Oh, blessed be! The gatekeepers have discovered a gate with no lock and they are furious.

Let’s translate these pearl-clutching remarks into plain English:

1) “It helps them build an audience, but it distracts from writing their next book.” —An agent

Yes, because the only real writing is done in a silent stone monastery, by candlelight, with a quill, while an agent periodically slides a contract under the door like a ransom note.

Here’s the scandal: Substack is writing. Drafting in public is writing. Publishing on a schedule is writing. Finding your voice, your cadence, your people? That’s not a distraction from the work. That is the work.

If anything is a distraction, it’s the industrial-grade busywork of “platform building” everywhere else—where you’re expected to dance for the algorithm like a trained poodle in a cardigan.

2) “You know what this could have used? An editor.” —Editor at an independent publisher

Sure. Some Substacks could use an editor. Some books could use an editor. Some publishing meetings could use an exorcist.

Also: an editor is not a mystical creature who only lives in Manhattan and feeds exclusively on semicolons. Writers can hire editors. Writers can swap edits. Readers give notes. Communities shape drafts. The “gotcha” here is less “Substack is messy” and more “How dare writers publish without asking permission first.”

3) “Yes, but it’s going to end poorly... users will get bored of the format.” —An agent

People have been “getting bored of the format” since the first human scratched a complaint on a cave wall and someone else said, Ugh, another cave post?

The format is... words. Delivered directly. Like letters. Like pamphlets. Like essays. Like every durable form of literature that ever mattered.

What they mean is: We’re nervous about a world where writers don’t need us to be heard. Which, to be fair, is a big emotional adjustment for someone whose job description includes “middle.”

4) “Writers rush out half-baked ideas... ideas I would pay for, but not once they’re out there for free.” —A magazine editor

Ah yes, the sacred editorial principle: “I support writers, but only if I own the first kiss.”

A Substack can be a sketchbook, a salon, a serial, a testing ground, a living room with the lights on. Some posts are polished. Some are prototypes. That’s not moral failure—that’s process.

And this panic about “free”? Please. Publishing has been training readers to expect free content for twenty years, then acting shocked when writers try to build a direct-paid relationship to survive. Substack didn’t invent the economics of attention; it’s just one of the few places where a writer can say: If you want this, help me keep the lights on.

5) “Let’s just write posts on sticky notes.” —A writer

Honestly? Iconic. And yes. Let’s.

Because the point is not the chandelier. The point is the electricity.

Here’s what’s really happening: traditional publishing—agents, editors, magazines—are used to being the Sun. Substack is a solar system with a lot of little stars. Some flicker. Some burn out. Some become constellations people navigate by.

And writers? Writers have always been accused of being too messy, too much, too long, too intimate, too opinionated, too alive. That’s not a bug. That’s the job.

So should authors be on Substack?

If it helps them write more, write truer, find readers, build a body of work, and keep their creative oxygen flowing—yes.

If someone needs a permission slip from an agent to speak in their own voice—no.

The future isn’t “Substack or books.”

The future is writers owning their relationship with readers—and letting the work travel in more than one form.

A post can become an essay. An essay can become a book. A book can become a life raft.

And if an agent calls that “ending poorly,” I have a tiny sticky note for them that says:

Sweetie, you’re confusing your business model with literature.

Gloria Horton-Young (@gloriahortonyoung)