptions as an integral part.

~~~
internet_jockey
To add to Chris's point (this is Hamish), I think Substack is just really
simple. As a writer, I like the idea of not having to think about building and
designing my own site, or coming up with various payment and rewards tiers, so
I can focus almost all of my time on writing.

------
kbenson
As someone who reads a lot of serialized content with a wide range of
professionalism, what guards are in place to protect users from an author
dropping a serialized work that is supposed to have a clear end prior to that
end being reached?

That is, if I'm reading a book in serialized form from Matt Taibbi (as an
example) that I feel invested in the outcome (in this case both figuratively
and _literally_ ), and Matt decides he's got better things to do 80% the way
through the book, what's to keep him or any other author from walking away at
that point?

As a consumer, it's bad enough when I'm left in this situation when there's
been no money exchanged (such as a series cancelled with the plot mostly
unresolved). If I've actually been partially responsible for the funding to
that point, I will not be a happy person if that happens.

In what says does Substack incentivize authors to complete serialized work
like this, or at least leave it in a state that is somewhat appropriate?

~~~
cjbest
The idea that getting substantial recurring revenue helps put the author in a
position to deliver, and avoid the "popular thing gets canceled" effect.

The relationship is between the reader and the writer, and the writer puts
their reputation behind what they're doing. We see our job as to give them
options if unexpected issues come up - pausing subscriptions, partial refunds,
or whatever is necessary.

~~~
kbenson
Having seen a number of professional authors recently not quite fall into
this, but something similar, in which they get a few books into a series and
either lose interest or don't know how to continue, I'm very interested in
specialized incentives that could be offered to provide assurance to consumers
and keep authors aligned.

For example, an opt-in program where authors allow Substack to keep keep a
portion of the monthly revenue until some criteria are hit or some time period
passes, whichever is first. For example, if each month 50% of the author's cut
is paid out to the author, and the other 50% is kept and paid out in
installments based on the number of content posts delivered compared to the
author's target. For example, it an author plans to release 4 content posts a
month, and their cut is $100 each month, they would be paid $50 for the month,
and $50/8 per post after that for that month, so within two months they should
get the full amount. After two months there would be an equilibrium and the
full amount would be coming in ($50 for current month, $25 for each of the two
prior months).

Now, I'm not seriously proposing that exact system, but an _opt-in_ system
such as that (with some variation on time frames, etc) which could be have a
specific tag would go a long way towards making me feel like I'm investing in
something that has a future when I pay, because let's be honest, some authors
have been able to coast on a good reputation and some beloved prior works for
a long time without needing to put out anything in the same vein. That's their
prerogative, but at the same time I'm at the point in my life where time is at
a premium, and money is less so than when I was younger, and if I'm going to
invest the time and effort into a serialized work, I want to do as much as I
can to make sure I'm doing so in something that will see an appropriate end.

------
atxeastside
Hi Matt, do you see any potential for serialization to make a comeback by
utilizing a platform like Substack?

~~~
MattTaibbi
I hope so. Serialization was such a huge thing for writers once upon a time.
In particular it was a medium that encouraged experimentation and allowed
writers to be compensated better for unusual work. It's how a lot of American
detective writing got its start -- the fast pace of work like Dashiell
Hammett's "Continental Ops" stories was built around the immediacy of
periodical publishing. If you're writing that kind of prose as a book, it has
a different style. The periodical form helped create that unique, suspenseful,
fast format. My hope is that in the internet age -- when people are reading
more as a whole but maybe reading fewer books -- that a serial web formal will
help create a literature for readers of this era, just like magazines like
"Black Mask" helped make a literature for the twenties and thirties.

