Substack or Smug-Stack?
What the Platform is For (And what it isn’t…)
Like most of reality, only some will survive, make it and blossom. Most of us won’t. And that’s perfectly fine! There’s that hierarchy again; it’s inevitable. That’s just the gritty realism of human nature, talent, luck and competition. But the idea that everyone can make it is the idea that’s being “sold,” so to speak, by Substack. And we all know that’s a dangerous myth.
Substack, which I generally love, seems to attract a strange, intriguing, annoying and humorous mixture of writers. There are some genuine experts, people who are not only highly degreed and credentialed but who have traditionally published books (sometimes very successful ones) and employment histories which include things like working in the White House or in major [traditional] news media, or longtime respected authors such as
, , and , among many others.This is all to the good.
Then you have some sort of mid-level people, I’d argue such as myself; people who have published a few dozen short stories and nonfiction pieces in various literary magazines and journals, who have a couple books published, and who have worked “in the industry” in one way or another. (I’ve been a book editor since 2013 and edited, among many other books, ex-neo-Nazi-turned-anti-hate-activist Christian Picciolini’s two books, White American Youth and Breaking Hate. We even got the foreword written by none other than rock-n-roll icon Joan Jett.
And finally there’s a sort of third tier—I apologize: My capitalist-steeped American brain is addicted to hierarchy—which is probably 85% of Substack. This is the group of people who are either brand-new writers or else they’ve written some here and there but haven’t ever taken it all that seriously. Or their family members have been saying for decades, You know, you really should write a memoir. We all know these types.
Now. There’s nothing inherently wrong—in my humble opinion—with any of these tiers. Everyone is welcome, and that’s part of the Grand Joy of Substack. The democratic angle. The cherishing of Free Speech (despite the radicals on here who last year wanted to restrict that speech because there) were supposedly ‘Nazis’ running wild on the platform [it turned out to be a few minor, unimportant white supremacist goons that no one cared about or followed]. The diversity—true diversity, not progressive-Woke ‘diversity’—of the ideas and opinions which has sadly and pathetically fallen away from the little literary magazines and journals and to a large degree from mainstream publishing and media.
In short: On Substack you can find anything you want.
But.
There’s also a chorus of voices from below and from above and they’re screaming different things. From below they seem to be saying that Art is sacred, that people shouldn’t care too much (or at all) about making money, and that the ‘real voices’ on the platform are the people just having a good time and making all their content (or most of it, anyway) free.
*(One criticism I would level at the platform/the founders/creators: In my opinion we should be able to ask for whatever monthly or yearly price we want. I’d gladly offer $20/year subscriptions if I could, not on S.A.W., but on my book editing stack.)
From above you’ve got the people who think that, since they came into Substack (or: Smug-Stack) through a professional angle, they should, by natural right, be paid for their work.
And then of course you’ve got the middle-layer which is somewhat mixed. (This is where I sit.)
I’m not even saying one is good, the other bad, one right, the other wrong. The beauty of the platform is that you, as a reader/consumer of stacks, get to choose who you want to read, how many stacks you want to read, etc. I love the ease of Substack: Everything is quick, efficient and at the mercy of my instantaneous choices and moods. (Being a capricious man this serves me well.)
But there’s also a whole other camp of Stackers who write about writing (I do some of this myself), writers who teach/coach, who promote themselves as people who can help promote you, help you gain traction with subscribers, help you improve your content, etc. They’ll tell you to ‘niche down,’ to write short, tight, concise posts, to target a very specific audience, to make a solid mixture of free and paid posts, to engage a lot with other stacks, to use Notes a lot and to do A, B and C.
All of it’s fine and all of it’s exhausting.
But what does any of it matter?
The smugness stems, for me at least, in the cries from above being seen as All of Substack, when we all know that 98% of Substack writers aren’t going to make it big. Most probably won’t ever even get to, say, 5,000 subscribers with 100 paying. As well all know, most of the featured stacks (not all but most) have been from people who came into the arena already in the profession, already with a big social media following, already with insider connections.
There was a stacker recently who shall remain unnamed who did a post about going from “very little” to making a good yearly salary on the platform. But when I read the piece I saw that she started with 600 emails, and had thousands of social media followers. I get it; that’s certainly not huge. But it’s also not “tiny.” I started with 50 friends and family. Now that’s small.
Like most of reality, only some will survive, make it and blossom. Most of us won’t. And that’s perfectly fine! There’s that hierarchy again; it’s inevitable. That’s just the gritty realism of human nature, talent, luck and competition. But the idea that everyone can make it is the idea that’s being “sold,” so to speak, by Substack. And we all know that’s a dangerous myth. It’s been true and probably will always be true on any platform that ever comes around because human beings are intrinsically—and this makes some people squirmy—unequal.
Calm down, progressives: I’m not talking about anything as silly and superficial as race. Or sex. Or gender. I’m talking about levels of writing skill, the ambition and drive of individuals, ability to write for a newsletter-style structure. Some people are fantastic at digitally glad-handing and connecting with others and doing guest posts (I’m trying to do more of these) and some are pathologically shy, insecure, isolated and loner-like. Some people feel they deserve to be paid for their work (I started my paywalls early, in the fall of 2022) and some don’t feel they deserve a single cent for their writing.
This is simply “the way things are.” A platform that tried to force “equality of outcome” would be terrifying, trust me, and that’s not something that any of us truly want. (On Substack or in government or in the culture.) We do want—and do have!—equality of opportunity.
That is, in theory, everyone on Substack has the ability to write good work, gain subscribers, get paid, etc. But again, that obviously doesn’t mean it’s an even playing field. Because some people walk into the platform already professional writers. Some are wildly ambitious. Some are brand-new to writing. Some are writing about popular, trendy cultural issues that net a wide, broad audience, and some write about very niche topics. Both have the possibility of succeeding, but neither has any guarantees.
In the end you can be a Substack writer or a Smug-Stack writer.
In other words: You can write the best stuff you got and hope for the best, or you can conversely judge everyone who doesn’t write/act/think like you. But the whole point of Substack was to get away from that line of thinking, the line of thinking which started to dominate traditional media in the manic insanity of 2020. (The New York Times re the Tom Cotton fiasco is a great example.) Mainstream media, publishing, Slack channels and social media started to become more and more navel-gazing and myopic. A solution appeared from a little company not many had heard of in even 2019: Substack.
And now the platform is just growing and expanding, turning into a monster for good and ill. It’s still diverse. It’s still a great, easy place to write. It’s still strong on free speech. But there seem to be these self-segregated sectional fractures. And I don’t know how I feel about all the constantly developing new AI and tech opportunities, adding video and Notes and chat and everything that I left social media to avoid.
But, of course, that’s the nature of tech: It grows. Just like capitalism; rather as a side-growth of capitalism. Substack is “like a blog.” (Sort of.) But also more like a website connected to a broad community of other websites. And then again it’s neither, really; it’s just sort of its new organic “thing.”
I admit I myself can be a little smug about writing, about Substack, about my own newsletter, about being paid, about my subscriber list. I’m also deeply insecure, want people to like me, want to be part of a digital community and yet I crave the opposite, too. I am by nature a contrarian.
But isn’t that how Substack sort of started, or at least rocketed forth out into the great mysterious wilderness that is the internet around 2020? As an alternative to the mainstream? As a platform of contrarianism?
As the smug rebuke to Twitter, Slack, and the New York Times?