Substack

In two thousand and seventeen, writers worked for publications that owned their audiences. Medium owned writers. Twitter owned writers. Platforms controlled distribution and pricing. Substack changed the equation. Writers kept ninety percent of subscription revenue. Substack took ten percent. Writers could own their audience directly. A writer with twenty thousand subscribers charged five dollars monthly. Revenue equaled one point two million annually. The writer earned one point one million after Substack's fee. Traditional publishing paid salaries regardless of audience size or engagement. Substack aligned incentives perfectly between writers and their reading audiences. Writers migrated to Substack from every major publication.