[DIGEST] Do Substack economics work for most writers?

Do Substack economics work for most writers? No.

I’m very pro Substack, but no, they don’t work for most writers.

The only robust study on this is ’s Substack Income Transparency Project. Out of 174 participants, I counted 17 with income over $20,000 (which is what I would consider the poverty line).

Of those, 6 made over $50,000 and 3 made over $100,000.

That gives you a 10% shot at making above poverty wagers, a 3.4% chance at making above $50,000 and a 1.7% chance of making over $100,000.

(For the record, the latest studies show the average writer makes around $8-12k a year in total. So, it’s not like we’re making a lot of money anywhere right now).

If that holds to the population, which it might not, then that’s actually not that far off from the metrics on Amazon.

So, it’s not that there’s no hope there…

…but you almost certainly need more than Substack, just like you probably need more than Amazon, even if you are in KU.

There are some great success stories here, but this platform, like every other one, suffers from survivorship bias, wherein you judge the efficacy of something based on those who succeeded doing it.

Publishing is riddled with it. No shade on anyone who succeeded, but for each one of them there are 100 that flamed out. I have been publishing online since at least 2008, which means according to the internet I should be a Kindle millionaire and a blogging mogul, and yet, just because I lived through the “glory days” of both things, I have no jet, no yacht, and no mansion.

I talk about this behind the scenes all the time, but you can’t just rely on paid subscriber revenue to drive most of your revenue. You need to also have books, courses, events, consulting…

…well, IDK, but even I don’t fall into that $20k category and I have 30,000 subscribers!

I do make good money every year, but it’s because I have multiple platforms supporting each other and working together in an ecosystem.

I also know a ton of great writers who make almost nothing on Substack but cobble together good livings from 5-10 different other sources. It’s not just me here.

Substack is a great base for your business, but it’s probably not going to be a whole business…

…and maybe that’s okay. Maybe you don’t want this to be a business…

…but I know a lot of you think it’s a moral failing that you can’t grow a business here and it’s for sure not.

It’s math.

Subscriptions should be the undercurrent of your business, growing all the time, but it shouldn’t be the main crux of almost any business.

You aren’t broken if you can’t get this stuff to work. There is asymmetric growth in the system, and the Power Law curve is already working against you.

To illustrate how I have a billion revenue streams, here’s a picture of me at Wondercon slinging books. My friends Matt Harry and joined me for the weekend and we always have a blast hanging out together and talking to fans.

If you want to share how you are doing this week, then there are two ways to interact with this post.

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NEW KICKSTARTER IS LIVE: We just launched the Kickstarter for my first NSFW comic, Death’s Kiss, with our publisher Laguna Studios!

She was born of death, and it was only through death that she could survive. As the last of her kind, she was forced to walk the shadows of the world, stepping into the light only when she must claim a new soul.

It was a simple existence, yet she never wanted more. Until she saw him, and somehow he saw her too. The impossibility of their connection drew her closer, and soon she found herself wishing she was more than just a waif condemned to live apart from humanity.

For centuries she merely existed, but now she longed to live. Can she escape what she was to find who she's truly meant to be?

WHAT WE WROTE ON SUBSTACK: This week, I asked whether you are finding or building arbitrage.

Plus, holds tight to their golden thread and accidentally publishes an activity book For kids. 

A new chapter of Magic also dropped this week.

All chapters of The Godsverse Chronicles are now free for all subscribers. You can read the whole series from the beginning right here.

You still only get access to a bunch of free books and stories from my back catalog by becoming a paid member. You can start your membership with a 7-day free trial.

JOIN US FOR A FREE VIRTUAL CONFERENCE: Do you have FOMO from missing our Future of Publishing Mastermind? Then I have good news. You can join us virtually from May 22-24 for free and relive the experience with us.

We’ll have tons of speakers talking about how to take advantage of the future of publishing…starting now.

If you want to know where the publishing industry is going in the next 3-5 years, and how to take advantage of it NOW, then The Future of Publishing Virtual Summit is perfect for you.

