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Substack, marking, etcetera

Taking a bit of a breather

Stephanie Decker FAcSS FBAM

Oct 3

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I’ve been running this newsletter on Substack for a while now, and started with the weekly blogs in April. I really appreciate the nice feedback I am getting, even if I am sometimes wondering what to write about next. Apologies for missing last week’s; I was trying to get the Master’s Dissertation marking done (11 first marking, 11 second marking, so no small feat) and also plan forward what to teach the next cohort in the Dissertation module.

But more on that later.

I was also watching subscriber numbers with great curiosity as they were getting closer to a round number — 500, here we come! Obviously, that is small for a newsletter on here, but for such a niche topic like organizational history, I think this is not bad. Not bad at all — even if I do say so myself.

And then there was one of those strange moments when the newsletter gets the fleeting “Rising in…” status - it has happened a few times, but honestly, I can never figure out what it means or what it is based on. Nevermind.

A few days later, OHN hit the 500 mark - I was so pleased. And meant to post.

But the very next, they gave it away… 500 was a mirage, never reached, when I looked at my statistics. Not sure what happened there. Really, we are still a few shy of 500 on the free subscribers. Anyone else you can think off to send this to?

Now we also have the little coin/flower/whatever symbol for those of us subscribing to paid. Good to know.

Does Substack make sense?

Much debate on here about whether it does. It’s fair. I subscribed to Wired this year - they offered an annual sub for a rock bottom price, and I find their journalists excellent. Most newsletters here cost way more, and arguably deliver a lot less.

It’s worth highlighting that £5 monthly is the lowest you can charge, equating to £60 annually. To me, that feels steep, so I set my annual price at £20. Many academics don’t charge for theirs. Fair enough.

I have my reasons.

The basic newsletter with updates is still free and will always remain free.
I do not need to write additional blogs. Frankly, I will only do so if there is a reason. Getting paid is a reason.
When I ran OHN on WordPress, after the grant money ran out, I paid for the site rental and the WordPress subscription. Several years. I moved to Substack for the free service (will it remain free?), and I launched “paid” to make some of the money back. Fair and square.
I have a problem with Free and Open Access. Yes, it is convenient and drives citations. And every society on the planet right now has a problem with the free internet and the associated clickbait-y enshittification of information and public thought. Free devalues knowledge. It’s time we get real about this. It is not coincidental in a capitalist society. We work in business schools. Tell me one area in business that you would advise anyone to give their core capabilities away for free (unless your game is standard setting)?

Of course, enshittification, originally about platforms, is quickly becoming the Theory Of Everything. International Politics, and UK HE (and life for young people in general). Some debate whether Substack will go for enshittification.

There are a few countervailing forces currently built into the platform: direct access to the content you subscribed to, and creators being able to reach their audience, not mediated by an opaque algorithm; competition — very successful Substackers leave all the time, so competition is alive and well for now.

And I have a fifth and final — my last few months as a British Academy of Management Executive & Trustee will be focused on launching a Substack publication for BAM, which will have a multi-author team. So I hope my learning here will help with launching a much bigger, more diverse type of Substack publication. More in due course.

So, onwards now to the paid portion of this message.