Member-only story
The Elephant in the Substack Room
or why the Emperor had no clothes
I feel like the kid in the old story The Emperor’s New Clothes. An Emperor gets duped into wearing a make believe costume. His people go along with the scam until a kid asks innocently:
“Why is the Emperor wearing no clothes?”
For the people who didn’t speak up it was a convenient omission. They didn’t want to get into trouble. Or maybe they didn’t trust what they saw because no one else was speaking up.
Either way, here it is:
The “experts” on Substack — the ones sharing their impressive growth and income stats — are thriving in the Substack niche. And while they’re handing out advice to all sorts of writers, there’s often zero acknowledgment of the built-in advantage they’ve got.
They write about writing. They write about how to grow on Substack. They write about success on Substack … on Substack.
Plenty of people moan about how “everyone on Substack is writing about Substack.” But most of that commentary stops at mild annoyance.
What no one seems to be talking about is how this trend actively distorts the perception of what’s possible for most creators in their niche.