This is an event curated for forward-thinking, self-starters who want to be at the leading edge of the publishing industry for years to come. Publishing is shifting faster than ever. Do you want to help chart where it's going? 

UPCOMING ARTICLE: Next week, I talk about the evolution path of each Author Ecosystem

ROUNDUP: Here are some of my favorite articles of the week.

Business-y:

• offers five non obvious skills for product & growth managers in 2024, lists out an 8-step solopreneur manual, and masks to get a job.

• steps into their office, deconstructs registration paywalls, and is unbelievably unf*ckwithable.

• arms themselves with weapons of mass production, parses out when to disagree and when to commit, and tweaks their side hustle into a full-time business.

• finds their second act calling, explores the nature of productivity, and squeezes time.

• and need their plus-minus-equal, seeds that there’s no investor bounce back in Series A, and differentiates between cash flow and earnings.

• makes people pay more with the art of visible labor, organizes indie labor, and beats distraction at its own game.

• learns lessons from a grueling job hunt, wonders what they are really going to do this year, and gives a performance review to performance management.

• snaps the carrot-on-a-stick of social media monetization, shares with purpose, and amplifies Amplitude’s success.

Publishing-like:

• doesn’t think a bestseller list should be the goal, translates the secret language of a paint tube, rewrites their pat author bios for accuracy, and releases a creative professional survival guide. 

• can’t visualize words because of aphantasia, trafficks in knowing that not all traffic sources are created equal, tricked themselves into thinking their book launch was a flop, and taps into joy to bring their hardest stories alive on the page.

• stumps for a seasonal model of publishing, updates the handbook for being a public figure, and thought their job was safe until someone used AI to write their daily newsletter.

• actually finishes a draft, thinks on how they would have build Book Riot if they started today, and swallows the toxic mix of grief and burnout.

• accepts that haters gonna hate, keeps writing at the top of their to-do list, and Elizabeth Segran makes a big deal out of the tiny tweaks that help HarperCollins save thousands of trees.

• gets out of their own way on the road to publication, lays out what they earned from a viral Medium post, and demands to know if Harry Styles is aware of The Idea of You book and/or movie.

Subastack-esque:

• builds a timeline to achieve the elusive full-time Substack dream, gets clear on their offer, automatically adds Substack subscribers to their Flodesk mailing list, and gives a STELLAR writing retrospective.

• maximizes sponsorship revenue, gets their little orange checkmark, grows their Substack by 150 subscribers in a month, and reads what they’ve written aloud.

Culture-ish:

• unearths a classic MTV short, dissects why we hate email, analyzes whether movies are better when we watch them in theaters, and is not having a midlife crisis.

• demythologies grit and passion, mainlines self-help, runs from vulnerability, and understands how understanding cultural psychology makes people better travelers.

• outlines how it works when you’re a woman on the internet, shows what Katie Britt and a Mormon Church social media firestorm have in common, and hails the crowned conqueror of the Madonna-Whore Complex.

• drags their kids through D.C., biographies the original Hot Topic douchebag, and treats AI like a human.

• banishes the curse of reckonitis, builds a mental framework for homo techno, and provides a burst of color.

Lifestyle-oid:

• eats nothing but dog food for 7 days, says they are okay even when everything is not okay, breaks up with a best friend, and creates and gathers.

• puts $1,000 into anything but penny stocks, went to Paris and all they got were these delicious food recommendations, and defaults to being a default friend.

• bakes bread when life is sour(dough), ends their secret girlfriend era, and burns out on their boyfriend.

Find anything you loved enough to swoon over or hated enough to make your blood boil? Let me know.

If you like what I’m doing around here and want to check out the archives, you can do that with a 7-day free trial, or simply go straight to being a paid subscriber. You also get access to my seminal graphic novel series, Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter.

Ichabod is a mental patient who has been convicted of killing many innocent people, but when he awakens in the Apocalypse he may just be the best hope for humanity to survive. If only he knew whether the Hell beasts he slaughtered were real or existed only in his mind.

Can Ichabod become the hero the world needs even after society decided they didn’t need him? Or will he devolve into the animal people always accused him of being? Enter the madness and find out.

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