Slowing down
Good writing takes time. I have a limited amount.
Twenty-five essays, not counting this one, and I’m proud of them all. For the past half-year I’ve published an essay every week with very few exceptions – a process that has allowed me to hone as well as share my views.
The Leopard has built an engaged community of several hundred readers, a number that rises each week. It’s heartening to see that an audience exists for a European view on global affairs, even when produced by just one relatively unknown writer. So, thank you all.
With all that being said, I need to slow down a bit. I derive no income from The Leopard, nor do I have any intention of monetising it. The vicissitudes of freelancing being what they are, I need to prioritise paid work when I have it, and right now I’m booked five full days a week, plus various bits of ad hoc evening work, until June. That doesn’t leave enough time to write an essay every week to the standard I want to uphold.
I will therefore not be publishing every week for at least the next few months. But I will continue to publish as and when inspiration strikes and I find the time to write well – hopefully at least once a month. I may pick up the pace again over the summer, when I expect paid work to be quieter.
The Substack economy
When I started writing The Leopard six months ago, I identified three broad scenarios. In the worst case it would fail to gain any traction and I would quietly stop about now. In the best case it would gather huge engagement and I might forgo paid work in order to grow it, bring in guest writers and so forth. In between was the scenario of solid but not exponential growth, in which case I would keep plugging away.
I’m squarely in the plugging away bracket. I typically get about 500 views per week, and four of my essays have gone above 1,000. That’s enough to justify a continued effort, but not to convert The Leopard into my main hustle. With heavy demands on my time elsewhere – thanks in part to The Leopard, which has brought in at least two clients – I have to cut back a bit.
This goes against the conventional wisdom of Substacking (such a thing now exists), which is to write consistently every week to build a following, and then create a paid tier with access to additional content and community engagement. Needless to say, this requires a significant time investment and is geared toward creating a revenue stream, which is not my objective.[1]
What would it take for me to go all-in, or at least turn away some paid work? Serious revenue aside, the possibility to grow or evolve into something resembling a proper publication, or to reach readers in the tens of thousands, would probably swing it. But for now, that seems to be out of reach.
The main difficulty is not my lack of a significant public profile. On any social platform, an existing profile gives you a head-start but it’s possible – perhaps even advantageous – to build a following from scratch.
The question of whether my essays are actually interesting and well written is a pertinent one, but not for me to judge objectively. All I can say is that, while there’s always room to improve, I’m generally happy with my writing and the feedback I receive is broadly positive.
Two structural challenges prevent me from reaching a very large readership. The first is that I’m a generalist who likes to dabble in everything, whereas the most successful newsletters tend to be tightly focused and ‘superserve’ a highly interested audience. I’m aware of this dynamic but that’s just not how my brain works; so I do what I do and hope the readership follows.
Second, I’m deliberately not writing for Americans or the American-inflected Brits who account for most of the online Anglo ‘discourse’, and who also make up most of Substack’s user base.[2] Of the highly successful Substack accounts I’ve seen, the great majority sit firmly within this space. The lack of a European public square is exactly the problem I’m trying to solve with The Leopard, but a modest publication like mine can’t conjure an audience all on its own.
Pleasure and learning
Beyond such hard-headed calculations, it’s worth noting that writing The Leopard brings me a great deal of pleasure. I previously spent almost a decade as a staff journalist, during which I was constantly exposed to global events but contractually prohibited from publishing my own opinions about them. The freedom to do so is one of the great joys of being a free lance.
This becomes particularly true if one’s opinions fall outside the scope of polite discourse, which in recent years has come to include almost anything that is culturally right of centre; the LinkedInification of the public domain has exacerbated this effect. While I hold many left-wing views, I believe the censorious trend on the left is pushing citizens ever further right, and thoughtful people ought to challenge it.
Finally, the process of writing hones my opinions – not just how I structure and express them, but the opinions themselves. In a world of political polarisation, it’s all too easy to see an absurd position online and instinctively take the opposite view. In fact, the extreme views surfaced by social media algorithms are typically exaggerated expressions of ideas that, at their base, have some merit. Researching an essay unearths these moderate views, and writing it forces you to engage with them.
There are many more reasons to write essays than the prospect of one day getting paid for it. But get paid I must, by hook or by crook, and for now that means a little less writing and a little more editing. Stay tuned.
[1] This is certainly what Substack wants me to do, since its own revenue comes from taking a cut of paid memberships. If I’m being cynical, this may be why the ‘conventional wisdom’ being pushed on me by the algorithm is encouraging me down this path.
[2] Revealingly, the subscriber map in Substack’s analytics toolbox defaults to a state-by-state breakdown of the US. The only other option is to show the whole world, where Europe is so small that one can barely distinguish the different countries.
I like your writing, and it’s in my interest to check in at least once in a while with a European perspective. I can’t promise I’ll read your stuff regularly— but if you promote your writing on Notes, it’s more likely that I’ll see it. Good luck! Although I’m American, I can afford to commiserate a bit with a fellow writer who finds the American dominance of substack— or of anything— a frustrating obstacle.
Re: substack’s commitment to trying to bring in money— it doesn’t make you cynical to observe this, any more than (to me) this tendency makes the substack team dishonest or immoral. I believe them when they say they like what they’ve done for public discourse, non-famous writers, the media ecosystem, etc. I believe they are justifiably proud of the people who don’t make tons of money, but contribute something of value. That’s where I am, and I appreciate the opportunity they’ve given me to grow slowly. I’m glad there’s a place for you here!
But they also are a business, and while I don’t love all the writing that thrives here, I’m glad when people bring in money for this venture. There are people who have made various predictions about how substack will crumble or be corrupted, and I don’t know. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Beautifully and logically written. I liked this paragraph the most: “the process of writing hones my opinions – not just how I structure and express them, but the opinions themselves. In a world of political polarisation, it’s all too easy to see an absurd position online and instinctively take the opposite view. In fact, the extreme views surfaced by social media algorithms are typically exaggerated expressions of ideas that, at their base, have some merit. Researching an essay unearths these moderate views, and writing it forces you to engage with them.”