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Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support
subscription The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, a ...
newsletter A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers. Newsletters generally contain one main topic of ...
s. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
.


History

Substack was founded in 2017 by Chris Best, the co-founder of
Kik Messenger Kik Messenger, commonly called Kik, is a freeware instant messaging mobile app from the Canadian company Kik Interactive, available on iOS and Android operating systems. The application uses a smartphone's internet connection to transmit and re ...
; Jairaj Sethi, a developer; and Hamish McKenzie, a former PandoDaily tech reporter. Best and McKenzie describe Ben Thompson's ''
Stratechery Ben Thompson is an American business, technology, and media analyst, who is based in Taiwan. He is the author of ''Stratechery'', a subscription-based newsletter/podcast featuring commentary on tech and media news. He is also the co-host of ''Expo ...
,'' a subscription-based tech and media newsletter, as a major inspiration for their platform. Christopher Best operates as chief executive as of March 2019.


Content

Substack users range from journalists to experts to large media sites. Among the high-profile writers to have used the platform are Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist and author Glenn Greenwald, culture critic
Anne Helen Petersen Anne Helen Petersen is an American writer and journalist. She worked as a Senior Culture Writer for BuzzFeed until August 2020, when she began writing full-time for her newsletter "Culture Study" on Substack. Petersen has also been published in ...
, music essayist
Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...
, and food writer
Alison Roman Alison E. Roman (born September 1, 1985) is an American food writer, chef and internet personality. She is best known for her viral recipes, such as #TheStew and #TheCookies, which were widely shared on social media platforms. Roman has held s ...
. ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' columnist Mike Isaac argued in 2019 that some of these companies see newsletters as a more stable means to maintain readers through a more direct connection with writers. In 2020, ''
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hu ...
'' said there was an absence of local news newsletters, especially in contrast to the large number of national-level political newsletters. As of late 2020, large numbers of journalists and reporters were coming to the platform, driven in part by the long-term decline in traditional media (there were half as many newsroom jobs in 2019 as in 2004). Around that time, ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' said that while "Substack has advertised itself as a friendly home for journalism, ..few of its newsletters publish original reporting; the majority offer personal writing, opinion pieces, research, and analysis." It described Substack's content moderation policy as "lightweight," with rules against "harassment, threats, spam, pornography, and calls for violence; moderation decisions are made by the founders." In 2019, Substack added support for podcasts and discussion threads among newsletter subscribers. Major writers on Substack include historian Heather Cox Richardson, journalists
Matt Taibbi Matthew Colin Taibbi (; born March 2, 1970) is an American author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. A former contributing editor for ''Rolling Stone'', he is an author of several books, co-host o ...
and
Bari Weiss Bari Weiss (born March 25, 1984) is an American journalist, writer, and editor. She was an op-ed and book review editor at ''The Wall Street Journal'' (2013–2017) and an op-ed staff editor and writer on culture and politics at ''The New Yor ...
, authors Daniel M. Lavery, George Saunders, travel writer
Blake Nelson Blake Nelson is an American author of adult and children's literature. He grew up in Portland, Oregon, and attended Wesleyan University and New York University. He lives in Hillsboro, Oregon, in the Portland metropolitan area. Biography Nelson ...
and
Chuck Palahniuk Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk (; born February 21, 1962) is an American freelance journalist and novelist who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He has published 19 novels, three nonfiction books, two graphic novels, and two adu ...
, novelist
Salman Rushdie Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and ...
, tech journalist
Casey Newton Casey Newton is an American technology journalist, a former senior editor at ''The Verge'', and the founder and editor of a technology newsletter called ''Platformer''. Career Newton had been covering the Arizona State Legislature for ''The ...
, blogger and journalist Matthew Yglesias, and economist Emily Oster. As of November 2021, the platform said it had more than 500,000 paying subscribers, representing over one million subscriptions. Substack announced in January 2022 that it would begin private Beta testing video on its platform.


