Tomorrow Substack CEO and co-founder, Chris Best, and the app team will join us at Office Hours to answer additional questions. We invite you to join us and share what is on your mind.
I like this idea. I would like to highlight a potential drawback, however. One significant benefit to the email/newsletter system is that it is inherently distributed. When SlateStarCodex went down, his collective readership had a rich history of emails to piece together the blog. If readers stop receiving our work in their inboxes, we lose out on that failsafe. Now, the overwhelming majority of us may never have a need for it, but some will. I know, it's a niche issue; I just thought I'd share it.
I love that you're continuing to invest in the platform, though. This is a great idea overall and I'm happy to see it.
One update to add to these FAQs: We're adjusting how the smart delivery/email pausing stuff works in the app. We always want to be thoughtful about keeping writers' trust, so we've made the following changes:
1. As of now, the toggle you see after turning on push notifications will default to leaving email on as well.
2. In the next release, we're going to pull it out of onboarding and just have it be a setting you can find if you want.
We're going to continue to iterate on making this great for writers and readers. Feedback like yours helps us do this, so thank you.
One other thought -- it seems that right now, the app doesn't show the email header and footer. A lot of writers use that to include CTAs around sharing the post and subscribing to a paid option without having to clutter up the actual post. It would be great to have some option for including these in the app version of the post as well.
Until it’s possible for readers to pay for a subscription within the app, I don’t see how this is a positive development. You’re encouraging people to bypass email, which was the whole point in the first place, and in the process are ensuring that many of those people will not become a paid subscriber. Very slick app for readers; incredibly frustrating for us. You should have waited and launched when in-app payments were possible.
So exciting to see this! Especially thrilled that Substack will be keeping to its philosophy of keeping the app itself in the background. Looking forward to seeing what's next for the app!
This is the first time in a while that I have seen something this big come out of nowhere and the company behind it was prepared for questions from all affected by it. Solid rollout, Substack team.
Really exciting to see this launch, a great step forward for all Substack creators and readers. In the search screen on app, there's a list of categories. How do we request for new ones to be added? For example, we wouldn't love to see a "Gaming" one be added. Is that possible?
Substack App FAQ: Writer questions answered
You can also view more technical FAQ here in our support center https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/sections/4538222076820-App-FAQs
Tomorrow Substack CEO and co-founder, Chris Best, and the app team will join us at Office Hours to answer additional questions. We invite you to join us and share what is on your mind.
Save it to your calendar: substack.link/office-hours
I like this idea. I would like to highlight a potential drawback, however. One significant benefit to the email/newsletter system is that it is inherently distributed. When SlateStarCodex went down, his collective readership had a rich history of emails to piece together the blog. If readers stop receiving our work in their inboxes, we lose out on that failsafe. Now, the overwhelming majority of us may never have a need for it, but some will. I know, it's a niche issue; I just thought I'd share it.
I love that you're continuing to invest in the platform, though. This is a great idea overall and I'm happy to see it.
Tried getting the app but it did not take my email address....cannot open the app even after I was sent an email to open.
Hi writers!
One update to add to these FAQs: We're adjusting how the smart delivery/email pausing stuff works in the app. We always want to be thoughtful about keeping writers' trust, so we've made the following changes:
1. As of now, the toggle you see after turning on push notifications will default to leaving email on as well.
2. In the next release, we're going to pull it out of onboarding and just have it be a setting you can find if you want.
We're going to continue to iterate on making this great for writers and readers. Feedback like yours helps us do this, so thank you.
One other thought -- it seems that right now, the app doesn't show the email header and footer. A lot of writers use that to include CTAs around sharing the post and subscribing to a paid option without having to clutter up the actual post. It would be great to have some option for including these in the app version of the post as well.
Until it’s possible for readers to pay for a subscription within the app, I don’t see how this is a positive development. You’re encouraging people to bypass email, which was the whole point in the first place, and in the process are ensuring that many of those people will not become a paid subscriber. Very slick app for readers; incredibly frustrating for us. You should have waited and launched when in-app payments were possible.
This is great news. Can't wait for the Android version.
So exciting to see this! Especially thrilled that Substack will be keeping to its philosophy of keeping the app itself in the background. Looking forward to seeing what's next for the app!
So exciting!!!
This is so great. I have been waiting for this!
Why does the page freeze every time I click on "publish with buttons?"
This is the first time in a while that I have seen something this big come out of nowhere and the company behind it was prepared for questions from all affected by it. Solid rollout, Substack team.
Amazing! This app sounds like a great idea!
Really excited to check this out!
Really exciting to see this launch, a great step forward for all Substack creators and readers. In the search screen on app, there's a list of categories. How do we request for new ones to be added? For example, we wouldn't love to see a "Gaming" one be added. Is that possible?