I've been meaning to leave Substack since about three weeks after I joined.

I was so proud of my fledgling newsletter back then. Blogging had come to feel like an obligation to Weigh In, if not on the Crises of our Times, then certainly on the Crises of the Moment in Publishing, and I'm the kind of guy who dwells: if I start writing, which is to say thinking, too much about the Crises of the Moment in Publishing it's like looking down at the wheels of the bicycle I'm riding. The disorienting wobbliness feeds on itself and I feel lucky if I can avoid a crash.

The newsletter form felt free and easy. I had a habit of sending mass emails to friends and family while traveling, and this was an easy expansion of that. I wasn't trying to catch an Audience out there in the ether through iterating on whatever posts generated traffic. I was mostly trying to reach folks who had asked to hear from me.

Then, just as I eased into this new medium as if it were a hot bath, Substack made itself a Crisis in Publishing. I don't have time to research the full play-by-play and recount it for you now, but, basically, they were trying to attract writers with big followings away from their existing platforms, by paying advances against subscription income. We're talking substantial advances, six figures in many cases. This made Substack less like an email services provider (Mailchimp, say) and more like a publisher, making editorial decisions about who they wanted to support. And when I looked at some of the people Substack wanted to give hundreds of thousands of dollars (funded in part by subscription income), I didn't like what I saw. There was a good deal of genius, a good deal of careful analysis... and a good deal of gross misogyny, transphobia, and hard-right stuff.

Now, I publish with major publishing houses, and I don't know one without an imprint that caters to what used to be the Bill O'Reilly audience. But while an imprint does feed into the larger company’s balance sheet, it is in many ways its own thing, answerable to the publisher and to the market and to the people for its decisions. We know who its editors are, and we can ask them why they do what they do.

Every communication I saw from Substack about their advance-paying program felt like they were trying to deny this responsibility, to pretend that their decisions weren't decisions at all. That didn’t sit well with me. Free speech is vital; free speech does not mean you have to give anyone a hundred thousand dollars.

I was busy, though, and setting up my newsletter in the first place had involved taking out loan of ‘get up and go’ from my future self that I spent a long time paying off. And then there were renovations, and a move, and deadlines... So it's taken years to leave, even though I've had a firm intent to do so. One of the benefits of being constitutionally inclined toward forming firm intentions that take a long time to execute, is that I'm writing the last book of a ten book fantasy series (twelve if you’re counting the games); one of the drawbacks is that sometimes things spend a while on the stack. (Or the Substack, as the case may be.)

The intervening years have given me a chance to watch Substack continue to do its thing, and, wow, even setting aside the political, it sure has been a VC-backed internet business in the ‘20s, hasn’t it. I logged into the main website one day to tweak a dashboard setting, and found that someone had grafted a microblogging platform over the newsletter hosting apparatus. Then the microblogging platform grew a group chat function. Now it has short-form video. This is definitely me being a bit Pa Ingalls over here but: when you're standing in the field of your long-form text-based platform and you see short form video over the horizon, it's time to pack up the wagon.

The other day I logged in and could not find the button for posting a newsletter.

Now, I have nothing against short-form video. I've spent enough time on an editing board to appreciate the constraints and artistry of the medium. I've done some short form video, and I keep meaning to do more, because I find it fun to practice, while text-based microblogging... well, its constraints lead to good writing, funny jokes, and poignant aphorisms, but my "that would make a good tweet" mental pathway feels more parasitic with every passing month. I know Chance didn't sing "Don't tweet bro, it's never sweet, oh" but my brain sure thinks he did.

Anyway, I'm troubled by the determination that it's not enough to be one thing: your project has to be everything, rather than be good at being the thing it is. Or, at being anything at all. Why do companies work this way? Is it grandiosity? A complete inability to say no to VC? An absence of inner principles, either of morality or experience design? A desperate sublimated desire for all that is solid to melt into air? Or does this sort of activity really make number go up?

I don't like everything apps, anyway, and I'm suspicious of everything devices. I like things with a bit of heft and care to them, things that seem to have been considered, weighed, shaped, chosen for a purpose. I like my cast iron skillet, my knives, my board games. I like a good pen, a clean piece of paper. I like my first sip of coffee in the morning. I like writing books.

So I've moved my newsletter to a place where it can be a newsletter.

Buttondown, our new host, makes its money by providing a newsletter delivery platform. I pay them for the service, and they take care of making sure my emails reach you. If you’re a paid subscriber to this newsletter, thank you very much. You help make my work here and elsewhere possible. Your subscription fees go to me, with a small cut to Stripe for payment processing.

I plan to launch a little sale to celebrate the move, but I want to be 100% sure my Stripe account and Substack have parted ways before doing so. Your memberships really do help, and I am grateful for them, particularly now. I still plan for most of my posts to go out free and clear, but if you’ve paid for membership, that encourages me to spend time thinking and writing in this format. So, if you pay: thank you. And if you don’t, also thank you: for being a reader, and for being there.

Take care of yourselves, everyone. And work for the liberation of all sentient beings. Happy holidays!