In contrast, every single edition of a newsletter is delivered to every single reader, and since a lot of it is paywalled, there’s little potential virality.

In the past, you might have spent 10 hours reading a book that took 4 years to research and write, a 3500x multiple on time! Today, a newsletter that publishes M-F and takes 30 minutes to read only provides a 67x multiple.

Organic sharing, growth and virality exposes readers to a wide variety of authors, serving up the best of each one’s writing. On Substack, instead of getting the best 1% of posts from 100 authors, you get 100% from each one.

I said earlier that the biggest risk to Substack is archives, but that’s only true in the existential sense. With regards to future growth, the biggest risk is that the mainstream population continues to read mainstream journals, and Substack never crosses the chasm.

Except that structural forces also ensure a homogeneity across newsletters, ensuring that you never read anything too original.

Isn’t this normal? After all, no writer can be expected to cover every topic. In an age of disaggregation, we should read from experts instead of casual polymaths.

It’s better for authors to think persistently and write occasionally than the other way around.

But on Substack, you’re paid monthly, creating pressure to churn out regular updates. Since it’s impossible to have interesting novel thoughts twice a week every week, this also means writers skew heavily towards summarizing the news, pumping out quick ta... See more

The obvious objection is that Twitter also has public follower counts but still manages to host vibrant subcultures.