I’m a novelist, so I do something very different from what you do. I started by publishing with smaller independent publishers, then did five books with Knopf, and the last three with smaller publishers. My editor at Knopf is a genius, and we became close friends. What I learned from his editorial expertise was invaluable. But dealing with the publicity arm of the publisher grew worse and worse. I won some awards for my work and was a PEN/Faulkner finalist for my 2004 novel PRISONERS OF WAR, but the last time I did a book with them, they didn’t even try to get it reviewed, and so for the most part it got ignored, though it did win one significant award. So now I’m back with smaller publishers. Until I read this piece, I had never considered publishing a novel here, and I am still not sure that would work for fiction. But this is a great piece, like everything you write, and I am going to start telling younger writers to read it.
This may prove to be a life-changing post. For years I’ve been thinking, I have a book in me, but I’m basically too lazy and don’t have the fortitude to get over the hurdles required. How do I start? Will anyone want to read something by me? Are my thoughts even worth the paper required to print them? I realize that I don’t need to worry about all of that. I just need to write. Substack can provide the platform. Easy peasy.
This is fantastic, timely, informative, and inspirational news, Ted. I have been releasing music independently since 2007 and have been toying with the possibility of publishing/promoting a book in the same way. The thought is a bit exhausting because I know how much work is involved--but for those of us with an entrepreneurial bent (read: anti-corporate rebellious streak), it's also another opportunity to be creative.
I'm old enough to harbor some snobbery against self-publishing, but I realize that's just the flip side of an unhelpful nostalgia. Great editors are indispensable, but these days your agent or publisher may send you out to get that help and pay for it independently anyway, even with a contract on offer.
I self-published books that paid my way through college. Like you, my next book, currently in development, will be on Substack - and for almost exactly the same reasons.
10 years ago I remember discussing - on the now-defunct Google+ - how I thought publishing was top-heavy and ripe for disruption.
Most of my commenters wanted to explain to me all the important things that publishers did to a book during that year of release. They weren't getting it. Editing has value, for sure. Is that what's happening now? Does it take a year, and a couple dozen people involved?
This is incredible feedback for writers and musicians. Is Bandcamp the closest thing to Substack for us musicians? My royalties from respectable small jazz labels continue to be between 00.00 and 00.77. Just kidding. But not really. Not at all. Then again I don't have 50,000 followers anywhere.
Bandcamp is the closest thing to Substack for musicians, but the model there works best for physical albums (vinyl). The streaming economic model is still broken. But these alternative outlets will force the hands of the whole industry. I expect that a number of platforms and technologies will emerge in the next few years that will allow musicians (and other creative professionals) to hold on to most of the money made by their artistry. The culture needs and deserves this.
Would you please explain the difference between the streaming (and downloading) model on Bandcamp and the physical model. I would think that the cost of manufacturing would make the physical model less attractive.
Let me clarify this. Bandcamp lets artists keep almost 90% of the profits on a recording. Streaming platforms, in contrast, only let artists keep a tiny portion of the profits. But costs are costs—so, yes, you need to manufacture a vinyl album before you can sell it. I am not asking for costs to disappear, merely that artists get to keep the majority of the profit dollars.
So you were comparing Bandcamp to other streaming platforms? I guess I was thinking of Bandcamp as a streaming platform because once you buy a cd,Lp, or download from them you can also stream it. And in your response do you mean "profit" or total income? The definition of "profit" is what makes film accounting tricky.
I will write about that very subject in the next few days. Many people distrust the accounting that comes out of the entertainment and media industries. One of the nice things about Substack is that they share gross revenue numbers with me every day, and pay out my share almost immediately. There's almost complete transparency on everything related to dollars. The film and music businesses aren't even close, and this creates huge trust issues for anyone who has to rely on them for income.
I think (I'm not sure) Bandcamp pays 90% of the gross (not the profits) to artists but the artists are responsible for manufacturing costs. Some artists sell only downloads with no manufacturing costs except for recording and mixing.
Bandcamp allows you set whatever price you want on anything you sell. So part of the game for us artists is to create clear reasons why someone should purchase something at a price that creates a profit for you. For now, just having a vinyl seems to be enough for some artists depending on their fan demographics. Others go deep into special editions, T-shirts, other merch etc etc. But yeah, you set your own prices, and that's a pretty powerful reason to use Bandcamp. Can't do that with any of the major music platforms on which to sell either physical or digital goods.
