can social obligation scale?

When I started writing my novel Self Care in 2017, it was an absolute pleasure to skewer the hypocrisy and the bullshit and the hollow messaging of personal brand culture and coaching world on Instagram. There were glam boss babes who, for a limited time only, would offer you access to their $1100 webinar (act now), to manifest the life you always deserved by teaching you how to scale your business by helping other women scale their businesses helping other women scale their businesses. We can do hard things!

Around this time, I had a meeting with a smart, charismatic entrepreneur I respected; she asked me to start a new business venture with her. I politely declined, as I had only recently resigned from the organization I’d led for three years, and I was extremely burned out.

“But I just paid for this $1100 webinar…” she said, hoping I would reconsider.

---

What I’ve observed recently on the writer side of Substack is the same coaching world dynamics I satirized years ago, combined with the moral language of the literary community imploring us to be “good” literary “citizens.”

For example, this post from a coach on Substack who coaches writers on their Substacks that tells us why we “should” pay for 20 (twenty!) creative writing newsletters:

It should go without saying that we should pay to subscribe to them. It’s simple commerce. They’re providing an incredible service for much less than we’d pay anywhere else. Most are seriously undercharging for what they offer.

Is it really “simple commerce”?

Sure, if you were thinking of getting an MFA and then realized you could get the very same experience for $100 a month on Substack, the logic follows. But a Substack is a small for-profit magazine. It’s not a writing workshop, or a graduate seminar, or a networking event with free wine and cheese and a handful of young agents also motivated by free wine and cheese.

This is the same kind of moral language you see when writers promote their books online: support debut authors! Support indie bookstores! FIGHT BOOK BANNING BY PREORDERING MY BOOK SPECIFICALLY

Substack’s value proposition is that the platform makes it possible for anyone to start a small for-profit magazine and earn income directly from their subscribers.

But I think the writers who find the most success are the ones who have figured out what content (and community) their audience actually values, and then they consistently deliver it.

Creative writers have a bad habit of imploring each other to “support” the work. And then they become disappointed, bitter, and disillusioned when this doesn’t deliver results in terms of subscriber count, or book sales.

Even Substack uses this this language! If you’re not already one of my subscribers, below you’ll see “Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work”:

I subscribe to about 25 Substack newsletters and pay for eight of them. I try to leave comments, and re-stack, on Substacks by my friends and by my clients. I don’t know if I’m an average user, or someone with more subscriptions than average, but I’m pretty much at my limit. It would be hard for me to double or triple my consumption of publications.

I don’t think social obligation is scalable. So as much as Substack has tried to make the platform more social¹ (through comments sections and the Notes feature), it’s just not possible for me to subscribe to every single newsletter by every single person who I feel fondly toward online.

On Twitter, I could easily follow 1,000 writers. I can’t subscribe to 1,000 Substacks.

I think any writer with a Substack—and any writer with a book coming out—needs to think beyond their own social network, if they want to grow their audience.

As a Substack user², here are practical ways I deal with the limits of my time and attention:

• I use the Substack app on my phone and recently turned off ALL email notifications, which really helped psychologically, because now I don’t see each newsletter in my inbox as an obligation (to read, to like, to comment).

• I unsubscribe from publications that aren’t providing content I value. This is hard when I personally like the author of the publication! (social obligation!) But especially if I’m paying for a subscription—would I continue paying for a print magazine if I no longer found the articles worth my time?

• I’ve started “following” writers I like on the Substack app, even if I don’t subscribe to their newsletter. It’s a way to see their content and interact with them (like Twitter). And some day I might convert to a subscriber.

• I communicate that I’m at my limit, when someone offers to mail me a free book, or give me a free one-month subscription to a publication they love.

For me, the flip side of obligation is pleasure.

I’ve spent my holiday weekend reading a novel entirely for pleasure—not because I know the author personally, not because the author asked me for a blurb, not because it’s a trendy BookTok book and I’m going to make a video about it later. It’s a private reading experience—the kind I had all the time as a teenager and a young adult, before I started living my life as a writer in public.

I’d like for people to follow my work because they are genuinely interested in what I have to say, not out of guilt or obligation.

---

Come to your senses in Collioure

After A.S. Byatt tragically lost her son, she told the Paris Review, “I suddenly thought, Why the hell not have happy endings? Everybody knows they’re artificial. Why not have this pleasure, as one has the pleasure of rhyme, as one has the pleasure of color?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about how many writing classes and workshops explore trauma, and how few invite studies of joy, pleasure, and beauty. Next June, you can join me in the south of France for a very special retreat with delicious food, beautiful light, time to write, and gentle prompts in the direction of the sublime.

1. If you find the social part of Substack irritating as hell, you’re not alone.

2. I’m more than a Substack user—I invested in their crowdfunding campaign in April! I really think they’re offering the best platform for writers in the creator economy.