Ghosting Substack

I'm moving my newsletter to Ghost. Here's why.

Photo by Tandem X Visuals on Unsplash

About 18 months ago, I tried to leave Substack for Beehiiv. My big issue at the time was how Substack’s leadership was indifferent to profiting off neo-Nazi publications and then hiding behind “free speech.” However, I felt like I ended up paying the price for their mistakes since Beehiiv carried a $500 price tag, and I promptly started bleeding subscribers. My major mistake was not building any paying subscribers that I could use as a foundation, so I was essentially $500 in the hole with no clear way to grow through Beehiiv. So I swallowed my pride, returned to Substack, and hoped that perhaps they would change for the better, and if not, I could at least make for a better departure the next time.

That time has now come. First off, I have to thank every single subscriber, but especially those who have signed up for paid memberships. Because of you, I now at least have a base of support that allows me to keep this as a solvent endeavor. I’m not the biggest movie newsletter, but I’m not struggling to cover a payment gap.

So why leave? There are three main reasons.

Substack Can’t Afford to Lose Nazis

Not only has Substack continued to profit off hate speech, but they’ve even pushed Nazi content to subscribers. They apologized for the push, but not for hosting the content. If you think of Substack like a newstand that makes a share of revenue over what they sell, then they’re putting neo-Nazi newsletter next to normal newsletters. It would be like walking into a Barnes & Noble and seeing Der Stürmer next to Entertainment Weekly. Substack already makes choices over what they’ll allow, which is why there are no pornographic newsletters. But these choices follow what payment processors will allow. Substack, which must be burning VC cash (more on that in a moment), can’t afford to turn away hate speech, and so they claim they’re just supporting “free speech,” or at least speech that’s as free as Visa and Mastercard will allow.

In short, the problem is getting worse, and as Silicon Valley continues to embrace authoritarianism, Substack will continue its decline into supporting bigotry because there’s money in it.

A House of Cards

As Dave Karpf, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, recently noted, Substack does not scale. Substack’s business model of only taking 10% of revenue off paid subscribers is not going to fund a massive business to say nothing of all the free newsletters. With all the VC cash getting pumped into Substack, those investors will want to see a return on their investment, and that’s likely going to come in the form of programmatic ads or some other nonsense that seriously devalues the experience.

On the one hand, you can look at everything going well for Substack users, enjoy coasting off their bad business decisions, and say, “Well, that’s Substack’s problem.” But they will eventually make it users’ problem and then that will become readers’ problem. Perhaps at the highest levels—newsletters with 100,000 subscribers or more—the change will be negligible. But down here, they’re going to try and squeeze more out of the average user.

We’re already seeing it with how Substack is now allowing subscriptions via Apple. That’s a problem because Apple takes a 30% cut of any subscription made through their platform. That’s 30% on top of Substack’s 10%, and that’s just not a great deal for any writer. It’s better to move to Ghost where I pay $500 up front but I get 100% of all revenue generated.

Trusted Peers

I’m indebted to Substacks that have already made the jump to Ghost, specifically The Reveal and Formerly Dangerous. They’ve helped outline the transfer process, and while I hear that it’s not perfectly smooth (The Reveal compared it to trying to carry an egg on a spoon), it will get the job done. Furthermore, if they’re willing to trust that Ghost can handle subscription numbers much larger than mine, then I can stand to make the jump.

While Ghost isn’t quite as feature-rich as Substack, I find that I don’t use a lot of Substack’s features. I’ve never quite cracked the “chat” feature, I don’t have a podcast on here, and Substack Notes is a nice-to-have, but far from a need-to-have. Also, there’s no reason why, in time, Ghost can’t have these features as well. And again, if larger publications are happy with the trade-offs, then I don’t see the problem in following their lead now that I have the subscriber base that can support such a move.

What This Means for You

Pretty much nothing. Substack and Ghost use the same payment processor—Stripe—so if you’ve paid for a subscription or if you’re a free subscriber, nothing changes. You’ll still get your newsletters delivered to your inbox, the archives will still be there, and so forth. The only major change is if you really love Substack’s current bevy of features like chat and notes, those won’t be on Ghost. With that in mind, if these changes prompt you to cancel your paid subscription, I totally understand. I don’t want to pull a bait-and-switch on anyone, and if you only want your newsletters through Substack, I’m not going to take your money and mosey over to a different platform.

I hope that you’ll stick with me on Ghost. I think we can build better things over there, and as larger media organizations continue to hemorrhage expertise, I feel like it’s important to support writing that treats you like a valued reader rather than a mindless consumer. If you don’t want to support me, then please consider supporting any smaller publication that’s not trying to dominate the online space but simply carve out a niche where they can make a living wage sharing their knowledge and insights. You have plenty of terrific options, and my job is to ensure that this publication is one of them.

Changeover

This publication will become Ghost-exclusive in October. I haven’t settled on an exact date yet because I have to work through the “concierge” process of transferring everything over, but I’ll have more details in the weeks to come.

Again, none of this requires anything from you. I hope you’ll stick with me as I move to a new platform and that you’ll recommend this publication to your friends. If you have any questions, please contact me, and I’ll do my best to address your concerns.