------
ilconsigliere
What tools do you use to do your work? What tools/processes are essential to
your workflow?

~~~
MattTaibbi
My father, who is also a reporter, used to have one important tool, a rolodex
(for those too young to know, this used to be a rolling phone card file).
Every night he came home and did a thing he called a "phone attack," where he
randomly called all his sources -- not for stories, but just to touch base,
chat, listen to what's going on in their lives. This is basically all you need
to do to be a good reporter, maintain a lot of relationships with people in
different walks of life. It's hard work but very rewarding. If you don't have
people with their ears to the ground, you're lost. So like my father I try to
regularly stay in touch with all sorts of people, and never to call a source
for a favor if I haven't recently called socially, or just to check in. People
hate feeling used.

------
scott00
I'm guessing substack is a high volume email sender, do you guys use an API or
in-house tech for that? Any interesting stories about keeping your mail out of
spam filters/your IPs off blacklists/Nigerian princes from starting
newsletters?

~~~
cjbest
We are, and it is an interesting problem!

I don't want to get too deep into the details here other than to say at a
product level we're focused on being respectful with the access we get to
people's inboxes. We hate junk mail as much as everybody else, and being good
citizens is necessary (but not sufficient) to deliver lots of email.

------
misiti3780
Matt,

I have really enjoyed your books and all your articles over the years,
especially about banking, corruption, and the financial crisis. i am curious
if you have read the book 'The Chickenship Club)
[[https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-
Prosecute...](https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute-
Executives/dp/1501121367)] and your thoughts on it?

~~~
MattTaibbi
So I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't read that book, but I imagine I've
read almost all of Jesse's articles from that time period, as we were both
covering essentially the same story. Along with Gretchen Morgenson of the
Times, Jesse was one of the first reporters to start asking the question of
why no one from the crisis era went to jail. I gather from the title alone
that he traversed a lot of the same area I did in "The Divide," which was
significantly about the pusillanimous Justice Department not wanting to take
on complex financial cases. Jesse is a great reporter so I will definitely
check it out.

------
twfarnam
Interesting project! I'm wondering: does Substack have a proposal to put
editors into this new workflow? Editing seems like an essential part of the
process of good journalism or any kind of writing that would be missing in
this model.

~~~
internet_jockey
As a writer who has worked with a number of great editors over the years: I
agree. In the short-term, the best writers will recognize the value of having
an editor and factor that expense into their business models. Ultimately, I'd
love to see an ecosystem evolve where editors can sell their services to
writers who want to improve their publications. I see that as a pretty
exciting opportunity for a platform like Substack at some point in the future.

------
ForrestN
Hi,

Especially given Matt's recent experience getting caught up in a #metoo
whirlwind, how do you think about creating a new business in publishing with
two white cis male founders and a marquee journalist from the same background
(doing a story that invokes the race of a non-white person in its title no
less?) Do you think that the struggles of SV/VC culture to accomplish its
stated goals in the area of diversity pose a particular challenge to a startup
focused on publishing?

Thanks for your time, and best of luck! Forrest

~~~
jairajs89
Very not-white third founder from Substack checking in (North Indian, born and
raised in Japan)

To address the question, one of the main benefits of our model (removing
advertising from the equation) is that communities aren't incentivized to
expose themselves to as many eyeballs as possible

From that lens, you can see how not trying to maximize eyeballs/clicks can be
great for diversity. It's totally fine for them to find the people who care
deeply about the community's purpose without being watered down by the outside
majority. To me that allows all sorts of unique communities to emerge and be
financially supported in a way that ensures their survival

~~~
ForrestN
Thank you for the answer, despite the sometimes chilly HN climate around
pluralism. I hope you’re right, that’s definitely a plausible scenario.

------
theodorewiles
Guys,

Great idea. I would focus on specialty media. Think things like banking
regulations, utility work, law reviews, etc. I think there is pretty strong
willingness to pay in those markets and the credibility of the individual
authors may carry more weight than magazine brands. Giving those writers a
bigger cut might also attract them to the platform. Clearly you need to think
about an advertising model here but those are the types of markets I would try
to compete in - not serialized fiction.

~~~
internet_jockey
Thanks. We agree that there is definitely a promising market in those fields,
too.

------
mbanerjeepalmer
Thanks for doing this. So, why newsletters? Why not RSS?

Clearly Axios and others are showing that email is better. Why do you think
this is? How do you think this will develop in future?