Understood. But just as a matter of rhetorical logic and pure emotion. Why the F$ck is there a platform working for writers and not musicians! I don't make vinyl...Is it just that mp3's are easier to copy than whole books in mass quantity?
Substack can function as an "accelerating platform" because journalism is collapsing. Freely available content is infested with ads, affiliate links, and obvious padding to force mobile users to scroll through more on-screen real estate in order to get to the info they want. Entire publications are folding, and whatever's left is moving behind paywalls. It's a very different situation than in music, where most of the content people are looking for hasn't yet been paywalled or buried under a toxic user experience of ads and padding. Writers behind a paywall are competing with a blasted wasteland of misery and death that sends refugees by the truckload to Substack's gates every time a greater writer gets laid off or a publication gets hollowed out by private equity. Musicians behind a paywall are competing with all the best content from the entire history of a timeless medium delivered on-demand and for free. For now, in any case.
Yes, the need to support these SubStack-type forums for musicians is really important to our world. What about the potential for including music (even all music?) in the framework of SubStack posts. Doing playlists on SubStack Works well. And since the writer, musician, presenter has control over artwork, typesetting, and links - why not?
One publisher, Skyhorse, has developed a whole business model of picking up authors who have landed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Woody Allen, Blake Bailey, Norman Mailer)
Looking forward to your new book! Have purchased and read both your blues history and your jazz history. And often go back to them, just open up to any page and enjoy over again. But, as a dinosaur, I must say, I prefer the tactile pleasure that come from a book in hand, and the turning of pages. Also, when photos, charts, or maps are involved, the experience is much better with paper. Being able to get right to the photo/map etc...with a book is a far better experience than doing so electronically.
There’s a lot of truth in what you’ve said. Maybe the way to merge it with Substack publishing is to incorporate a print on demand feature. Like on Amazon.
Thank you for this. As an author currently finishing my fourth book, it provides a lot of food for thought. I have been contemplating using the year until it comes out to finish my fifth book (an expanded, rewritten version of the first) and publish on my substack. You may have given me the final inspiration I need. Thanks for that, Ted.
Slightly longer: I love everything about this, but also I thought of your sobering feature a while back on the Long Tail theory, which you completely poo-poohed, and rightly so. Do you see any parallels here? Are we all dreaming in technicolor?
Alternative media platforms are a genuine solution to the disappearance of the long tail in traditional institutions. Just getting on to Substack has opened my eyes to a cultural shift that I couldn't have understood just as an outsider. I will write about this in the future.
Good news - and the sooner you write it the better. And please keep those writers in mind (ok, us writers) who've got much fewer than thousand+ followers and little or no social media chops... That would be really helpful.
(according to several experienced NY editors) writes articles that are poorly suited for commercial success—they are too long, too dense, too strange.
But the numbers don’t lie. I always believed there were readers who didn’t want writing downsized or dumbed down. And now I see it confirmed in the metrics every day.
This is exactly why I subscribed to you and will get my act together and pay. Especially now that I learned there is an annual subscription. Would rather you know that I have bought your book in advance than rely on me to continue to subscribe or have to speculate about numbers.
For your past works I may not have been totally interested in a topic but as soon as I would start the way you write and the writing itself make the subject and your premise interesting enough that before I realize the article is finished. Every single one of them.
Unlike most of the writing today after finishing your articles (especially this one) I come away with a point of view I may not have considered, more knowledgeable about the written subject, and with a deeper appreciation.
For that I thank you.
The only advice I can offer is to ditch comic sans and continue to be yourself, the “Honest Broker” we enjoy. The truth is refreshing.
For some years I wrote LONG interviews, mostly with classical musicians (e.g., Joshua Bell, Helen Grimaud, Pinchas Zukerman, et al.). However, I was eventually asked to "cut them down." I don't know how much interest in classical music I'll find on substack, but I may try a few interviews on this forum. [I also write fiction, of course!]
I love your work. You became known to me via Rick Beato and his You-Tube channel. Did your Substack readership take off like a rocket concurrent with Rick’s recommendation?
My subscriber numbers definitely increased after I was on Rick's podcast. But I'm also learning that there's a huge interconnected ecosystem of alternative media platforms—and they tend to support each other. By moving to Substack, I now am part of an alt or indie world which includes podcasts, YouTube channels, blogs, etc. They reinforce each other in many ways, and actually have much larger cumulative impact than legacy outlets.
