I'm Publishing My Next Book on Substack
tedgioia.substack.com
tedgioia.substack.com
The author of this article makes the point that Substack pays ~90% in revenue, versus traditional publishers which do ~10%.
While this is true, I do think the author seems to deliberately avoid mentioning the self-publishing platforms like Gumroad, Podia etc which allow authors to keep 95-96.5% of revenue when publishing books, and also have a direct connection with people who bug the books through emails. I say this as someone who published through one of these platforms. (Also, there are other newsletter providers which charge even less of a commission, like Revue charging 5% or Ghost or ConvertKit charging a monthly fee based on the number of subscribers, which could come out to below 5%)
A real (financial) pull of publishing a book via a monthly, paid newsletter is the higher revenue per customer. A customer won’t pay more than, say, $40 for a book. But they’ll more likely pay ~$120 by paying $10/month for a year. See also how Steven Sinofsky is publishing his book series Hardcore Software on Substack with the option to pay up to $300/year to get a final, printable PDF edition of the series once finished. I paid $100 to read this series for a year and one of my friends went for the $300 option.
Holding on to publishing rights is a huge difference when going self-publishing or newsletter-first. When I worked with a traditional publisher, only then did I realize I have no rights to publish my words without publisher consent: this was when I asked if I can share drafts of my writing in public, and the publisher said this is down to approvals on their end. This realisation was a reason I ended up self-publishing instead. As the author of the article notes, by keeping publishing rights, it’s always an option to sign a contract with a publisher for a print book.
What is not written in the article is how self-publishing makes a lot more (financial) sense once:
1. You have enough of a reach to not benefit much from the - sometimes surprisingly little - marketing that a traditional publisher does
2. The association with a publisher brand is no longer a priority.
3. You don’t need a publisher helping you finish a book pushing you with deadlines (they sure help!)
4. You are ok paying for - or doing yourself - editorial things (development editing, copyediting, proofreading)
You should plan to have a book web site, at least. And probably submit it on HN.
Wow, this sounds awful (for the customer). Is that where publishing is going? $120+ for a book?
lol. Bill Gates' book on climate change is selling for $14 (Kindle version) https://www.amazon.com/How-Avoid-Climate-Disaster-Breakthrou...
I can understand charging for hard copy, but why does someone worth 100B feel the need to charge for digital version of his book on the most important topic of today, climate change? Even if 100,000 people buy it, that is what, 1.4M? Bill must make more than that in the time it takes for him to drink his morning coffee?
That said, it is his book, he can do whatever he wants with it. He was kind enough to make the PDF available for free for college kids, for a while... https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/How-to-Avoid-a-Climate-Dis...
I guess that Sinofsky thinks he has a very niche audience who can well afford $300 so they he might as well get them to pay.
I was responding to to the bit about online editors, and Quip has a very nice collaborative editor that has a lot of useful functionality (which eventually makes its way into Google Docs)
And even then, I’d chose wordpress over medium any day because of how restrictive and gated medium is. Their rss feeds are also so hidden it’s annoying.
https://medium.engineering/why-contenteditable-is-terrible-1...
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I think the cause will be a combination of being a YC company along with community that has a general skepticism of legacy media outlets and an enthusiasm for alternatives. Plus the nature of the platform as a “no curation” direct channel from writer to reader lends itself to a particular kind of writer that’s attractive to that same community.
Personally I’m not really on board and a “substack.com” domain is now a negative quality signal for me in the same way as “medium.com” has become, but I can totally see why it’s a hot topic for some.
It is for classic liberals who want free thought, so it seems logical that the site shows up here.
It’s really the case that they played up their hosting of some controversial writers in order to build publicity - hence one of their founders appears on Joe Rogan etc.
You can admire their stance and business model or not but let’s not pretend they were out of the ordinary.
As a reader, I like substack. It promotes a healthy diversity in opinions unlike the increasingly ban-happy established social media and puts some power back into the writer's hands, at the cost of shattering the "For Free!" illusions of free beer social media.
What I just wish they do is realize how goddamn fucking aweful their rock-slow website is, how astonishingly user-hostile and actively infuriating it is to use.