~~~
exolymph
Not from Substack, but the answer is that people reliably look at their
inboxes and open the emails.

~~~
cjbest
Bingo.

That said we have (basic) RSS support as well for those that prefer it, and
it's on our list of things to improve.

------
thefsb
Hi Matt, have you read Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs: A Theory" yet? It has an
interesting perspective on what drives the trend to minimize pay for writers.

------
fomojola
Have you considered integration with any of the voice control devices like
Alexa? The text-to-speech interfaces aren't really quite good enough yet to
handle arbitrary complex content without jarring breaks in the listening
experience, but I think high-quality serialized content presented in audio
form could be an interesting option, particularly given the recently improved
payment support in Alexa.

------
JacobJans
I make my living running ad-supported websites/newsletters. I always like the
idea of getting away from ads, and relying on direct support from my audience.
I am good at building email lists.

My business model currently depends on the predictability I've developed with
the ads on my site. Do you have any advice for transitioning away from an ad
based newsletter to a subscription service?

~~~
internet_jockey
Clear and honest messaging to your readers about why you're doing this and
what the benefits will be for them. Also: let's talk? You can email us at
hello at substack dot com

------
KevinoftheLion
Will Substack be strictly a written newsletter platform or will it allow a
hybrid approach including picture, audio, video, comments, etc. ?

~~~
cjbest
We'll definitely look for ways to make the product better for readers and
writers.

You can already add pictures. We are testing comments for paid subscribers on
a couple of publications (you heard it here first!) And that other stuff is
definitely interesting.

What will not change is that the experience for the reader will stay really
simple - Sign up, and everything you need shows up in your email. Also the
model will stay focused on letting readers pay writers directly for high
quality content, because that's the magic.

------
agaruccio
Why did Substack choose the subscription model? Have you considered the
micropayment model instead? Personally, I would much rather pay a small fee
for each article I read (provided you remove all the barriers to payment)
rather than pay a monthly subscription. I'm curious about the pros and cons of
each option

~~~
cjbest
I think micropayments don't work.

Even if you make payment as completely frictionless as possible, there is
still the mental overhead of deciding to pay. As the dollar amount gets
smaller and smaller, the "pain of deciding to pay" becomes a higher fraction
of the total pain, and the economics don't make sense. Plus, if you just
charge for each click or whatever, you get the bad incentives of clickbait
back.

Subscriptions are great because you only have to make one (big) decision.
Subscribing to individual writers is great, because the thing you are deciding
is do you like/trust/want to keep reading this writer, which is something that
people actually do have strong feelings about.

As distribution has become free, the value of content has been driven to zero.
But now the value of curation -- of reading somebody you trust -- gets higher.
That's what people are willing to pay for.

~~~
mirimir
Those are excellent arguments. That's how I read fiction. Whenever an author I
like publishes a book, I buy it.

But that's not how I read journalism. Many years ago, I subscribed to the
local paper, The NY Times, and a few magazines. Now I browse forums and Google
stuff.

I like many writers. So many that I can't imagine committing $x per week to
each of them. As you say, paying per article leads to clickbait. But somehow,
I'd like more flexible access to multiple writers.

~~~
cjbest
I buy that. I think some people will subscribe to an individual journalist
that they really like, or covers something especially important to them, but
others may need some kind of federation/bundling in the long run.

I'd prefer to see a world where that happens bottom up -- writers choose to
band together with other writers they trust. But we'll see :)

~~~
mirimir
> I'd prefer to see a world where that happens bottom up -- writers choose to
> band together with other writers they trust.

I _love_ that idea!

------
whatever2222
What has it been like switching from non-fiction to (semi)fiction? How did it
change your writing process?

