(2023-04-13) Did Substack Just Change The Game For Indie Newsletter Publishers

Did Substack Just Change the Game for Indie Newsletter Publishers? ...as a Substack skeptic, this had basically broken my brain, because all of a sudden, I found myself saying nice things about Substack on Twitter and Mastodon. (re substack notes)

It kind of sucks for indie publishers, not gonna lie.

at that moment, I saw the future. Despite my desire to not see Substack consolidate the newsletter space any further, I saw a lot of writers that would most likely consolidate their presences around the Twitter-like social network that made most of their money

Sure, Mastodon will inevitably continue to grow. But Substack not only has successfully built its moat, but it got a full parade just before it closed the gates.

vertical integration... The level of ability that a company has to manage its own technology or business processes without having to rely on outside vendors. (The downside of this, as noted by the Corporate Finance Institute, is that you have to take on the complexity of running the business process yourself.)

They know that, as people build influence on social media platforms, people become fans, and as those people gain fan bases, it makes their voice more viable.

Substack will be able to identify non-creators who prove especially engaging on Substack Notes, then reach out to them

For small-scale newsletter operators like myself, this can be very nerve-wracking. The reason is that we no longer feel like we can find full success while operating the stack ourselves.

All things considered equal, I want to self-host and to run my own CMS and my own design. The real concern I have is that things are no longer equal.

Would Notes be welcoming to people who aren’t in the moat? Would we have to change our strategy? Does email matter a little less all of a sudden?

As far as social media goes, I want Mastodon to win. It is the cleanest expression of the “old” internet we have. But I also have a business to run, and I can’t ignore potential threats to that business

So, my strategy is that I’m going to start a Substack. It is intentionally going to be a low-effort Substack, but one that I’ve been thinking about doing for a long time—a newsletter that features highlights from the many thousands of things we’ve mentioned in Tedium over the past eight years or so. I’m calling it Lesser Tedium.