Thoughts on Scott Carney’s: “Why Substack is Collapsing” & How that Will Impact You

Substack doesn’t have a diverse future, and that will inevitably limit your choices.

I’m on the road the past week, to return next week. However, I caught Scott’s article where his words rekindled my thoughts that I had mentioned in “Notes” a few times. Here’s a longer version, written on my phone - hence the brevity and some typos (apologies).

First, here’s Scott Carney ‘s article:

https://open.substack.com/pub/sgcarney/p/the-real-reason-that-substack-is?r=3f5dso&utm_medium=ios

Scott’s words are 100% on the money, or lack thereof.

I’m at just over 5k subscribers, with a conversion rate of sub 1%. My ever dwindling Substack “income” pays for dinner at a mid-range restaurant. Although I had aspirations to (finally) return to full-time journalism - I’m a former newscaster - that dream is being met with a slow, but steady, roll of paid-unsubscribes.

Some of the survey data, albeit lacking in granularity, suggests that readers don’t “have time”, or “price”, or the more prominent “no reason.”

In response, I tried paywalls. That didn’t work in two ways: my open rate remained about the same, and I did not generate new paying subscribers. In fact, some noted that “if my information is important, it must be accessible to all - for free. Because readers can’t afford $8/month.”

In part, this is true and I sympathize. I’m in the same boat, hence the attempt to paywall and generate an income.

In another part, the issue is audience overlap: 45% with Heather Richardson Cox (HRC), 43% with Robert Reich, Bulwark, 42% with Meidas, etc. - all of them let the reader consume for free, some of them turn on “paid comments.”

The issue is not with their work, but with having well-funded teams that can produce at a pace the single author cannot keep up with. Yes, HRC has a team, too.

What’s the solution for the small writer? Frankly, none is all-solving, but all require Herculean efforts that far exceed an 8-hour workday. That’s OK for most writers, who are also entrepreneurs. Working more than a W-2 gig demands is par for the course.

The only way forward, from where I stand, is to focus on YouTube, Patreon, and a Podcast. All are intense uphill battles, but the income diversification may be, long term, more fruitful than battling on Substack.

Scott mentioned some of it: the paying/reading audience remains reasonably the same, but the writing competition has grown exponentially.

I’m adding to it, that giant names entering the platform in recent months, from Scott Galloway (team of 27), to Simon Sinek - and Substack brass topples over itself to welcome them, sharing and algorithmically pushing them, tilts the market.

As an aside: I read some of the former network journalists. I noticed that they aren’t producing content that’s remarkably different than the content they produced while on-network. They just have their names on it now, and the red checkmarks keep appearing, further enriching authors who are already well-off, while the rest fends for scraps.

The data of “wealth concentration” supports the usual: 10% of writers claim 80% of the overall revenue, 10% share 10%, and the rest, which are over a million Substackers, share the rest.

What’s a writer to do? Altruistically write, while dismissing their own economic needs, or consider unit economics and time?

A good article takes time and money to be produced. This is a conversation I’ve had at length with Andra Watkins. Subscription fees to various platforms or sources (yes, they charge for their work), and time. The latter, if clocked, reduces the a writer’s income to cents/hour.

Thus, we saw the rise of AI “writing”, maximizing time while minimizing quality. This is not all that different from any other form of production or manufacturing: time is the variable and it’s valuable: an author wanting to make a living, must optimize. AI is that optimization. Whether that’s ethically justified or rubs the reader wrong, can be answered with: if the audience wants artisan work, it will take time. Time that deserves to be compensated.

Ultimately, I’m not blaming the reader when they unsubscribe. I used to blame myself for not writing better or publishing more. That was wrong, too.

It’s market forces, limited available resources, a platform that’s optimizing for VC returns, but with its new “AI scanner”, the ever questionable “Pangram”, wants to force artisanal quality, while not having provided a way to generate an appropriate way to monetize.

Subsequently, this will encourage two outcomes:

1) AI content will increase - but it will be written in a way that AI scanners are useless. The writer adapts, but the overall quality still degrades.

2) large teams that produce work at scale, will “win” the battle for paying readers.

This is where Substack “matured” into real economics and platform capitalism.

Naturally, there will be attrition. Smaller writers will seek other opportunities. Some of those voices will fade away altogether, and our lives will be less diversified, educated, and enriched.

We learn from others, and when those teachers cease to educate, we’ll be reduced to consuming AI content or network crap - at times, it will be network slop.

I’ll be back with a longer, perhaps more relevant post, in the first week of August.

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~Z.