I’m becoming more uncomfortable with bookish Substack and I’m having a hard time figuring out why. Scattered thoughts below, apologies in advance.

Some of it is that there are now so so many reviews, recommendations, and lists . . . and there’s so much overlap. There’s now even discourse on the discourse! Some people love a certain classic, some people hate it, argument ensues. Repeat, ad nauseam.

I also can’t quite nail down what the point of all this bookish content is — sharing our love for great stories and art is totally fine, but is that really all that’s happening here? That is certainly what used to be the impetus for my newsletter, but then the social aspects of Substack were introduced and it inevitably changed. I started thinking about audience. And virality. And how to make $$$.

I’ve been writing my own newsletter for almost 8 years. The bookish web has changed a lot in that time: BookTok has taken over, celebrity book clubs move millions of copies, publishers focus on a handful of new titles, and Substack is obsessed with classic lit. Some of it is good, some of it is bad. I haven’t figured out how my newsletter fits into this new world.

So, do I keep doing what I’ve been doing, sharing a couple books a week that are mostly in the vein of a classic book review? Do I try to pull out lessons from what I read? Do I come up with more interesting angles? Do I publish less in order to take on bigger ideas and projects?

I’m wildly grateful for Substack but part of me wishes it didn’t evolve beyond being a platform for sending emails.

As I think about 2026, I’d love to hear what you think about Substack these days as a creator and a consumer.