Thoughts on Substack
I’ve used Substack for a few years now, having migrated The Transportist (previously the Transportationist) from WordPress.com, and before that from Moveable Type hosted by the University of Minnesota Library, and before that from Blosxom on my own internet-connected desktop at work, back when they allowed us to host from our own desktops. I also use Substack for newsletters for our open access journal Findings, as well as being a writer on the Substack for my research group TransportLab, and the advocacy group WalkSydney. I am reasonably familiar with its ins and outs.
While the initial migration of The Transportist went mostly smoothly, formatting and images of the older posts are sometimes fubar. I keep the WordPress.com site around, as there are links on the internet, and I use it as my static home page still. I check in once in a while, e.g. after they added Newsletters, and after they added ActivityPub, and to update static pages, and am reminded why I left (foremost the transition to the Gutenberg interface, which bothers the hell out of me, and I can’t seem to remove). Substack is much better tool as a writer than anything else I have seen. But it could be better.
As far as I can tell, Substack does not have a “Nazi Problem”, and that’s really mostly FUD (and in a sense, an inverse blood libel, calling someone a Nazi or Nazi-adjacent or Nazi-facilitator when they are not) spread primarily by haters and competitors.
In contrast with most competitors, Substack does not charge writers who aren’t making money directly, which is good, (although I am not certain sustainable, but that’s between Substack and their accountants), and makes it a useful tool for non-profits.
Reader
The UI as a reader in the app still confuses me: Chats and Posts and Notes. I know UI is hard, But if all Posts of anyone I followed showed up in Notes, and that were made more prominent, it might be cleaner. The Chats should be demoted somehow.
The Substack community of writers (and readers) is excellent. I follow or subscribe to who I want. However, I am cheap and so not paying more writers, with so many to follow, and I probably could not justify all of them, and I actually feel bad when I do subscribe to something (or buy a book) and then don’t read it. It’s an obligation to myself unfulfilled. (This seems irrational, and I know the sunk cost fallacy, so that becomes the problem.
I also want it easier for my subscriptions to show up in the App (or a Feed) rather than my email, which has a lot of other things going on that should not be confused with newsletters. I.e. I should be able to make that a default, rather than have to reset it for every newsletter.
Clubstack
I want a Substack+, or Clubstack, subscribe to ‘all’1 package for say $X per month, where revenue is distributed proportionally to all participating writers, based on how much each subscriber reads (assuming this is tracked). So if I only read one participating writer in Substack+, they would get all $X (- the Substack admin fee of course). Obviously writers could self-organise into magazines and build their own streaming services, but I don’t want 10 or 100 writer-based services, and neither does Substack.
Writer
As a writer, I want better Fediverse integration for Substack Notes and Posts, (which is to say any Fediverse integration). I do send the RSS to my account (@transportist@mastodon.social) through the brilliant Mastofeed, but this seems a needless extra step, and I would like to be able to see everyone’s new posts when they come out in the reader of my choice (e.g. Ivory), not just the Substack app. I’ll get to a Substack page if I click through, which will offer to allow me to subscribe no doubt.
I wish Posts were automatically sent to Notes (with a toggle in the writer settings) rather than having to use a Share Menu after the fact, as well as to my accounts on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and the Fediverse (including Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon), etc.
I wish the Posted Note was more automatically informative (maybe including the first sentences or a lede, with a more… link to the full post), rather than just the title with a graphic background.
I would like to see an improved ease of use of Substack as a traditional blog as much as a newsletter. These should be the options:
0. Post Nothing (Draft / Private Diary Mode) [Default]
Blog (and/or)
Mail to Paid Subscribers (and/or)
Mail to Free Subscribers
with a Paywall (or)
without a Paywall
(and then how many permutations for share to social media)
All of which might be achieved easiest with checkboxes that can be toggled off and on, with a default configuration.
Then there is the question of scheduling. The default should be settable in advance (Next Tuesday at 1:00 am AEST), and then adjusted on a case-by-case basis.
Allowing Substack to be a better static Home Page. We can post pages, but it remains a bit awkward. I don’t want the cornucopia of WordPress templates, but maybe something different than the panel, like a Hamburger Nested Menu that I could configure.
All of this is to say Substack is the best thing out there, but also should continue to improve. I am sure many of these have been considered by the Substack creators, and either are on the To do list, are in the Too hard bucket, or are bad ideas. But maybe some are useful.
All writers who participate