A call for writers

Get in on the ground floor with Substack

We are looking to add a few more writers to Substack’s crew of founding publishers. If you, or anyone you know, is interested in starting a publication that makes money from subscriptions, now is the time. We’d love to work with you to make it a success.

One of the inspirations for Substack is Ben Thompson’s Stratechery, a publication focused on tech business strategy. Since starting Stratechery in 2013, Thompson has attracted thousands of subscribers in 30 different countries who pay $100 a year. As a one-man operation, it has proven to be not only a valuable resource for readers, but also a highly profitable enterprise. “It’s more than a business,” Thompson has said.

We believe that there are many thousands of opportunities for Stratechery-like publications in almost any editorial niche imaginable. Are you an expert on your local college basketball team? There might be a valuable subscription publication in that. How about local-level politics in your city? Do the theater buffs in your state have a good way to read about the latest plays? Is anyone writing intelligently about your passion for artificial intelligence or The Handmaid’s Tale?

If you’re a writer who’s passionate about a niche and has a proven ability to build an audience around your work, we want to hear from you. We will make it easy for you to start a subscription publication by providing great tech tools and personalized support for your administrative and business needs, including hands-on help to grow your subscriber base.

While some writers will build huge businesses on our platform by attracting enormous subscriber bases, the beauty of the Substack model is that highly focused publications can be profitable even with small (but committed) readerships. So if you think some people would pay to read your work, please get in touch. Our goal will be to help you get to your magic number as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, if anyone out there is up for starting a high-quality subscription publication about the Highlanders rugby team, then let me know! I’ll be your first paying customer.

For more details and background, read our first post: A better future for news.

Any questions? Please send them to hamish@substack.com