You and Rick have developed amusing, entertaining and educational franchises. Thank you!
In your talks with the Substack management, do they plan to include sound and video on an iteration of Substack? My son is an Indie musician in L. A. (I know, just one of 5 million) and they just released their first album. A Substack equivalent for music and music video content could part the waters and turn the tide for them. As you are forever on the prowl for new music, check them out on all streaming services and their website: Futurelustmusic.com Their self-titled first album is Futurelust.
They have no intention of signing with a label and owing their lives to “The Company Store”.
Thank you for making my cultural life so much richer.
Hi George, I’m one of Substack’s founders. The platform does support audio and video. I encourage you to check out Jeff Tweedy’s Substack (jefftweedy.substack.com) and Patti Smith’s (pattismith.substack.com) to see how they’re using the platform.
Thank you for joining the thread! I am definitely recommending this platform to them as a better way to monetize the dissemination of their art. Legacy record companies have seriously damaged the artists and themselves by losing the control of streaming which has resulted in the dismal streaming royalty rate.
What a great article, Ted which gives me so much hope. I began actually writing my crime novel here on Substack back in May posting 2 instalments a week and it has definitely helped to spur me on to finish it - I am 45,000 words in so far. It is gaining traction and I am getting more and more subscribers. All I need now is an agent or publisher to pick it up and I would be over the moon! I know that’s never going to happen but I live in hope. I have subscribed to your Substack and look forward to hearing more from you. Best wishes, Rosy Gee.
I’m a novelist, so I do something very different from what you do. I started by publishing with smaller independent publishers, then did five books with Knopf, and the last three with smaller publishers. My editor at Knopf is a genius, and we became close friends. What I learned from his editorial expertise was invaluable. But dealing with the publicity arm of the publisher grew worse and worse. I won some awards for my work and was a PEN/Faulkner finalist for my 2004 novel PRISONERS OF WAR, but the last time I did a book with them, they didn’t even try to get it reviewed, and so for the most part it got ignored, though it did win one significant award. So now I’m back with smaller publishers. Until I read this piece, I had never considered publishing a novel here, and I am still not sure that would work for fiction. But this is a great piece, like everything you write, and I am going to start telling younger writers to read it.
Is there any reason why you see fictional writer's can't do well with substack ?
This may prove to be a life-changing post. For years I’ve been thinking, I have a book in me, but I’m basically too lazy and don’t have the fortitude to get over the hurdles required. How do I start? Will anyone want to read something by me? Are my thoughts even worth the paper required to print them? I realize that I don’t need to worry about all of that. I just need to write. Substack can provide the platform. Easy peasy.
Easy peasy. Thought only i said dat you old cat. Great comments, and yes, substack sounds easy peasy 4 realz...
Easy peasy. Thought only i said dat you old cat. Great comments, and yes, substack sounds easy peasy 4 realz...
This is fantastic, timely, informative, and inspirational news, Ted. I have been releasing music independently since 2007 and have been toying with the possibility of publishing/promoting a book in the same way. The thought is a bit exhausting because I know how much work is involved--but for those of us with an entrepreneurial bent (read: anti-corporate rebellious streak), it's also another opportunity to be creative.
I'm old enough to harbor some snobbery against self-publishing, but I realize that's just the flip side of an unhelpful nostalgia. Great editors are indispensable, but these days your agent or publisher may send you out to get that help and pay for it independently anyway, even with a contract on offer.
Very much looking forward to your book!
Sandhya (Sandy) Asirvatham
I self-published books that paid my way through college. Like you, my next book, currently in development, will be on Substack - and for almost exactly the same reasons.
10 years ago I remember discussing - on the now-defunct Google+ - how I thought publishing was top-heavy and ripe for disruption.
Most of my commenters wanted to explain to me all the important things that publishers did to a book during that year of release. They weren't getting it. Editing has value, for sure. Is that what's happening now? Does it take a year, and a couple dozen people involved?
Best of luck, Ted. That outline looks delicious.
This is the most inspiring thing I've read in a while.
This is incredible feedback for writers and musicians. Is Bandcamp the closest thing to Substack for us musicians? My royalties from respectable small jazz labels continue to be between 00.00 and 00.77. Just kidding. But not really. Not at all. Then again I don't have 50,000 followers anywhere.
