thoughts on subscriptions + publishing + bluesky/atproto
Riffing on longform publishing on Bluesky/ATproto, and what could be cool to build as Substack alternative, drawing on ideas & convos on Bluesky (orig for @leaflet.pub team, now sharing publicly!)
To start with some high level things that feel important to me:
keeping bsky publications ultralight…like Leaflet :)
publications > specific things like 'blog' or 'newsletter'
making sure it feels fun, fresh, different, open
Looking on Bluesky there really is quite a lot of discussion about Substack alternatives…both for political reasons and because people are just fed up with their self-serving platform lock-in etc.
This is a good sign, compared to e.g. Patreon which I barely see people talking about because they've fallen so far behind.
There's also something fitting about building the Bluesky counterpart to power publishing when Substack is trying to make their own Twitter clone…going the other direction haha.
anyway, some post-based observations follow!
(not particularly ordered for now…)
We definitely want to focus on writing / publishing (vs. Buttondown for example which is great but explicitly email-first):
I think my main problem (and it's definitely a Me problem, not a You problem -- thank you for replying!) is that most of the functionality I want is more toward the blog CMS side of things - comments, search, and tags, in particular - than the e-mail newsletter end of the spectrum.
It seems the best current alternative is Ghost, which is basically cooler nimbler WordPress but still pretty complicated to set up and/or expensive for the hosted version.
I think this is a good point — focusing on lightweight + flexible publications feels like a good direction, making it about the content…and NOT the feed, inbox, chats, posts, and so many other things (Substack is becoming as bloated as e.g. Notion):
substack does so many sleazy, growth-hacky things like i view newsletters as a necessary evil; i find them extremely retrograde as a use of the medium but i understand why they need to exist, so i put up with them but like, substack gives you a newsletter and then moves immediately to geld it
And the social aspect of Substack is almost certainly overrated! The reason people’s newsletters grow is because other authors mention them and link to them. That has *nothing* to do with the platform! Other platforms (Ghost, Beehiiv, Wordpress, Buttondown, Medium) have better economics, too.
Ghost is that platform. @theradr.bsky.social has written about how Ghost is an ethical nonprofit. It’s not that much of a pain. People like the convenience & social networking aspect of Substack. Then they try to convince themselves that’s more important than not giving a fucking inch to fascists.
Similarly it'd be nice if we can have at least a decent free tier, if we can keep email delivery cheap or do a version with more direct Bluesky subscriptions…
frustrating that there's not a Substack competitor with the kind of financial backing to allow people to host not-paid-for newsletters without fees
New: I wrote about Substack's splashy new partnership with Bari Weiss, what it's been like in the year since Substackers Against Nazis, and why you really need to get the fuck out of there: www.thehandbasket.co/p/substack-a...
This next post makes me think about the beauty of ultralightness (per Laurel!) — not only re: the mechanics of setting up publications but in making it feel good to create and share things.
I have in mind a goal of, say, creating a dozen publications…because why not! They can be tiny popups, or a way to share just occasional simple photos I like, or a little limited-run event series…whatever :)
For a lot of us the “simple” prospect of filling in a web page with content presents an insurmountable writer’s block. For all their flaws, this is in large part why the mainstream social media applications have been so successful: All it asks for is a blurb, and now we can be WRITERS together 💌
Resolving the content-creation imperative
🍵To fully inhabit the World Wide Web you must also embody your virtual self within it. For a lot of us the “simple” prospect of filling in a web page with content presents an insurmountable writer’s ...
Haha love this because it's so obvious yet also so true…to be fair there are other CMS options that are more user friendly, but usually still tricky to set up or limited or annoying in certain ways:
they should invent a wordpress that's easy to use and looks good
For me the appeal of e.g. WordPress or similar CMS / site builders is being able to publish things in many forms, really flexible with the shape of content, beyond just 'blogs'…it'd be great to see publications that are more like a series of zines, websites, pages, events, etc. — more "doc web".
(I do love when people make weird Substacks that break the mold of typical blog / newsletter expectations, even when it pushes against the grain of the platform…let's aim to enable this, but better!)
Also interesting — not fully sure what they have in mind but I like the idea of exploring ways to inject interactivity to publications:
I feel like it's time for the wordpress equivalent of what replit is trying to do. Community-built, easily-installable custom apps
I'm really into this example from Elan of using Substack in a way that feels fresh and breaks the bounds of the default Substacky subscription dynamic…makes it more personal, interactive, etc.
