What would Substack in print actually look like?

A product pitch and a position about the future.

~1,700 words, a nine-minute read

Several months ago, I checked the welcome page for the most-read Substack, Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American. Then, it indicated there were “tens of thousands of subscribers.” Today? “Over one-million subscribers.” I point this out simply to say that this platform is clearly growing, likely exponentially so, to the point where individual authors arguably have more engagement than mainstream news outlets like CNN.¹ I find this kind of mind-blowing, in a good way. For what a better incarnation of Silicon Valley’s brighter side and the U.S.A. entrepreneurial spirit for a once scrappy start-up to quickly and legitimately compete with the entire country’s mainstream media regime. More admirable still is that it continues to operate under the premise that value lies in the freedom of individual authors and the voluntary engagement of their audiences, not in the platform itself. There are now countless instances of talented writers who have a newfound path to complete financial and intellectual independence. It’s a new rendition of the American Dream! When just recently it was a common household sensibility to despair over the precarious prospect of a writing career! The tide is a shiftin’, and Substack is owed a great deal of credit for pioneering the new environment.

Right, so I’m a big fan. And alongside my fandom is an idea, which many may find archaic. But a special, select few may say, “Hmm. Neat.” And it’s for these select few that this post is written.

On the surface, the premise for Substack (circa 2017) is super simple. Basically, it’s a blog (circa 1999²), plugged into an email list (circa 1971³), plugged into Stripe (circa 2009) for the optional payment set-up. (In a way, it’s a wonder something like this wasn’t implemented until relatively recently.⁴)

In the larger innovation ecosystem in which “technology” tends to be popularly associated with artificial intelligence, the batteryification of everything, and using Big Data to Solve Big Problems,⁵ the platform I’m using to deliver these very words to hundreds of inboxes is a nice counter example; an apparently simpler technology that’s proved to be highly impactful in its own right. Plus, if the gas stove debacle of a few weeks ago proved anything, it’s that primitive technology (in that case, fire) is deeply near and dear to us, and great political consequence awaits any party in charge during regulatory speculations over such things. Mike Solana’s Substack essay “American Futura” put it quite nicely:

For most, this was a fight over what the future should look like, and for the first time in over half a century most of the country preferred the look of fire to “the future.” A major problem for technologists.

Along these lines, here is what I want to say: paper is fire.

And what I mean by that is not that “material in the form of thin, flexible sheets used for writing” is somehow akin to “the physical manifestation of combustion, characterized by flames.”⁶ What I mean is more like, paper is lit. Paper is great! Paper is something we know and love and should hold onto, moving forward in time as we are and whatnot. Like fire, it is technology, even if we don’t think of it that way. A technology worth celebrating, even.

Herein lies my product pitch for Substack readers, writers, and employees in the product development team: allow writers to opt-in to a feature that offers subscribers an option to receive print copies of Substack articles.⁷ You know, in the mail or on the front porch or something. My hypothesis is this would be enjoyed by many, and could also be profitable for everyone involved.

I am confident about this claim in part because some of you voted for it. Yes, you, esteemed PinP reader. Not all of you are down with this kind of thing, of course, but some are. And, even though it’s only three people (lol) I think as a percentage, it is (in theory) enough to make the endeavor worth considering. 

The results of a poll I ran last year in a Plans in Perspective Substack post

After all, I know why 25% of you voted for it. I know because I would have voted for the same thing for the same reason: reading on screens is excruciating. It’s bad for the eyes, bad for the mind, and bad for holding one’s body in a dignified manner in public. You see, this sizable minority of poll-respondents take no propagandistic vision of the future seriously when it renders a little glowing rectangle as the paragon of all information-displaying surfaces. Long associated with Jetsonsesque techno-utopias, screens are devices which I now believe are at the root of an indescribable feeling of modern despair that stirs in me during times like when, getting on the subway car, I witness only the poor-posture hordes, huddled goblins as if over flickering, glowing death sticks, of the sort that Obi-Wan Kenobi sought not to be sold. 20 years from now, we will finally realize that screens are just as bad for you as death sticks. Or even probably worse.

We can do better. We can read our Substacks of choice in print, on paper.

