After a week of side effects, I’m back, with an interview of Rachel Macaulay from The Links. Tell us a little about yourself. I live in Edinburgh, in Scotland, and I worked as an engineering consultant for years before pivoting to the penniless writer industry. I write both fiction and non-fiction, and love both equally.
"I’d like... to be able to add your own newsletter to a category rather than it being curated by the Substack team (what’s that about them not having an editorial stance?)"
"When the gods wish to punish us, they merely answer our prayers." Self-published books on Amazon had the ability to self-categorize, but it led to all kinds of nonsense of people mis-categorizing their books to get a high ranking in a less competitive category. So this is not a tenable idea, sadly, if one wishes categories to actually mean something.
And getting rid of the front page altogether to avoid even the slightest hint of "editorializing" as you accusingly put it seems overkill for a very reasonable policy, considering the alternatives. The front page is not part of one's actual publication anyways - it's for all intensive purpose an external advert.
I take a middle position. I do think Substack is curating on its front page and in its categories, and that this is a problem. (I keep wondering: why those newsletters and categories and not others?) But self-categorization, as you point out, could lead to other mischief. While I assume Substack will continue to feature certain newsletters, I'd like to also see a better search engine as well as a set of links to random newsletters. (If there were a page listing, say, ten random newsletters, personally I'd keep refreshing the page to see what else is out there! 🙂)
I agree with the better discovery features, though I wonder if a reason they seem hesitant is they are afraid of people messing with it - trolls starting multiple neo-nazi newsletters, spammers starting Nigerian prince newsletters and so on.
As it is, to get any visibility requires effort, and so is a "natural" way to filter. I wonder if a big reason why some categories are missing - such as fiction perhaps - is because those towards the bottom of that top list have single digit subscribers and would therefore be too easy for bad actors to get on.
Honestly I feel like someone at Substack just came up with a bunch of categories one day, and that no one has revised them. Does "Literature" include original fiction? Does "Climate" include environment and nature? Should there be a category for pets, or autos, or fitness, or games, or...? I presume some of these other categories would include newsletters of significant interest.
I imagine that Substack must be concerned about trolling and spam. Spam does appear if you scroll down some of the categories. Substack could probably filter a lot of it out shortly after the spam is posted. But that wouldn't stop someone from starting what looks like a legitimate newsletter and later making it less benign.
"I’d like... to be able to add your own newsletter to a category rather than it being curated by the Substack team (what’s that about them not having an editorial stance?)"
"When the gods wish to punish us, they merely answer our prayers." Self-published books on Amazon had the ability to self-categorize, but it led to all kinds of nonsense of people mis-categorizing their books to get a high ranking in a less competitive category. So this is not a tenable idea, sadly, if one wishes categories to actually mean something.
And getting rid of the front page altogether to avoid even the slightest hint of "editorializing" as you accusingly put it seems overkill for a very reasonable policy, considering the alternatives. The front page is not part of one's actual publication anyways - it's for all intensive purpose an external advert.
I take a middle position. I do think Substack is curating on its front page and in its categories, and that this is a problem. (I keep wondering: why those newsletters and categories and not others?) But self-categorization, as you point out, could lead to other mischief. While I assume Substack will continue to feature certain newsletters, I'd like to also see a better search engine as well as a set of links to random newsletters. (If there were a page listing, say, ten random newsletters, personally I'd keep refreshing the page to see what else is out there! 🙂)
I agree with the better discovery features, though I wonder if a reason they seem hesitant is they are afraid of people messing with it - trolls starting multiple neo-nazi newsletters, spammers starting Nigerian prince newsletters and so on.
As it is, to get any visibility requires effort, and so is a "natural" way to filter. I wonder if a big reason why some categories are missing - such as fiction perhaps - is because those towards the bottom of that top list have single digit subscribers and would therefore be too easy for bad actors to get on.
Honestly I feel like someone at Substack just came up with a bunch of categories one day, and that no one has revised them. Does "Literature" include original fiction? Does "Climate" include environment and nature? Should there be a category for pets, or autos, or fitness, or games, or...? I presume some of these other categories would include newsletters of significant interest.
I imagine that Substack must be concerned about trolling and spam. Spam does appear if you scroll down some of the categories. Substack could probably filter a lot of it out shortly after the spam is posted. But that wouldn't stop someone from starting what looks like a legitimate newsletter and later making it less benign.