Authbition Weekly Comes Home
An unexpected layover in Detroit provided an opportunity to write
Hello Friends,
I’m sitting on a flight from Boston to Raleigh. I finished writing a draft for a new essay about a memorable day on a movie set where I had a hot encounter with Bridgette Fonda. Then I moved on to reading a few essays from fellow writers on Medium. What to do next? How about starting my newsletter here on the Authbition website?
I had originally chosen Substack as the newsletter home for Authbition. But, I must say, after spending a couple of months on Substack, I’m feeling negative energy. I will be slowly pulling away from the platform. Why? I’ll give you my logic. Take it or leave it.
Substack wants to be the center of the universe.
I had been happily strolling along over on Medium, polishing my craft as a writer of (mostly) memoirs and personal essays. Before Medium, my writing was a haphazard smattering of poetry, teaching, and generic blogs on various platforms. Anyway, things on Medium have been great.
I have over 100 published essays on Medium, and I’m grateful for the community.
One day, not so long ago, my massage therapist suggested I start a podcast so she could listen to my essays while washing dishes. One domino led to another, and we have Authbition.
After a few weeks of producing podcasts, I thought, “I need to make a newsletter to promote it.” Let’s try Substack. People like Substack. Oh. Look at that. Substack supports Podcasts. Cool. Let’s check it out. The only problem is that after Substack generously accepted my RSS feed from Spotify Creators, it subtly moved me towards deleting my Spotify account so that I could host the podcast on Substack. Is there any other way? No. Either host your podcast on Substack and share your RSS feed from Substack back to Spotify (and back to Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music), or, Sorry, Substack won’t take your RSS feed from anywhere else.
Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts, tech giants and staple homes for podcast listeners, happily accept my RSS feed. Substack won’t?
Is Spotify the best, right choice to have started my Podcast? I don't know. I'm torn on that. I talk about this tension on episode A013 if you’re interested in learning more.
Substack's "host here or the highway" position was my first major turnoff to the platform. That place is about “me,” not “we.” The platform feels too much like X, IG, and TikTok. I have accounts for all of them. They are not creative homes. I use them as beacons for my essays and podcast. These platforms, love 'em or hate 'em, reach a broad and diverse audience.
The Substack audience, from what I can tell, has significant crossover with the Medium audience. So the idea of using Substack as a beacon wasn't the original idea. I was using Substack as a creative home for my newsletter.
It's just not that. It's not a creative home. It doesn't feel that way to me. But since they want to be like X, IG, and TikTok, I’m going to treat them that way. A beacon only.
Add all that up, and, Boom, I am choosing a homegrown home for my Newsletter.
Welcome to it.
I hope you like it.
Love,
Andrew
