[seemslegit]

> Here's how this plays out. The successful writers on Substack will eventually leave the platform for more control over their audience and lower fees (there's a reason Ben Thompson isn't on Substack).

Except the entire model of substack is based on writers not having access even to their audience's mail addresses.

[sails]

Substack writers do have access to their signups and can easily export them.

https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037465992-...

[edouard-harris]

Yes. This has been the case from the very beginning of their platform, as far as I'm aware.

[chinathrow]

> Except the entire model of substack is based on the writers not having access even to their audience's mail addresses.

Is that correct as of today?

https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037465992-...

[seemslegit]

I'm not sure, their Publisher Agreement seems to also have been very recently revised to remove some very strong prohibitions against trying to gather your subscribers data on your own so maybe they realized it's a bad idea - do you know what information is included in the csv ?

[ves]

well, you may not have their address, but you have their inbox.

“References and supplemental video content available on my website at ...”

[seemslegit]

Great, so now you have a website to maintain and pay for and your customers with their associated revenue are still owned by substack.

Getting paying subscribers to change their subscription method is huge friction and risk of churn, the more revenue you already have established on substack the bigger the risk cost of trying to move away, aka the boiled frog business model.