Why Novelists Love Substack
They just never stop writing!
Wow, what a stone cold bummer of a news day. As you rally your energy to continue to fight, rest your mind on the soft pillow of Culture, which today takes the form of gossip about literary Substack, a peek into the lives of Black American expats in Ghana, and a very specific and gross question for our chief of copy, Carl Rosen. —Emily Gould
SUBSTACK GOSSIP
Exactly How Much Money Does Ottessa Moshfegh Make From Her Substack, Anyway?
And other burning questions for our resident literary Substack expert, Emma Alpern.
Senior copy editor Emma Alpern is the person at the magazine most up to speed on what’s happening in two sometimes relevant, always messy online spaces: BookTok and literary Substack. This week in the magazine, she went deep on the latter, talking to the authors and writers who have the most interesting relationships with the platform. I caught up with her on the phone about her findings.
So as you know I’m fascinated by Substack. It had a rocky beginning when its founders were offering writers “deals” to be on the platform — some reportedly for millions of dollars but nobody really knew — and some of the people were odious. Anyway, they were blurring the line between “platform” and “publisher,” and that never works out, no matter how many times people try. But they have now achieved total market dominance mostly by having good functionality and being much less owned by Elon Musk than other platforms.
That deal thing kind of reminded me of when a tech start-up creates a magazine by poaching a bunch of writers from long-term newsrooms and then the whole place goes under within a couple years. It felt very volatile. They were handing out those deals to establish themselves, and it was never meant to be long term. But you can kind of tell the people who signed up under those deals because they have a different approach to the platform – a little more professionalized. So, for instance,
, who runs Story Club (311,000 subscribers) — I don't know if he’s said it publicly, but I think he did have one of those deals. He posts so regularly to the point where it gets a little overwhelming. Whereas then you have somebody like (36,000 subscribers), whose cadence is a little less in a nice way, and it's a little more free-form. She’s not really promising anything in particular, but for that reason, it feels a little more engaging and unusual and personal.The Substack employee you talked to said that writers should be aiming for 10 percent of their subscribers to be paid subscribers. If 10 percent of Moshfegh’s 36,000 subscribers are paid — she says a “major minority” of them pay, which means who knows what — then she’s making about $388,800 a year after Substack’s 10 percent cut. And even if only 5 percent of her subscribers pay, she’s still making just under $200,000 — that’s a decent salary. But she’s probably not representative of most writers on Substack, most of whom charge only $6 a month rather than her $10 and some of whom don’t charge at all.
I suspect she's not at 10 percent, just because I think that is hard. Another thing that kind of shocked me is that I think a lot of people subscribe for free and then they don't get to read most of what people send. It's just an odd system, but she's probably making a good bit of money from it. Even someone like
, whom I spoke to, is making a little money, and she said it's just adding to her income stream. It's not that hard to do. It's fun. It's a comfortable place, and it's a good way to add a little to your pocket. And she describes it as literary busking, which I love.Don’t these writers worry about running out of words for their novels by expending so many words on Substack? I personally feel like I have a maximum of 3,000 words in me every day, and once I hit that upper limit, I’m done.
The one question I asked everybody was, Do you ever worry that you're going to run out of words to write? Are the number of words that you write for your Substack subtracted from the overall number of words that you can write in a day? And does that take away from your novel-writing time or the number of words that you can contribute to the manuscript that you're working on? And mostly they said “no,” which I thought was interesting. This writing is a generative form for them, which is kind of cool.
You must have signed up for so many Substacks for this piece.
And I had notifications turned on, which is kind of overwhelming, especially now with the Notes feed, which is basically Tumblr — you can quote, restack, or just post a brief thought. I had a moment when I was working on this piece of Oh, this is where all of the writers have gone. They don't really seem to be on X in the same way. It's such a pleasure, honestly, to scroll through Notes, because it's really where people go to shit talk. And there's all these debates happening all the time about, I don't know, the iPhone novel, and everybody has their take on it. It's a lot, but I enjoy it.
TRAVEL ISSUES
The Dream of an African Homeland Is Alive in Ghana
Like all dreams, though, it’s not quite synced up with reality.
Kéche Nne Nomu writes about the dissonance between Ghanaians and Black Americans who have moved to Ghana in search of an “African euphoria.”
“‘Much of the ambivalence Ghanaians have is connected to benefits they get from the tourism boom. This creates a kind of myopia,’ said Yaw Atuobi, a 30-year-old researcher who works with the Foundation for Contemporary Art. Atuobi lives in Ashaley Botwe, a suburb about 30 minutes from Accra. Previously accessible sections of the lakefront in their neighborhood, they said, had been bought by a developer: “People are talking about it or making commentary about it, but there’s no cohesion.” When I spoke with Atuobi a second time, they said they were in the process of relocating because their landlord had discontinued their lease.”
ANNALS OF COPYEDITING
On the Slang Term for Orgasming, Let’s Come to a Consensus
One is funnier. One is more correct. Copy chief Carl Rosen explains our choices.
Last night I watched the series finale of The Righteous Gemstones, and immediately afterward I turned, as one does, to the Vulture recap of same. The recap opens with this dialogue from the show:
“‘As much as we miss Momma, we think it’s pretty cool your dipstick still works. And I think I speak on behalf of all of us when I say that we’re proud and, quite frankly, very impressed that you can still do comes.’
‘And Daddy, whether it be with Ms. Lori or some other skibidi toilet come guzzler, we support you. I just can’t be responsible if you get an STD, man, because I am not gonna use a wet washrag to get maggots off your dick hole or whatever.’”
I had been watching the show with subtitles on because my window AC unit is really loud, and the subtitles had rendered the term cum(s) in both lines. I decided to let Carl weigh in on how the magazine makes decisions around this word.
Carl, why do we default to come? The subtitles said cum.
We go by Merriam-Webster's and occasionally stray from style on this issue. I don't find it that important, but individual editors can stet [Ed.’s note: copy-editor-speak for “let it stand”] copy changes. Styles are set so copy editors don't have to make decisions that will slow them down, considering we have to make a great number of decisions as it stands.
Absolutely, I understand. I guess in this instance I simply wish the editor had stetted. It's good to know there's some flexibility on this issue.
Yep! Squeaky wheel and all that. But the worst argument for change is that another interpreter of sound made a choice of spelling. That's like taking an AP transcription of what Trump says without questioning the style.
Fair. But you can’t really disagree about cum being funnier.
[“This.” emoji reaction].
Click Your Way Out
You don’t have to talk me into spending $160 on a beach chair. Wait, you do. Okay, I’m convinced!
Adults with jobs, like the ones sitting next to me, were born the year that Lindsay Robertson started blogging. After a hiatus, she’s back at it, so bow to the Queen and O.G.
You don’t really need to know much lore to wrap your head around Jurassic World Rebirth, but it’s more fun if you do.
One fun thing about Friday being the Fourth of July is that you just know there are celebrity publicists out there with news they’re waiting to dump then, hoping no one will see it. What do you think it’ll be? Probably a divorce, but literally anything’s possible.
Love it!!
I like this article!