Substack a Likely Alternative to Medium for Many Writers

I have never used Substack nor Medium, but being a student of digital publishing, I can’t help but feel that Substack is killing off Medium.

The New York Times report that Michael Moore is joining other prominent writers on Substack is further evidence.

Substack, founded in 2017, is a publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure that allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers.

Earlier this year, Legal tech columnist, Bob Ambrogi blogged about Substack being used by some lawyers.

Medium, founded by Ev Williams, in 2012, is a free publishing platform that enables users to publish in a blog like fashion inside of a common site.

Williams, as a co-founder of both Blogger (sold to Google) and Twitter, created a splash with Medium’s launch and attracted a lot of investment money.

Writers, including legal tech company CEO’s, were attracted to Medium by the idea they would be seen by others with common interests and could write something akin to a blog without having to maintain a blog.

However, without a strong revenue model, Medium has crashed, laying off a good portion of its team. Development, other than keeping the site up and running has likely been put on hold.

Substack, on the other hand, is a slick and simple publishing platform that continues to generate more and more buzz.

The company raised $65 million earlier this year, and my guess is they’re valued at over a billion dollars, today.

Though short of a blog’s features, Substack provides writers a nice publishing environment for an email publication.

I expect to see more and more writers and reporters attracted to Substack’s simplicity and ease of use.