Of course, one does not simply snap one's fingers to manifest such upgrades in the world. Being an architect and all, and having intimate awareness of the long and complicated path from scribble-on-paper to building-in-ground, I agree with Mr. Ek:

Jon Erlichman @JonErlichman

“Ideas are 5%…execution is 95%.” ~ Spotify founder Daniel Ek, 2012.

On that note, let me briefly do what me and my fellow millennial laptop-class does best: apply generalized terms in an overarching, diagrammatic fashion. Because if there is anyone ambitious enough out there to actually execute this, I may be of some limited help. I have, after all, formatted things, and printed things, and I once delivered newspapers for a time.⁸ That knowledge in mind, I anticipate the need to solve the following crucial problems if Substack in Print is to become real.

1. The formatting problem. How does Substack’s current format of the linear, infinite scroll, get reconfigured in a multi-page print document? Who formats?

2. The printing problem. Potentially large scale but with much more variety then, say, a typical newspaper (newspaper: same content, millions of copies. Substacks: a lot of varying content, ??? copies).

3. The distribution problem. How and where is content folded, stuffed in envelopes, mailed, stamped delivered?

4. Tech infrastructure problem. The system upon which this is built to ensure, after all, that there’s frustration-free interface for opted-in readers and writers. Enter address, click, start receiving content. 

To dream on a little more, what would it actually look like? Magazine style print? Newspaper paper? 8.5x11 printer paper, a la the family newsletter? Or, the of-mysterious-origin stapled-seam church brochure? It’s fun to speculate on, and perhaps it would vary, greatly even, depending on the Substack in question. Me, I like those folded-in-half magazine-style ones they do for Real Review, for example.⁹ 

Image Source: https://bpando.org/2017/09/25/hands-real-review/ (click for more images, too) and Real Review.

Regardless of the final form, it’s interesting to reflect on the vibe-shift so well represented by the media and Twitter frenzy over the gas stove issue. That is to say, technological obsolescence — even if temporarily deemed as some form of “progress” — is by no means inevitable. That’s definitely true with paper. Recall how in the 2000’s, the ever-imminent transition to the paperless corporate environment was all but inevitable. Take the hit TV show The Office, for example, where the financial difficulties of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company are referenced periodically over its nine-season run. Yes, just behind Michael Scott’s goofball hilarity lurked the cold reality of an uncertain and changing world, global financial collapse and paper company extinction and all. 

“Listen, Scott. It’s no longer financially viable, we’re losing money. OK? It’s not a charity, it’s a business. And it’s a dying business. Look, the whole business model of the small regional paper company simply doesn’t make sense anymore.”

– Dwight Schrute as David Wallace, Season 3 Episode 7

Yet, look around the office now, 18 years after that iconic staple of American TV first aired. At least from my vantage, the real-world version of Dunder Mifflin known in these parts as W.B. Mason seems to be doing just fine. I see their trucks every morning, frantically delivering paper all over the place.

The future is fire, and the future is Substack. First devised in 0’s and 1’ s but someday maybe also, for a nominal fee of course, coming to your mailbox.

Morning ‘stack in hand, gas-stove cooked breakfast on the table.¹⁰ That’s a vision of American Futura I can get excited about. I'm serious.

1. See a recent ratings report that indicated that CNN averaged “just 444,000 viewers in primetime.”

2. Shortened from the term “weblog”, circa 1993, according to OED.

3. 1971: First Ever Email, Guinness World Records

4. See “Are Technologies Inevitable?” for more on this.

5.  See (take?) Raj Chetty’s MOOC “Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social Problems.”

6.  Clips of OED definitions.

7. I have not searched high and low to see if someone is actually doing this on, say, their own Substack, so it’s very possible this idea is not really new. This footnote officially saves me from any accusations of pitching redundant ideas. I’m only claiming to be original if I am, in fact, original, and I’m probably not.

8. I’m not sure if anyone’s reading this and wondering what this has to do with the built environment, as I’m not sure anyone really cares if I “stay in my lane” or not. It’s Substack, and there are no rules, after all. But if that is of concern somehow, this is the part I would point to to say I think there is something about producing drawings, plans, as physical objects that exist outside of screens, and therefore a connection can be drawn to the original premise of PinP. So, there you have it.

9. In the absence of this being implemented as a universal feature by Substack, I’m still considering piloting this on PinP sometime in the future. If you’re still in the 25% that finds this of interest, let me know?

10. While we’re here, let’s pour one out for large, wall-mounted clocks too.