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Keep up the good work...And...please do away with this new Substack issuance of the "influencer" checkmark. It doesn't reflect well on Substack to fall into Meta/X mimicking. Readers love and follow the writers they respect, not because of perceived "being in the special club."

Just fyi the checkmarks are to illustrate the number of paying subscribers (hollow orange for hundreds; solid orange for thousands; blue for tens of thousands), so they’re less a social credit system as on X and Facebook, but more a signal to readers that this or that publication has managed to attract a given number of paying subs. Obviously I have one, so you may think me biased, but it’s nice to have a system which automatically shows new subs that your work is of sufficient quality to merit paying for. Keeps the flywheel spinning.

Mikey, understand totally ... also, putting my tiny hand up for the folk who genuinely don't want to have paying (or pledged) subscribers (just saying so for a me) - the playing field should level(ish) or at least not two escalators, one fast, one slow (rubbish analogy alert, which is one reason I won't charge for my musings!)

I think Substack do a pretty good job of keeping a level playing field overall. We all have access to the same tools. Substack Reads and getting featured on the homepage is not dependent on checkmarks (both happened to me before I got mine).

A more philosophical point - I have a strong belief that power laws are a fact of the universe, however we may feel about them, so I’m not sure there’s anything Substack, or any platform, could do to stop big winners arising from the mass of strivers. Not th…

Philosophically speaking, it all depends how we measure winning ... as comparison is the thief of joy I am mightily of the hope that we all find some voices we enjoy hearing, and that we all end up being voices that find an audience of their own, whatever the size.

I would gently say, though, that as "a discovery system that attempts to maximize subscription revenue for writers" rolls out, the pitch leans a little more in favour of those in that space.

I'm very relaxed though, relishing the joy of creation.

You make a very good point, Barrie. Though I’m not sure what the alternative for Substack is, as they will need to earn money at some point. I have no idea but I doubt they’ve made a profit yet, given the Silicon Valley tech startup playbook

Of course, so true - and I guess the big hitters will end up supporting the business model and those with smaller reach (and modest ambitions).

There's an excellent recent post by Margaret Atwood which addresses the idea of taking paid subscriptions, dispersing the 10% to Substack before supporting charities with the rest. Lots of ways to flavour the recipe.

I was just thinking about this and wondering if there might be a way to collect an additional .5% (or something) to have a writers' hardship fund ... and then thought of the nightmare it might be to administer it. However, we are a community of individual writers for the most part and it would be nice to have some way of supporting needs. I was so touched by Edwin Kiptoo Ngetich's post about haranbee and how community rises to the needs of the individual ... I would like to be part of that kind of community.