Bandcamp is the closest thing to Substack for musicians, but the model there works best for physical albums (vinyl). The streaming economic model is still broken. But these alternative outlets will force the hands of the whole industry. I expect that a number of platforms and technologies will emerge in the next few years that will allow musicians (and other creative professionals) to hold on to most of the money made by their artistry. The culture needs and deserves this.
Would you please explain the difference between the streaming (and downloading) model on Bandcamp and the physical model. I would think that the cost of manufacturing would make the physical model less attractive.
Let me clarify this. Bandcamp lets artists keep almost 90% of the profits on a recording. Streaming platforms, in contrast, only let artists keep a tiny portion of the profits. But costs are costs—so, yes, you need to manufacture a vinyl album before you can sell it. I am not asking for costs to disappear, merely that artists get to keep the majority of the profit dollars.
So you were comparing Bandcamp to other streaming platforms? I guess I was thinking of Bandcamp as a streaming platform because once you buy a cd,Lp, or download from them you can also stream it. And in your response do you mean "profit" or total income? The definition of "profit" is what makes film accounting tricky.
I will write about that very subject in the next few days. Many people distrust the accounting that comes out of the entertainment and media industries. One of the nice things about Substack is that they share gross revenue numbers with me every day, and pay out my share almost immediately. There's almost complete transparency on everything related to dollars. The film and music businesses aren't even close, and this creates huge trust issues for anyone who has to rely on them for income.
This is what's great about Bandcamp, too. Transparency and the ability to control your own pricing.
I think (I'm not sure) Bandcamp pays 90% of the gross (not the profits) to artists but the artists are responsible for manufacturing costs. Some artists sell only downloads with no manufacturing costs except for recording and mixing.
A friend of mine's son works at Bandcamp. The artist gets 85% of a purchased download. Not sure what it is for a CD or LP (or how that even works).
Bandcamp allows you set whatever price you want on anything you sell. So part of the game for us artists is to create clear reasons why someone should purchase something at a price that creates a profit for you. For now, just having a vinyl seems to be enough for some artists depending on their fan demographics. Others go deep into special editions, T-shirts, other merch etc etc. But yeah, you set your own prices, and that's a pretty powerful reason to use Bandcamp. Can't do that with any of the major music platforms on which to sell either physical or digital goods.
Understood. But just as a matter of rhetorical logic and pure emotion. Why the F$ck is there a platform working for writers and not musicians! I don't make vinyl...Is it just that mp3's are easier to copy than whole books in mass quantity?
Substack can function as an "accelerating platform" because journalism is collapsing. Freely available content is infested with ads, affiliate links, and obvious padding to force mobile users to scroll through more on-screen real estate in order to get to the info they want. Entire publications are folding, and whatever's left is moving behind paywalls. It's a very different situation than in music, where most of the content people are looking for hasn't yet been paywalled or buried under a toxic user experience of ads and padding. Writers behind a paywall are competing with a blasted wasteland of misery and death that sends refugees by the truckload to Substack's gates every time a greater writer gets laid off or a publication gets hollowed out by private equity. Musicians behind a paywall are competing with all the best content from the entire history of a timeless medium delivered on-demand and for free. For now, in any case.
Yes, the need to support these SubStack-type forums for musicians is really important to our world. What about the potential for including music (even all music?) in the framework of SubStack posts. Doing playlists on SubStack Works well. And since the writer, musician, presenter has control over artwork, typesetting, and links - why not?
Morality clauses in book contracts? That's shocking if not entirely surprising.
It's a very big deal now. Anything that offends a woke junior staff member is in danger of cancellation: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/76733-in-the-metoo-moment-publishers-turn-to-morality-clauses.html
One publisher, Skyhorse, has developed a whole business model of picking up authors who have landed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Woody Allen, Blake Bailey, Norman Mailer)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/27/tony-lyons-skyhorse-publisher-cancelled-books
Looking forward to your new book! Have purchased and read both your blues history and your jazz history. And often go back to them, just open up to any page and enjoy over again. But, as a dinosaur, I must say, I prefer the tactile pleasure that come from a book in hand, and the turning of pages. Also, when photos, charts, or maps are involved, the experience is much better with paper. Being able to get right to the photo/map etc...with a book is a far better experience than doing so electronically.
There’s a lot of truth in what you’ve said. Maybe the way to merge it with Substack publishing is to incorporate a print on demand feature. Like on Amazon.
Thank you for this. As an author currently finishing my fourth book, it provides a lot of food for thought. I have been contemplating using the year until it comes out to finish my fifth book (an expanded, rewritten version of the first) and publish on my substack. You may have given me the final inspiration I need. Thanks for that, Ted.
