19 Comments
User's avatar
Ben Woestenburg's avatar

I'm writing my fiction and only able to afford a good bottle of wine a month...I'm working my way up to a good Scotch, but it may take some time.

Michelle Dowd's avatar

Yes. I used to be a contributing writer for several national publications, and I’m reconsidering ever going back to that.

Jonathan Brownson's avatar

I am always grateful for your willingness to post honest interviews Hamish rather than hiding in some corner office. I am even more grateful that I can comment on the ideas you express.

Hamish McKenzie's avatar

You can consider me your friend, and a friend to all writers (even the ones who hate me). I know the pain and necessity that comes with it, and also the irreplaceable high of being understood through writing.

Jonathan Brownson's avatar

You and Chris are more than friends for me. You gave me a platform to not only grieve over Jeannette's passing, but also begin to figure out who I am without her. God bless you both.

Plum Sykes's avatar

Ok these two British guys no idea who they are but I love them

Ricky Sutton's avatar

We are easy one the eye. Thanks for noticing Plum.

Magick Mica's avatar

exciting!!!!! I’m here with my coffee watching this!!

I love substack.

Mary Ann Rollano RN's avatar

Interesting. Can you expand more on the syndication model? How does one go about syndicating their work?

Ricky Sutton's avatar

Syndication began when one editor asked if he could republish one of my articles. I said yes.

Then I went through my black book of publishers I knew followed and liked my newsletter and offered it to them.

I said I would do the first 12 at an introductory price of $1,000 a month. For that, they would republish one of my articles per week. $144k.

The price felt low to them compared to me being a formal columnist. It also felt low to me. But it’s no extra work, and extends my reach.

Those publishers are now the third largest source of new subscribers.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Alix's avatar

This really shows how the media landscape is shifting—writers now hold the power, and the direct connection with readers changes everything.

🎡 Pierre-Henry™ 🌴's avatar

This is brilliant!

Poetry Culture's avatar

Being left Scotchless 😭

Ricky Sutton's avatar

Frankly, an awful place to be!

Ricky Sutton's avatar

Hey James. We did a pod with Cloudflare on this the other day. Pay per crawl will matter for bigger publishers, but Substack traffic is tiny by comparison. The quality is high though, that’s why I prefer sponsorships

Loretta Zaloga's avatar

independence is the key.

Stefanie Iris Weiss's avatar

For the love of god, Hamish, my subscribers are not getting my emails, even my high-paying founding subscribers, and I have been through EVERY STEP with them and it’s not their email provider. I have been desperately trying to get your AI support chatbot to help me open a help ticket to no avail! Please please please help so I don’t have to leave this platform entirely!

James Taylor's avatar

Fascinating discussion, surprised no one talked about recent push with the X402 standard e.g. announcements from Cloudflare → Fiat Wallet $ or Coinbase → Crypto Wallet that will allow content creators or publishers to enable friction-free micropayments from content consumers, plus the ability to block AI agents from scraping content (AI agents can use X402 to charge each other, but that’s a separate topic).