~~~
MattTaibbi
It's completely different and fun. This is kind of an in-between change for
me. Oddly enough working with my anonymous partner has been a real help -- my
own natural voice is probably wordier and slower on the page, but he has a
great natural narrative voice and gets to the point a lot more quickly. So
trying to replicate his voice, I think, has made the material different and
more fast-paced than I could have done on my own. It's been a blast, the most
fun I've had writing in ages.

------
subpixel
Not a question, but feedback. I was intrigued at the concept of subscribing to
a serialized deep-cover investigative story.

Then I saw that this is a novel, and my interest evaporated. Not because I
don't read fiction, but because I don't want to read fiction that way.

~~~
cjbest
Maybe read the first chapter and then decide? ;)

[https://taibbi.substack.com/p/chapters-one-and-two-the-
busin...](https://taibbi.substack.com/p/chapters-one-and-two-the-business-
secrets-of-drug-dealing)

------
masfjo
As a writer who goes after very powerful people, how does that affect your
work in terms of these financiers/banks trying to pressure you or your
employers. Are tools like Substack designed to help writers stay independent?

~~~
MattTaibbi
I think that's definitely going to be a major motivation for journalists going
forward. The media landscape is becoming more and more rigid and it is
becoming harder to challenge certain points through the old networks and
newspapers. So having reporters be financially independent would be huge for
investigative reporting, which is one of the areas that has been cut the most
in the new era of clickbait media.

Another thing -- what Substack is trying to do is to solve a problem that has
existed in media forever. Writers of all types have always been compensated in
an indirect, convoluted way, by publishers who get some or all of their
revenue from ads. This forces writers to address audiences through layers of
middlemen who may or may not want to meddle in the material. The Substack
model could end both direct and indirect censorship.

~~~
cjbest
This is definitely part of our motivation for making Substack. When readers
pay writers directly, the writers are accountable to those readers, and not
e.g. advertisers.

------
qtstc
Should make [https://substack.com](https://substack.com) redirect to
[https://www.substack.com](https://www.substack.com)

------
thehigherlife
Matt, What is your favorite investigative piece you've written?

~~~
MattTaibbi
Wow. I would say -- let me just back up and say that generally the job of
investigative reporting is mostly about getting up to speed as quickly as
possible about really complicated topics, and then communicating what you've
learned in readable prose in as short a time period as possible. So the
biggest challenge is when you have the hardest, most complex subjects. After
the 2008 crash I was given a general assignment to explain what happened, and
since I knew nothing about Wall Street, I basically had to learn about ten
years' worth of financial practices in the space of maybe eight weeks. Those
early stories about Goldman and AIG were both thrilling and terrifying because
it was so much to digest.

Another fun one (in retrospect) - I don't know if this is investigative
journalism exactly, but I was once involved with what in hindsight was a very
crazy caper: a Russian newspaper called "Stringer," for whom I worked
occasionally, had a contact who was willing to sell them a week of wiretapped
phone calls from Putin's chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin. I ended up doing
the writeup of that story. There were some minor improprieties exposed in the
transcripts, but nothing world-shaking. Still, I was so terrified about
publishing it that I left the country. And when I returned, I was detained at
Sheremetyevo airport for hours. It turned out the problem was an unlamented
passport page. I thought I was going to prison forever.

------
emodendroket
Have you considered having a Kindle edition periodical? Frankly I find it much
more comfortable to read long pieces on my Kindle than on my computer or on a
phone or tablet.

------
scott00
What's the best way to discover substack content? substack.com doesn't have
search or browse functionality as far as I can tell.

~~~
cjbest
We're working on this! Right now most people discover through the author's
networks, and from people sharing free content.

We made a super basic discovery feature (that's just chronological free posts)
here: [https://www.substack.com/discover](https://www.substack.com/discover)
but we need to make that a lot better now that the home page is starting to
get appreciable traffic :)

------
osazuwa
What genres currently are outperforming cryptocurrency newsletters?

