Thanks for the multiple mentions, Tara! As always, I appreciate your historical framing. This jives with what Ted Gioia published recently. And it is remarkable how much Substack has improved on the formerly disparate blogosphere. (Although some former bloggers say that the growth advice and best practice roundups proliferated then, too).

One thing I'm still struggling with, a bit, is the saturation of these spaces. I met with a few other Substack writers recently, and we all moaned a bit about how many newsletters we were subscribed to (far more than we could keep up with) and how much "noise" there is. I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing, so I can dip in and out of Notes without much FOMO. But some people feel like as soon as they open it, they're behind and trying to catch up.

I remember a similar feeling the first time I attended the AWP conference. I was there by dumb luck, having landed a poem in RATTLE and then having been invited by Timothy Green to read that poem as part of a cowboy poetry panel (even though there was nothing that cowboy about it). You were supposed to walk the exhibit, make connections, introduce yourself to editors. But I suck at that, or at least don't know how to do it without coming off as crass. And so the ironic effect of going to the mothership of creative writing was that I really just wanted to stop writing, stop producing, take my voice out of the general clamor.

I had a desultory conversation last night with an indie bookstore owner where I live. He had a shelf labeled "Local Authors," so I asked (while buying a book for my daughter) how he chose who to feature there, if he did commissions, etc. Turns out that he just features local authors who have deals with Penguin. Can't be bothered with commissions. Spoke scornfully of vanity projects and how local authors who don't have a publishing house behind them never sell. It made me question why I was buying a book from someone who was just a funnel for big publishers anyway -- why not get it cheaper online? I've never run a small bookstore, and maybe he's jaded by past attempts. But it seems that little people should have each others' backs.

It's easy to get discouraged out there. I'm glad that we have built these sources of support here, and I hope that whatever happens when Substack goes public, that we can keep these pockets of community together.