Why Substack is more fun than writing for the national press

I might never get commissioned again after penning this, but you know what? That's OK

Drink your coffee, woman. Or accidentally tip it over the laptop. Your choice. Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash.

I fucking love Substack. This love affair started four weeks ago, when I wrote my first blog, about how I make bugger all from writing. Since then, I have been BUILDING AN EMPIRE (mwahahaha! I’m basically Elon Musk with big tits and scruples). I’m serious: I’m now making $1,790 a year from Substack, which is $1,593 after the 11% fees. That’s £1,304 in real money, which is £109 a month, but it’s better than a kick in the pissflaps. And, unlike my pissflaps, I’m really hoping it’ll grow.

Because money is extremely useful. If I could just grow this blog to 100 paid subscribers, I wouldn’t have to worry when my daughter browses the expensive exotic fruit section of the supermarket, casually picking up mangoes and lychees as I torture myself with mental calculations. (One time, she browsed all the exotic fruit while announcing loudly, “Peru - BAD. Tanzania - BAD. India - BAD. Britain - GOOD.” I felt like putting an announcement out over the tannoy: “My daughter’s not racist, she’s just worried about air miles and climate change!”)

Paw-paw is only gonna make me poor-poor. Photo by okeykat on Unsplash.

But [enter LinkedIn speak]: there are also many other reasons why Substack is a better business model than traditional journalism for writers. Here are seven of them…

You can write about whatever you want

A journo once told me that he pitched a piece called ‘In praise of pooing’ to a comment section, and the section editor told him in horror, ‘That’s disgusting!’ (Perhaps that editor doesn’t poo, but instead emits gusts of perfumed rose petals from his delightfully puckered anus?)

I mean, you can pitch whatever the hell you want - ‘Why I pick gum off pavements and chew it’, or ‘Experience: I once retched up my own clitoris after reading the Daily Mail’ - but it’s not going in a newspaper unless you can get it past an editor. And sometimes, they are wrong. They turn down brilliant ideas, and it is intensely dispiriting.

Also, a lot of the time they don’t bother replying to your emails at all, not because they’re intentionally snubbing you, but because they don’t have time to engage if an idea isn’t to their liking. As a former editor, I know the role is just too busy - you can’t hit back every ball that bounces into your inbox.

But now I can write about pretty much anything I want, uncaging my imagination. I no longer have to second-guess what editors will be interested in. Because I am my only editor, and it’s incredibly liberating.

Which brings me to my next point…

“Yes Daddy, I agree - Thatcher’s neo-liberal policies can only cause harm!” Me, aged zero, ‘reading’ the Guardian in 1981.

No one’s going to spike you

Entire non-journo world: “What’s spiking?”

It’s not as gruesome as it sounds. The media has its bad points, but journalists don’t tend to get skewered on spikes - at least, not in Britain.

No: ‘spiking’ is just when an editor decides to shitcan your piece after commissioning it, once you’ve filed the copy. So it never runs, and you feel sad and hopeless and consider giving up journalism to become a florist, where the only spiking is from thorns.

I’ve had a mere six pieces spiked, but I was still outraged as THEY WERE GOOD. You’re meant to receive a ‘kill fee’ of 50% of the article fee, but I’ve only ever been paid a kill fee once, when the piece couldn’t run due to a legal issue. (Big thanks to Red magazine, who paid me £175 of £350, and very promptly too.)

Writing is meant to be read (amusingly, mine wasn’t read in Red). Of course, these days you can stick your spiked pieces up on Substack in an indignant huff - but why not write them for Substack in the first place?

I get it: journalism is more profitable, at least initially, and newspapers have a far greater reach than you or I, which is seductive. You also never know if a piece in them could lead to more work, either from that publication or from others. And relationships with friendly editors can be lovely, too.

So a happy medium would be to do both, which is my plan: carry on my journalism career with the odd piece in nationals, but also build and grow this Substack.

However, my point remains: unless you’re a total masochist, you wouldn’t spike yourself. [This is an S&M joke. You might well shelve a piece, but at least it’d be your choice. Don’t @ me.]

You won’t get impaled on these. It’ll just feel like it, psychologically. Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.

You don’t have to deal with evil commenters

I know, I know: don’t read below the line. But most writers do, because wouldn’t you want to know what someone was saying about you, even if it ruined your day? Which it often does.

I shall tell you a story as juicy as a dripping summer plum you have to eat over the kitchen sink:

I once received a comment under a Guardian piece I’d written, saying that I only wrote for the Guardian because I’d shagged a certain celebrity columnist. Which, like many rumours, was about 5% true.