Finance

Authors can decide to make subscription to their newsletter free or paid, and to make specific posts publicly available to non-subscribers. , the minimum fee for a subscription was $5/month or $30/year, and Substack usually takes a 10 percent fee from subscription payments. Advertising to users plays no role in revenue generation. In February 2019, the platform began allowing creators to monetize podcasts. Substack reported 11,000 paid subscribers as of 2018, rising to 50,000 in 2019. Substack raised an initial seed round in 2018 from investors including The Chernin Group,
Zhen Fund Zhen may refer to: * Towns of China, called zhèn () in Chinese * True (China), ''zhen'' in Chinese * Zhen (surname) (), a Chinese surname * Balhae Kingdom, originally called Zhen () in Chinese * Lady Zhen (183-221), wife of Cao Pi of Cao Wei of th ...
, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron.
Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen H ...
provided $15.3 million in Series A funding in 2019, some of which went to bringing high-profile writers into Substack's network. Substack has provided some content creators with advances to start working on their platform. In 2019, the site provided a fellowship to some writers, which included a $3,000 stipend and a one-day workshop in San Francisco. The decline of sports-oriented publications such as ''
Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence tw ...
'', '' Deadspin'', and ''
SB Nation ''SB Nation'' (an abbreviation for their full name ''SportsBlogs Nation'') is a sports blogging network owned by Vox Media. It was co-founded by Tyler Bleszinski, Markos Moulitsas, and Jerome Armstrong in 2005. The blog from which the netw ...
'', coupled with the onset of the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
, led to a surge in sports journalists moving to write on Substack in 2019 and 2020. However, Substack competes with subscription site ''
The Athletic ''The Athletic'' is a subscription-based sports website that provides national and local coverage in 47 North American cities as well as the United Kingdom. ''The Athletic'' also covers national stories from top professional and college sports ...
'' in this submarket, so McKenzie says the company does not recruit as strongly in that market. In 2020, following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Substack extended grants of $1,000–$3,000 to over 40 writers to begin working on the platform. Substack expanded into comics content in 2021 and signed creators including
Saladin Ahmed Saladin Ahmed (born October 4, 1975) is an Eisner Award winning American comic book writer and a science fiction/ fantasy poetry and prose writer. His 2012 book ''Throne of the Crescent Moon'' was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel an ...
,
Jonathan Hickman Jonathan Hickman (born September 3, 1972) is an American comic book writer and artist, best known for his creator-owned series '' The Nightly News'', ''The Manhattan Projects'' and ''East of West'', as well as his lengthy stints as a writer on M ...
,
Molly Ostertag Molly Knox Ostertag (born October 28, 1991) is an American cartoonist and writer. Her work includes the animated series ''The Owl House'', webcomic ''Strong Female Protagonist'', the middle grade graphic novel series (''The Witch Boy'', ''The ...
, Scott Snyder, and James Tynion IV, paying them while keeping their subscription revenue. After their first year, Substack will take 10 percent of subscription revenue. The Substack founders reached out to a small pool of writers in 2017 to acquire their first creators. Bill Bishop was among the first to put his newsletter, ''Sinocism,'' on Substack, providing his newsletter for $11 a month or $118 a year with daily content. As of 2019, Bishop's ''Sinocism'' was the top paid newsletter on the service. By late 2020, the conservative newsletter '' The Dispatch'' claimed the title of top Substack user, with more than 100,000 subscribers and over $2 million in first-year revenue, according to founder Steve Hayes. In May 2021, Substack acquired Brooklyn-based startup People & Company. In August 2020, Substack reported that over 100,000 users were paying for at least one newsletter. As of August 2021, Substack had more than 250,000 paying subscribers and its top ten publishers were making $7 million in annualized revenue. In April 2022, the ''New York Times'' reported Substack may be valued at $650 million. Substack dropped an effort to raise money in May 2022. The company had aimed to raise between $75 million and $100 million.


Privacy incident

On July 28, 2020, Substack sent out email notifications to all its users about changing privacy policies and notification about CCPA compliance. In this notification email, email addresses of all recipients were inadvertently included in the email ' cc' field rather than in the ' bcc' field. This exposed the email addresses of many Substack users. The company acknowledged the issue on
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
and said that it was remedied after the initial batch of emails but did not disclose the number of users affected.


Substack Pro

In March 2021, Substack revealed that it had been experimenting with a revenue sharing program in which it paid advances for writers to create publications on its platform; this became a program known as Substack Pro. Substack has been criticized for not disclosing which writers were part of Substack Pro.


Substack Defender

Substack provides legal advice to its writers through its program, Substack Defender. Lawyers provide a legal review of stories before they are published, and provide advice surrounding cease-and-desist letters related to writers' work.


Criticism

In 2020, popular platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube began restricting or removing accounts that they claim spread
COVID-19 misinformation False information, including intentional disinformation and conspiracy theories, about the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease has been spread through social media, text messagin ...
, which violates those platforms' content policies. Some prominent authors have moved from those platforms to Substack. In January 2022, the Center for Countering Digital Hate criticized the company for allowing content which could be dangerous to public health, estimating it earned $2.5 million per year from the top five
anti-vax Vaccine hesitancy is a delay in acceptance, or refusal, of vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services and supporting evidence. The term covers refusals to vaccinate, delaying vaccines, accepting vaccines but remaining uncertain abou ...
authors alone, who have tens of thousands of subscribers. Presumably in response to press inquiries, the three founders in a blog post affirmed their commitment to minimal censorship.


References


External links

* *{{cite web , last1=Chang , first1=Clio , title=The Substackerati , url=https://www.cjr.org/special_report/substackerati.php , website= The Columbia Journalism Review , language=en , date=Winter 2020 Online companies of the United States Blog hosting services Internet properties established in 2017 American companies established in 2017 Companies based in San Francisco 2017 establishments in California