Established in San Francisco in 2017, Substack has over 500,000 paying subscribers today. (You can be a non-paying subscriber but you can then only read a limited amount of content.) Chris Best, the company’s CEO, says the platform aims ‘to allow writers and creators to run their own personal media empire’. In a world of flimsy social media, Substack is a place where long-form writing can flourish.
The idea is so appealing that authors and thinkers of every type – from Salman Rushdie to Dominic Cummings – now have a Substack presence. According to The Guardian: ‘Substack has variously been hailed as the future of the media industry, a home for writers who don’t want to be edited, and a place where those who have already made a name for themselves find success.’
Substack’s Instagram feed flags up some of its interesting content. For more, read our round-up of the best Substack newsletters to read now.
Letters Of Note
Author Shaun Usher’s obsession with handwritten correspondence began when he fell in love with his wife by letter. Since then, he has published three books of collected letters and set up Letters Live. In his Substack, he publishes nothing but history’s most interesting letters. Read more.
Books + Bits
We love everything that writer and broadcaster Pandora Sykes does, which includes her brand-new Substack newsletter of life-enhancing nuggets and cultural recommendations. Read more.
A Newsletter
In her Substack offering, the US food writer and TV personality Alison Roman says she shares ‘recipes, stories and unsolicited advice’. Read more.
Salman’s Sea Of Stories
The literary giant’s Substack is ‘an ocean of stories’. He says: ‘I’ll be talking about stories I’ve read or seen, true stories, tall stories, stories about me, and some I just made up.’ Read more.
Murder, She Cooked
Jenny Hammerton’s quirky Substack newsletter comprises episode guides and companion recipes from the kitchen of Angela Lansbury and many of her Murder, She Wrote co-stars. Read more.
Letters from an American
Boston College professor Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack offering, which has over a million subscribers, focuses on the history behind today’s politics. Read more.
Grace on Football
Grace Robertson’s Substack is a celebration of the beautiful game. She says: “Call it football, call it soccer, call it whatever you want. We’re trying our best to use stats, tactics and other lenses to understand this beautifully opaque sport.” Read more.
Melanie Phillips
Phillips is a prominent British journalist, author and broadcaster, with a weekly column in The Times but you can check out her Substack newsletter for her valuable tuppence worth on pretty much everything. (It is worth noting that her husband, Joshua Rozenberg, also has a good Substack newsletter called A Lawyer Writes.) Read more.
By Becky Ladenburg
March 2023