How might we make publications and subscriber relationships with Leaflet feel flexible and nice for this kind of thing?
today i’m launching a ᵐⁱᶜʳᵒsupporter program: readers can support Escape the Algorithm by doing something as little as sending me a gift/postcard in the mail or taking me out for a cup of coffee. here’s why:
Announcing the Escape the Algorithm ᵐⁱᶜʳᵒsupporter Program
Welcoming tiny acts of codependence
Interesting, sounds like Ghost is working on some ActivityPub stuff:
Plus they're not playing the whole "we own a copy of your social graph" game that Substack is using to lock folks in. Full Fediverse integration coming pretty soon!
Building ActivityPub
Ghost is federating over ActivityPub to become part of the world’s largest publishing network
…including "building an ActivityPub feed directly into Ghost", cool:
Buttondown is thinking about this as well:
…but this feels a bit more like a syndicated distribution channel and less potential for global social dynamics than with bsky/atproto.
Nice, found via search, someone suggesting basically the exact thing we're thinking about:
The problem is that there isn't a large platform besides Bluesky that doesn't monetize Nazis as a core part of the platform. @bsky.app would be smart to add a feature that rivals substack that includes a subscription model. I would absolutely use that. @johniadarola.bsky.social probably would too
And just saw this too!:
i think it would be really cool if substack and bluesky could somehow become best friends
Ha, some evidence people don't take Patreon seriously for writing:
As I wrote, Patreon doesn’t market itself for writing and nobody mentions it as a Substack alternative. I spent a long time looking for alternatives and never heard of Patreon being an option and now I can see why.
Interesting notes / wish for some kind of atproto payments infra:
I think payment rails for atproto is going to be a requirement. And I'm hoping how its implemented is generic enough and decentralized so we don't get locked into one centralized authority handling payments. How that's achieved, IDK. I have an idea, but I don't think people would like it lol.
What I mean by that is imagine someone makes market lexicon. And a bunch of apps leverage that lexicon or even a subscription service. If there's a account level payment preference than from any service I can pay for things. That's of course the option if there's not a "network level standard".
Good question from Erlend here re: why publish directly on atproto vs. publish normally to the web + use atproto for broadcast:
What’s the benefit it full publishing on atproto? As a publisher, I first and foremost want my content published on the statically archivable web, that’s my source of truth. RSS, ActivityPub, AT Protocol et. al. are broadcasting protocols as far as my published material is concerned.
My thoughts on this (so far) include:
a way to archive data in a more guaranteed open way
cool interop w/ other apps in ecosystem + identity layer
potential with composable lexicons e.g. subscriptions (both email and $) alongside longform content (or other kinds!)
different publish views, social discovery mechanisms, etc. built on top of those same base lexicons
And a few great replies from others! See:
much closer tie-in with the rest of your social identity that you need for promotion. Im doing the full WordPress over ActivityPub experience with fediversereport, broadcasting full text via wordpress plugin as well as promotion via my masto account. having that be a single account would help a lot
I think AT Protocol is going to advance beyond broadcast. Or rather, the entire web is distribution and discovery. Publishing is irrelevant if it can’t be found. Not clear the statically archivable web is a target ahead. This is my hypothesis of why we should put a notes graph on #atproto
i do think substack esque features would be amazing on or connected to atproto (some of it requires private data tho sadly)
bluesky should add an “email list” lexicon that allows anyone to “sign up” to a profile’s email list, thus allowing anyone to begin collecting subscribers for an email newsletter and directly competing with part of substack’s feature set
Good discussion here! Agree the network effects are important and something we'd want to focus on…
Part of the problem for writers migrating from Substack is losing platform benefits and network effects. A real alternative must be more than just a publishing platform. It needs networks and communities too.
I’m going to continue to talk about building (and migrating to) infrastructure to counter the right wing bullshit machine. Here’s another piece of that. We need good (better?) alternatives to Substack and we need to take our content and eyeballs over to them.
Eagle-eyed viewers will notice this isn't a Substack, it's a @ghost.org. (Also used by @caseynewton.bsky.social, @404media.co, @susanrinkunas.com & many others.) Costs me more, but it's worth it. If you have any issues, let me know.
(This is a living doc; please tag me on Bluesky @schlage.town if you have thoughts / want to chat about any of this further!)