~~~
internet_jockey
Honestly, we are seeing a lot of strength in the crypto newsletters on
Substack and we love them. There are plenty of genres that are out-performing
some of them – from absurdist humor to bankruptcy industry coverage to foreign
policy – but the truth is that the writer matters more than the subject.
People subscribe to writers they trust. Those reader-writer relationships are
key in this world.

~~~
ineptech
Does Substack allow po - I mean, erotica? Asking for a friend.

------
java_script
Just posting to say I miss the TARFU report.

~~~
MattTaibbi
I miss it, too. Alex is one of my favorite people on earth.

------
S_A_P
Im a subscriber to Matt's book. I generally like this delivery model- and feel
like for his case the model works. There are 2 chapters available for free as
well as some additional information around the project. Payment was pretty low
drag and so far he has delivered in a very timely manner.

My struggle with this model is with other folks who may not deliver with such
professionalism or decide that their inner thoughts deserve a paywall and a
fancy click bait hook. Are there any safeguards or thoughts put into this?

~~~
cjbest
Thank you for subscribing!

The main protection is that it's really hard to get people to pay you money if
you don't have evidence of substance. It's harder to make paybait than
clickbait.

That said, it is definitely an issue we will have to navigate carefully.

------
simplecomplex
This isn’t a new business model and plenty of people and organizations already
charge money for newsletters or subscriptions for content.

There’s been plenty of academic papers from economists focusing on journalism
detailing the issues, but put simply: There’s two ways to monetize, 1) Ads
where businesses are the customer, 2) Pay per use (one time or subscriptions)
where the reader is the customer.

The problem with subscriptions is that it disfavors the poor and massively
reduces audience, which in the case of journalism and news the poor are
arguably in most need and end up disenfranchised by editors and journalists
because the need to write articles to please their upper and middle class
customers (think the Economist for example).

The problem with ads on the Internet is that content can be copied and
exfiltrated at no cost, so it’s difficult to prevent syndication of the
content elsewhere (why RSS is not more successful, for example)

Substack doesn’t fundamentally fix anything with the problems of a
subscription-based business model, even though it looks like a good product.

~~~
bill_rr
I like your analysis of the "problems" from an industry perspective. Here's
the user perspective:

(1) The problem with subscriptions is that it's unfathomable to subscribe all
over the place. I live in New Jersey, so I'm not going to subscribe to the LA
Times even if they have some great coverage of a particular topic.

(2) The problem with ads is that they are INSANELY annoying to see all the
time. Period.

My company, reallyread.it, is going to be uniquely positioned to make "pay per
use" (aka just reading something) a reality. It's the Holy Grail for all of
us: Spotify for News - one premium subscription that unlocks everything,
everywhere. We're on it. ;)

------
aphextron
How did you guys settle on "Substack"? I only ask because Substack is a really
well known handle for one of the most prolific Node ecosystem contributors,
and I feel like you guys are going to run into a lot of SEO pain dealing with
that.

~~~
cjbest
We subscribe to the pg take on naming. We went through a couple of options we
like, and Substack was the one we could get the .com for. It's a Stack for
Subscription publishing. We didn't realize about the node developer with the
Twitter handle; hopefully it's different enough that it's not a pain for
either of us.

See [http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html)

~~~
slikts
Or is it that you googled and decided you can just take over someone's
identity because they haven't registered a .com. It's not like "substack"
would be a thing outside of it.

~~~
TooBrokeToBeg
They haven't taken over an identity. A simple disclaimer on the landing page
is sufficient to explain the situation, which is that no company is
responsible for every current or past or future naming conflict. There's
something something about naming being hard.

------
styfle
This is the first I’ve heard of Substack.

I thought I recognized that name and then I remembered....there’s a
developer[0] who has written many packages on npm[1] with the same name:
substack

I’ll have to check this out just because of the name :)

[0]: [https://github.com/substack](https://github.com/substack)

[1]: [https://www.npmjs.com/~substack](https://www.npmjs.com/~substack)

~~~
cjbest
Just to avoid any confusion: we are not affiliated with James Halliday, the
developer who uses the Github/Twitter handle substack.

