Platform Privilege and the Question Everyone's Asking Me After They See Their Substack Data

Plus 4 questions to ask if you're thinking about jumping platforms ...

Data inherently creates conversations. And lately I’ve been having the same one on repeat with folks who work with me on a Substack Signal Scan. Many of them are asking some version of:

Should I leave Substack?

These discussions are usually intermingled with: “I saw [insert notable writer] moved to their own site...” or “I’m not getting the reach I used to...” or “What if I’m building on rented land?”

These are good, important questions, coming from a place of uncertainty about whether the ground beneath us is solid, whether the work we’re doing is sustainable, whether we’re making smart strategic decisions or just following what everyone else seems to be doing.

I want to talk about what I’m actually seeing happen right now.

Not the surface-level advice circulating in Substack strategy threads, but what’s really going on beneath the platform decisions people are making. What’s working, what’s iffy and the risks we’re not talking about.

Because as I watch good publishers getting crowded out, I am feeling a familiar pang in my chest: the feeling that no leader is immune from being crowded out by copy cats.

I’ve been thinking lately about my meditation teacher, Susan Piver, and how she was doing deep, contemplative work with the Enneagram at least 10 or 12 years before it went mainstream. Then I watched the wave of enthusiasm come into view for the Enneagram, and I’ve often thought about the people who wrote their Enneagram books after studying it for maybe a year, purporting that they were also now an expert on this complex system of human understanding. It made me feel squeamish inside, you know?

I’m seeing this same dynamic play out in the Substack space with creators of all kinds. The people who laid the ground for us to deeply understand our nervous systems (shout out to my friend

Jane Pike

!) are now in an echo chamber.

And I think if you’re feeling drowned out by other publications, I want to say that I don’t believe the antidote is to leave the platform or chase distribution elsewhere.

The antidote is to go deeper.

To nurture our audiences better. To protect our craft and creativity fiercely. (Thank you

Jonathan Fields

for this call to action in his latest TEDxBoulder speech.)

For me, the antidote I’m really leaning into is putting all my focus on the kind of relational ground with readers that can’t be replicated by someone who just learned the framework last month.

And that’s what I want to dig into a little more in today’s essay.

What Actually Changed This Summer (And Why It Might Be Working in Your Favor)

First, let’s talk about what happened when everyone’s subscriber lists started to tank. I have it on pretty good authority that Substack made significant changes to their recommendations engine this summer. There was some real magic lost in how people are discovered.

But I think what’s important to understand here is that the changes weren’t arbitrary. They were in service of trying to not just give people bloated email lists. Instead, Substack is now priming for the right reader who is most likely to upgrade. (I’m also seeing this in the data, for what it’s worth. Better, more consistent upgrades even if the free readership growth trickles in now.)

This shift in Substack is a good thing even if you don’t plan to monetize. Because it means that your newsletter isn’t getting a bloated email list full of people who you’d have to spend exponentially more time and resources to nurture.

What you really want is people who are likely to be ready. Because I’ve seen this consistently in my data work: Substack audiences take triple the amount of time, sometimes five times the time, to upgrade compared to audiences from other sources.

So if Substack is now optimizing for subscribers who are most likely to upgrade, that’s actually working in your favor — even if your direct experience of publishing on Substack feels quite uncertain.

So even though, yes, everyone’s lists are now seeing slow growth, the platform is trying to send you subscribers who are ready for what you’re offering. Not just people who clicked through because your title was catchy.

The Platform Privilege Question

Now let’s talk about what happens when someone with a big platform decides to leave.

I saw recently that Katherine May created her own website and wants people to come read her there now. I respect that decision and I will follow her anywhere. I understand exactly the kind of thinking that goes into that kind of decision. And I use data a lot to help publications decide if centralizing Substack is the best fit for their long-term goals.

But I also think there’s something we need to name: there’s a lot of platform privilege in the choice to leave.

Katherine May already has an audience that’s captured. An audience that will follow her (again, I will follow her), at least to some degree, because they always want to know when she has another book, how she’s exploring life as an autistic woman, etc. She has name recognition. She has publisher support. She has resources to build and maintain her own infrastructure.

Many of us don’t have that pivotability.

I don’t begrudge anyone for making the choice that’s right for them. Sometimes the data really does point us toward leaving a platform even if we have an established audience. But I do think we need to be honest about what enables certain choices — and what risks come with them for the rest of us.

