Substack could create the future of books

Here’s how that could look.

Apr 29, 2024

There are 20 million monthly active subscribers to Substacks.

There are over 2 million paid subscriptions to Substacks.

There is a market for reading here, and writers are being paid directly by their subscribers to read here. So why shouldn’t our books live here too?

For example, what if our Substack profiles included, not just the posts we’ve written, but also the books we’ve written. Like this:

And what if, as we were scrolling through Notes, they were interspersed with carousels of books by the writers we were following. Like this:

When we come across a new book we want to read we could save it to our library, a new tab in the Substack app that could look like this:

The best part is: We could create these books without any heavy lifting on the part of authors by adding one product feature to Substack: Allow writers to organize their posts into "playlists."

YouTube and TikTok already do this—I can create a playlist of my videos that play in the order I put them in. Just imagine if Substack writers could similarly create playlists of our posts, putting them in the right order, and then deciding which posts are locked to free or paid subscribers!

We should call these playlists “collections” (because it could just as easily be a collection of podcasts or videos depending on one’s publication). When readers click on that “book” (or "collection") they would see all of the posts in that collection, in order. It might look like this:

When readers open a post in that collection, it would open a feed of every post in that playlist, in order. Substack could save our place in that feed, just like it saves our place when we click out of a post and then back into it. Whenever you open a book, you’ll be right back where you left off.

Posts that are part of a collection could have navigation in the header and footer that looks like this:

That books would function as a collection of posts makes so much more sense for the internet age. Print and digital books are currently locked away in their format, unable to be shared online unless someone quotes from it or the author appears on a podcast or something more shareable. But as a collection of posts, readers can like, comment, and share the chapters of the books they are reading.

Best of all: We’d finally solve the age-old question of “what to read” because readers can now follow the authors they like directly, automatically get their books in their libraries, and find other books they might enjoy through the network. It’s not an algorithm on Amazon or a review in the New York Times that decides your next read, it’s the people you follow recommending people they follow.

Substack already has a “recommendation” feature that allows us to follow the people and publications our favorite authors recommend. If we add books to the mix, when we subscribe to a new author, the recommendations page could look like this:

As an author, I’d continue to publish posts as I do now, but I could also add those posts to collections as I go, the same way I might add a tag or a section in the post settings. When the book is complete, I could choose to lock all but the first three chapters of that collection to paying subscribers.

This would be an incredible way for writers to organize our existing writing. I’ve probably written more than 300,000 words for my newsletter that new readers will never see. But with collections, writers like me could organize our past work into collections that appear at the top of our profile, in the sidebar of our websites, and show up in Notes. And new readers could become paying subscribers to read them.

My website might look like this:

With Substack earning a 10% cut of subscriptions, they’d have the lowest margins in the self-publishing industry (Amazon takes 30% and publishing houses/agents take 85%), and authors could earn a much better income from their readers at $50/year than they would at $10/book. Unlike creator platforms like Amazon or Spotify, there is no algorithm that could suddenly suppress our earnings by not surfacing our work to readers—our subscribers have direct access to our work!

Just like it is now, authors on Substack would own their work, have direct access to the people who will read it, and could earn a living directly from their readers. But with a few new features, they’d also have a way to bundle their work into books, ensuring their content remains evergreen. Eventually, Substack could even partner with a book printing company so authors can print their books into collector’s editions for their premium “founding member” subscribers.

Substack has already created a thriving market for writing and is one of the few ecosystems that allow artists to be supported directly by their patrons. A future where writers can also publish books directly to their readers, and readers can like, comment, share, and recommend them to friends online seems like the more digitally native future of books we’ve been waiting for. All we’d need is a few organizational features to make it happen.

But I’d love to know your thoughts! 👇🏻