Short response to this: Holy fuck!
Slightly longer: I love everything about this, but also I thought of your sobering feature a while back on the Long Tail theory, which you completely poo-poohed, and rightly so. Do you see any parallels here? Are we all dreaming in technicolor?
Alternative media platforms are a genuine solution to the disappearance of the long tail in traditional institutions. Just getting on to Substack has opened my eyes to a cultural shift that I couldn't have understood just as an outsider. I will write about this in the future.
Good news - and the sooner you write it the better. And please keep those writers in mind (ok, us writers) who've got much fewer than thousand+ followers and little or no social media chops... That would be really helpful.
(according to several experienced NY editors) writes articles that are poorly suited for commercial success—they are too long, too dense, too strange.
But the numbers don’t lie. I always believed there were readers who didn’t want writing downsized or dumbed down. And now I see it confirmed in the metrics every day.
This is exactly why I subscribed to you and will get my act together and pay. Especially now that I learned there is an annual subscription. Would rather you know that I have bought your book in advance than rely on me to continue to subscribe or have to speculate about numbers.
For your past works I may not have been totally interested in a topic but as soon as I would start the way you write and the writing itself make the subject and your premise interesting enough that before I realize the article is finished. Every single one of them.
Unlike most of the writing today after finishing your articles (especially this one) I come away with a point of view I may not have considered, more knowledgeable about the written subject, and with a deeper appreciation.
For that I thank you.
The only advice I can offer is to ditch comic sans and continue to be yourself, the “Honest Broker” we enjoy. The truth is refreshing.
For some years I wrote LONG interviews, mostly with classical musicians (e.g., Joshua Bell, Helen Grimaud, Pinchas Zukerman, et al.). However, I was eventually asked to "cut them down." I don't know how much interest in classical music I'll find on substack, but I may try a few interviews on this forum. [I also write fiction, of course!]
I love your work. You became known to me via Rick Beato and his You-Tube channel. Did your Substack readership take off like a rocket concurrent with Rick’s recommendation?
My subscriber numbers definitely increased after I was on Rick's podcast. But I'm also learning that there's a huge interconnected ecosystem of alternative media platforms—and they tend to support each other. By moving to Substack, I now am part of an alt or indie world which includes podcasts, YouTube channels, blogs, etc. They reinforce each other in many ways, and actually have much larger cumulative impact than legacy outlets.
You and Rick have developed amusing, entertaining and educational franchises. Thank you!
In your talks with the Substack management, do they plan to include sound and video on an iteration of Substack? My son is an Indie musician in L. A. (I know, just one of 5 million) and they just released their first album. A Substack equivalent for music and music video content could part the waters and turn the tide for them. As you are forever on the prowl for new music, check them out on all streaming services and their website: Futurelustmusic.com Their self-titled first album is Futurelust.
They have no intention of signing with a label and owing their lives to “The Company Store”.
Thank you for making my cultural life so much richer.
George Young
Hi George, I’m one of Substack’s founders. The platform does support audio and video. I encourage you to check out Jeff Tweedy’s Substack (jefftweedy.substack.com) and Patti Smith’s (pattismith.substack.com) to see how they’re using the platform.
Thank you for joining the thread! I am definitely recommending this platform to them as a better way to monetize the dissemination of their art. Legacy record companies have seriously damaged the artists and themselves by losing the control of streaming which has resulted in the dismal streaming royalty rate.
Thank you, George! This article just came out and is relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/aug/18/in-the-streaming-era-substack-helps-indie-rockers-pay-the-bills-can-it-last
Hamish, thanks for sharing this article. Food for thought for this singer.
Thank you for your interest and timely assistance. INDUBITABLY!
What an exciting Post Ted! Thanks for sharing your book first with your subscribers!
Speaking of publishing your work, I’m currently reading “West Coast Jazz” and it’s fantastic!
What a great article, Ted which gives me so much hope. I began actually writing my crime novel here on Substack back in May posting 2 instalments a week and it has definitely helped to spur me on to finish it - I am 45,000 words in so far. It is gaining traction and I am getting more and more subscribers. All I need now is an agent or publisher to pick it up and I would be over the moon! I know that’s never going to happen but I live in hope. I have subscribed to your Substack and look forward to hearing more from you. Best wishes, Rosy Gee.