The Risk Nobody’s Talking About

Speaking of risks … Here’s what concerns me about the “leave Substack and build your own thing” advice that’s circulating: There’s real risk in how you set up a marketing engine to guide people into a place where you want them to spend their time, attention and money, especially when you’re changing where that place is.

Because of how young Substack still is, you run the risk of people saying, “OK, this is where I liked to read you, and if you’re moving, yeah, maybe I’ll stay engaged. But I was in a rhythm with how I engaged with you, and now you’ve changed that rhythm.”

People don’t just follow content. They protect their habits and their happiness. And they, too, are sticky to your following, but only to the degree that you’ve invested in a relationship with them. (Why do I have the urge to remind everyone about the “Who moved my cheese?” movement?)

When you change that context, you’re asking them to rebuild their relationship with you — and more importantly, their digital habits — from scratch. Many will, many won’t.

And here’s the really fun part about building a publication in public: you might not know which readers you’ve lost until you’ve already made the move. The data doesn’t tell you about the person who meant to follow you to your new platform but forgot. Or the person who subscribed on Substack because it was easy, but building a new login somewhere else feels like too much friction. Or the person who was almost ready to upgrade, but the move disrupted their trajectory.

My Framework for the Stay/Leave Question

I’m not here to tell anyone what to do with their platform decisions (I like to have data and context for that kind of chat). But I do think there are better questions we could be asking ourselves:

1. Is this platform sticky for you? For me, Substack is sticky. It’s set up, it’s rigorous, I have a huge archive there. For someone like me who’s worked in marketing where everything has to be hamstrung together with duct tape and prayer, Substack means I don’t have to do that anymore. Everything is in one place. That matters.

2. Do you have platform privilege elsewhere? I’m asking this because most of us don’t. We don’t have the existing name recognition or publisher backing or financial resources that make platform migration low-risk. And that’s okay. But we need to factor that into our decision-making.

3. Are your readers in a rhythm with you there? Don’t underestimate this. The relational ground you have with your readers is one of a kind if you’re actually nurturing it. Just like my friendship with my best friend is one of a kind because I’ve known her for 20 years. That kind of connection and reciprocity with your readers is what helps a publication flourish. If your readers have a rhythm with you on Substack — if they know to look for you there, if they’ve integrated you into their reading habits there — that’s valuable. That’s data. That’s relationship.

4. Can you afford to rebuild that rhythm elsewhere? I mean this both literally (do you have the financial runway?) and energetically (do you have the capacity to re-establish yourself, re-train your audience, potentially lose readers in the transition?).

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re real resource questions that deserve honest answers.

What Substack Actually Is Right Now

Here’s what I’m coming to understand: Substack might feel like social media, but it still is not behaving like a traditional distribution channel in the data I’m seeing.

There are plenty of signals from Substack leadership that they’re trying to make Substack your home base.

And honestly? I think that’s the right move for them. Because distribution without depth is just noise. Distribution without relationship is just a numbers game that doesn’t serve writers or readers.

Substack is not the platform for everyone. I would never tell somebody who’s entrenched in ecommerce to come to Substack unless they have a really interesting product with an exceptionally in-depth origin story that we could literally write stories about and create community around for years to come. Substack is not built for the wham, bam, thank you ma’am, spend $6 once and move on crowd.

But for those of us who are building body-of-work, who are going deep with our audiences, who are creating relationships over time? Substack is sticky. And that stickiness matters.

The Real Question for 2026

Which brings me to what I think really matters as we head into 2026.

The real question isn’t “Should I leave Substack?”

The real question is: Am I nurturing the readers I have?

Because what I’m seeing is that there’s a saturated space right now where people are staying really surface level. Where depth gets turned into sound bites. Where wisdom gets commodified into frameworks.

And in that environment, your competitive advantage isn’t distribution. It’s depth and relationship. It’s the kind of nurturing that creates readers who don’t just consume your content — they share, like, upgrade, they stay, they become part of your ecosystem for years.

That’s the work of 2026. Learning how to nurture an audience without compromising the rhythm of your newsletter of subscription tiers. That’s my stake in the “Substack leadership” space.

And it’s the work I’m doing for myself first. Here in part 2, I share how I’m adapting my own strategy and the two places I think we should all be focusing in 2026.

P.S. This is the work we do in my Publishing Mentorship. Every month I open a channel on Voxer for subscribers to talk through their publishing plans, questions and timely issues that affect being on Substack as a creative person. Join us here for $99/year (increasing to $199 in January).