When I started TRUST FUND MAN, I wanted it to look like a private club, not a blog.
Substack answered my prayers.
It is pristine and customizable. It’s almost impossible to make ugly. Publishing is simple. Getting paid is simpler. Substack has built a beautiful publishing platform.
Then you press Publish.
Now you are on your own. Good luck.
Substack is an island resort for the world’s best authors. They’re together schmoozing and having a good time before someone looks around and asks: “Where is everyone else?” There are recommendations, discovery feeds… Notes… all confined to the island—I mean the app.
Substack should flood the entire internet. Wherever a writer can be read online, a reader should be able to subscribe and pay them through Substack.
Your article doesn’t leave Substack. It carries Substack with it.
1. Sent From Substack.
Right now, publishing on Substack means advertising on the rest of the internet. You are your own hype man, and frankly, Substack should be paying you!
The current process is:
You publish the article.
Then you copy and paste the link to X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. Your own website. Send to grandma. You get it.
And the most important step: Pray or beg (a.k.a. marketing).
Every social media platform would rather keep its users there. The algorithm buries your link, and if one slips through, no one clicks. People may like your post, even share it, perhaps yell at you, but never leave the app. Clicking links is too difficult for most people. They want to keep scrolling.
Substack needs a Publish Everywhere button.
For a free article, natively publish the whole thing word for word on each site.
X Articles, LinkedIn Articles, Facebook (if anyone still uses it)… everywhere.
If the article is paid, the writer chooses where the free preview ends.
I know upper management is sweating, but don’t worry, gents: every time the article is posted, it will be glittered with beautiful “Subscribe” buttons, paid links and other ways back to the writer’s personal Substack page.
They can include “THIS IS A SUBSTACK PUBLICATION” at the bottom, if they must.
Sent from my iPhone, anyone?
2. Notes Is Not X/Twitter
Now let’s talk about Notes. I will be nice. Or at least try.
Notes feels like an X knockoff, because it is, except most people are still on X.
I already post on X. I love it. It’s my favorite app. I’m not changing.
And I definitely don’t want to copy my perfectly good tweets onto another, quieter app. I never left X for TRUTH SOCIAL or Bluesky. Building a brand-new audience from scratch doesn’t sound appealing, thanks.
Notes has only one job: get people to your articles.
Substack already lets you highlight a passage and restack it into Notes. Put that feature where I need it: at the end of publishing.
Suggest the three best passages from the article and prepare three Notes.
Let me approve them, edit them or choose something better. Post one now. Schedule the other two. I have already written the article.
“Crime doesn’t climb,” from my San Francisco piece, is a great example. The quotation text itself should be clickable when restacked. (The words, not a picture of the words.) Click the words, open the full article, subscribe if you like it—and pay me!
Every sentence should remember where it came from.
3. Substack Books
Nobody likes receiving digital links for Christmas. Unless it’s money from my relatives.
Since everything is digital now, physical products are becoming bigger status symbols.
People are spending more and more money on beautiful editions about clothes they will never wear and cars they will never own. And bodies they’ll never have.
Substack should not compete with Kindle. It should compete with Assouline.
Substack’s next publishing venture is sitting in its own archives, waiting to be edited, bound and shipped across America with a bow on top.
Now introducing: The Substack Publishing House, a.k.a. Substack Books.
Once a publication reaches some combination of subscribers, sustained readership… a viral moment?… Substack Books should unlock. Substack can choose the formula—I am not doing everything for them. Yet.
People don’t like to read physical books, but they definitely want to be perceived as someone who reads physical books. Substack Books solves that.
The writer would not have to disappear for two years and produce an entirely new manuscript. The book already exists in their archive.
Substack would work with the authors to create the look, fund the production and market it through its network. They get a percentage, obviously. I’m trying to help Substack, guys.
Imagine a truly beautiful limited-edition book with Substack branding, made to sit proudly on your coffee table.
Let’s talk about me, since it’s my article. My current TRUST FUND MAN archive looks like a long list of hyperlinks. Bind the same words in deep green leather, stamp Trust Fund Man in gold, and suddenly I am not a man with a blog. I am a handsome published author.
The writers get another way to sell their work. Substack gets a place on the coffee table.
You’re welcome.
Substack has created a place that makes independent writing feel legitimate. And I just outlined the helipad.
You should be able to read an article on X, subscribe with a button and, one day, have the archive arrive at your front door bound in leather.
That is how Substack attracts authors who already have an audience. Not by asking them to start over on another social network. By making it ridiculously easy to convert their current following.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take this call. (It’s my mom.)
Christopher Mayer
christopher@cmayerhq.com | cmayerhq.com
THIS IS A SUBSTACK PUBLICATION