The power shift from publishers to personalities

On whether Substack can justify its 10% revenue share for top writers:

Fast-forward to today, and your options are much improved. Journalists, and many other types of creators, now have what I call “audience portability”. They can bring their fans with them when they switch employers…and many are discovering the best employer is themselves.

Media should take cues from sports teams, which intimately understand how spotlighting and retaining stars is crucial to building a popular franchise.

Traditional publishers and social networks will have to compete with self-serve platforms to offer creators the best growth, monetization, and infrastructure. That’s a win for audiences who get more diverse content, as well as creators who get a more stable career path.

“In the long run, it really comes down to the growth side of the thing, right? . . .What's always true is that the rate at which you're growing has way more of an impact on how much money you're going to make over the next year, two years, three years than what exactly the fee is . . . that's going to totally overwhelm the 10% . . . so we want to m... See more

And for the first time in your career, you feel anti-fragile. You’re no longer vulnerable to a publisher’s budget cuts, pivot to video, staff redundancy after a merger, or ‘new editorial direction’. No one can say that what you believe isn’t fit to print. You can experiment with new formats or revenue streams like exclusive chat rooms, paid podcast... See more