As I continue my Year of Dickens, I’m about 30% through Barnaby Rudge. It’s . . . not great. The characters just aren’t very compelling and I’m having a hard time keeping track of them, which hasn’t been the case with other sprawling novels of his. Totally get why this one is usually at the bottom when his books are ranked.
You made it, you own it
You always own your intellectual property, mailing list, and subscriber payments. With full editorial control and no gatekeepers, you can do the work you most believe in.
I use Beehiiv at work. The analytics dashboard is akin to what I’ve used at various trade pubs over the years. For example you can A/B test on Beehiiv, but I’m not sure you can do that on Substack. Beehiiv also has deep ad tech integrations that Substack doesn’t have any interest in. There’s also a lot more design options. I’d say today’s announcement that Substack is partnering with The Free Press to build an enterprise solution is a real shot at Beehiiv, but of course enterprise users on Beehiiv already have that solution, so it’ll need to be better mousetrap. Also, at the enterprise level the economics tend to be friendlier to a bigger pub since you pay a flat fee and don’t have to revshare on paid subs.