Newsletters

I’m seeing this report cited a lot on social media, but I don’t know this is the right north star for a lot of independent publishers. Figuring out that the median subscription price for paid newsletters is $10 is one thing. I would love to know what the median price is for newsletters that are actually earning their authors a living wage. Or, at least, enough to compensate them for the time the invest in the publication.

I would bet that more successful publications have a range of support across a few tiers, with a more accessible “low/free” tier and the bulk of support coming from super-supporters. But I haven’t seen a study like that just yet.

The former CBS Evening News anchor launched a member-supported Substack, and has been working through some format changes in public. It’s an interesting example of someone who’s a professional in one field applying their skills to something very different, and being willing to build in public along the way.

Assembling a full week took too long — the Friday lift kept getting heavier — and it produced something almost too concentrated to consume. Worth clipping for anyone running a newsletter: the format that felt ambitious on day one can quietly turn into the thing suffocating the work. Dickerson’s fix isn’t more effort — it’s less structure.