He moved to a platform after decades of traditional publishing which got him the position he is in. It's like Taylor Swift starting her own record label and wondering why she keeps so much money now.
Small creators rely on distributors for advertisement, management, organizing events, networking and so on, none of which Substack does and none of which Ted needs. I don't think going down that route is good advice for anyone who isn't already extremely big. It's like going from being a member of the actors guild to becoming a Twitch streamer. If you're really famous you can likely carry your readers over, otherwise you may have a problem.
You are correct. It's not a valid comparison. Publishers help promote the author. Substack does no promotion.
That being said, the book he plans on releasing in installments about music looks good.
Walter White is the new Che Guevara. Now everyone thinks about Walter White when they feel a bit rebellious.
Mangas are still published like this (in jump) I believe?
I'm not a Christian, and don't agree with everything, therein, but the book is a great treatise on general decorum and a thoughtful approach to basic morality.
That is exactly how it was written.
I'm pretty sure The Martian, by Andy Weir, was written that way, as well.
It would also seem like writing posts is a way better ROI on time compared to a book.
“I’m a little like Walter White in the TV show Breaking Bad.”.
The moral of the story in Breaking Bad was that Walter was so self absorbed and selfish that he risked everything in his life.
How clueless we all are about the machinations of our own ego.
Instead of jumping to conclusions about the article (and author!) based on its first sentence, how about we take some nuance into consideration and try to understand where they're coming from?
With a positive attitude, you can clearly see that the author's comparison is towards the character's desire to focus on their work, instead of the "messy" processes around it. It's a superficial comparison about this one specific trait, not about the entire character or the series.
In other words, you are proving that our initial takeaway from the opening sentence was valid.
How egotistical, to publish your book in a unconventional way, explain that you are doing so, proclaim you are a little like Walter White. How could one not judge the whole thing?
So what’s the critique here? Maybe there’s a better way to fucking say stuff. And one should, especially if you are literally in the business of expressing yourself.
Why doesn’t he tell the truth? Would a publisher even publish it? Would a paperback even get to a store? Does he have a better chance at marketing and broadcasting the book in digital form? Probably right?
But no, he’s little like Walter White.
What’s truly meme status now days is self aggrandizement and constant exercises in vanity and patting one self on the back. It has scaled to ridiculous levels, and the overwhelming waves of it drowns valid criticism.
No, you shouldn’t write this article at all. You should publish your book, evaluate it’s success and failure, and then write your analysis.
HN is not Lake Woebegone, where all of the posters are above average.
They comprehend that the first few words that you present, will set the tone and understanding for what follows. That any nuance created, flows onwards from the context that you have first presented.
Some random writing on Twitter, or in their own little blog, should be afforded more sympathy than just their first sentence, because they probably don't have a clue what they're doing. That is not the same context as someone who intends to present a literary work, that can hold itself, on its own value.
Much like how we would hold a CEO more responsible for his words, than a warehouse employee. Both may be representing the company, within their context, but one comes with a set of expectations and responsibilities that the other would never encompass.
HashNode.dev has a better editor, syntax highlighting just works and the UI is not a mess.
In fact, some of the controls that I have to cede to them just to get my posts pay-walled were just unacceptable to me. Just the other day I realized that it's very easy to bypass the paywall to any substack websites. You just simply have to:
1. Change the useragent to 'googlebot'
2. Clear your cookies, if you'd visited the before.
3. Profit(?)
I get that they probably did it for some SEO optimization purposes, but I'd like to have to liberty to opt out of this behavior for my newsletter, hosted under my own domain no less.
> 10 REASONS TO PUBLISH A BOOK ON SUBSTACK
> (1) Substack is an accelerating platform:
> A few days ago, I had a chance to sit down with Substack’s founders while they were visiting Austin. I told them that I was initially skeptical about the platform, but a moment arrived when I finally grasped the way Substack empowered me.
I honestly doubt someone who just met the founders of a company face to face would then write an article purely void of any need to promote the platform, plus when you look at the text following what I quoted, I doubt that would be written without checking with the company first.
My 2cents, I could be wrong.