(Though now that I look at it, I definitely respect his work, especially
minimist)

~~~
slikts
Are you going to add this disclaimer to everything you do now, or is the idea
to just take the name over with your capital? It's their name that they've
established by being a prolific, well-respected developer; it was also the
only search result for it before you appeared, because it's a unique name
without an another established meaning. There's no explanation for why you'd
choose it outside of not doing due dilligence or just lack of morals.

~~~
eli
That's ridiculous. A new platform for journalism can't share a name with a
popular Node developer? Even actual trademarks only apply across a category of
similar products.

~~~
mirimir
So, for example, "Ruby fibers" are not chromium-doped alumina abrasives. And
indeed, one might see both on HN :)

------
rayiner
Not the kind of trash I want to see on HN:
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59f7...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59f729e9e4b06acda25f4b8e/amp)

> On October 27, Aimee Levitt published a piece in The Chicago Reader with the
> apt title “Twenty years ago, in Moscow, Matt Taibbi was a misogynist
> asshole—and possible worse.” Taibbi and Mark Ames were co-editors of the the
> English language gonzo, semi-satirical, semi-muckraking expat newspaper the
> eXile, where they engaged in sophomoric pranks, non-stop partying, and, if
> their own words are to believed, constant sexual harassment.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
So moral purity is a requirement for notable achievement now?

~~~
rayiner
Not being a misogynistic isn’t “moral purity” it’s the minimum standard of
decency. And nobody is saying Taibbi hasn’t had notable achievements. I’m
saying I have no interest in seeing someone like him do an AMA on HN. And as
an audience member, I certainly don’t want my friends knowing I have an
account and post to a site that’d let someone like Taibbi do an AMA. He can go
be notable somewhere else.

------
throwaway22375
[Deleted]

~~~
masfjo
This was already debunked dumbass

~~~
throwaway22375
The excerpts linked from reddit are stuff that was published in the Exile. Are
you saying they’re fake?

Can I get a link to the debunking?

Thanks.

~~~
rodion_89
His wiki[1] says "Women portrayed in the book have gone on record to defend
Taibbi, stating that none of the sexual harassment portrayed in the book ever
happened."[2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Taibbi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Taibbi)

[2] [https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/12/the-
destructi...](https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/12/the-destruction-
of-matt-taibbi.html)

~~~
throwaway22375
Alright. The Paste Magazine piece is enough to raise doubts for me. I deleted
my comment.

Thanks for the links, everybody.

~~~
badcede
"Raise doubts" is a bit stingy. Here is what one of the allegedly-harrassed
women had to say (in the Paste article): _“These claims that Matt would do
this stuff are ridiculous,” she said. “I left The eXile because we started
dating, and Matt was worried about impropriety. He didn’t even ask me out at
work! Matt is a fundamentally decent and kind person.”_

The smear seems to me to have been completely refuted on the facts, and
there's a second issue: if it hadn't been, there's no way those mainstream
publications would have retracted it en masse (especially not given the social
climate around that topic). When was the last time they all did that? It's
practically a magic trick to get them to do that.

------
Panjam
Matt and substack, do you think privately-owned media platforms could be
disintermediated by blockchain type solutions, linking producers to consumers
without a middleman?

------
one4morrow
Hello I am CEO of a Texas NPO and doing research for a nationwide initiative
to advocate for parents to test their minor children without the child's
knowledge for drug use. Would you consider donating a copy of this fine work
in-kind and allowing us to quote it with citations on a national scale? Also,
I love the business model! Steve Morrow MBA MA

~~~
cwkoss
> to advocate for parents to test their minor children without the child's
> knowledge for drug use

This seems kind of overbearing. Why do think this is something important to
advocate for?

