This past March, poet and critic Yanyi was very busy. Between teaching at Dartmouth, editing a literary journal, preparing a forthcoming book, and ru

Why Are Writers Fleeing Substack for Ghost?

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2021-06-17 01:30:03

This past March, poet and critic Yanyi was very busy. Between teaching at Dartmouth, editing a literary journal, preparing a forthcoming book, and running a creative advice newsletter called “The Reading,” his schedule was stuffed. Still, he decided to add one more task: pull “The Reading” off of Substack by the end of the month. “It was right before the Trans Day of Visibility,” he says, “and I thought it was important for me to make the switch that day.”

Yanyi had agonized over the decision to leave the newsletter publishing startup. Substack’s platform was easy to use, and he’d been granted an advance as part of the company’s fellowship program, allowing him to grow a healthy, engaged audience. But he was too unhappy with Substack’s moderation to stay. The platform had permitted content from writer Graham Linehan that Yanyi saw as anti-trans and in violation of Substack’s policy. He wasn’t the only unhappy one; other high-profile Substackers announced their decisions to leave for this reason around the same time. Many in the exodus had a similar destination: Ghost, a nonprofit publishing platform that bills itself as “the independent Substack alternative.”

Frankly, this designation is a bit odd. Even though Ghost has been openly courting defectors—the company has a concierge service to entice writers looking to switch—it’s not exactly a one-to-one Substack substitute. Newsletters are Substack’s core product. Not so for Ghost, which was originally envisioned as a snazzier version of WordPress when it was funded through a Kickstarter campaign in 2013. Unlike the VC-fueled Substack, Ghost is a bootstrapped affair, with a lean staff of two dozen scattered around the globe.