More on the book at the website of @bedazzledink.bsky.social publishing:
www.bedazzledink.com/surviving-a-...

Our public sphere is so broken, journalism and publishing have imploded so horribly, and surviving as a writer is harder than it ever has been. Please, y'all, be mindful of where you're directing your frustrations, and why. Save the righteous rage for the real villains -- there's no shortage.

If you find Substack to be a singularly noxious force in this dystopian world, of course, say so and go after its owners and investors. By all means, promote your alternative platform. But please stop with boycotting and denouncing other writers, unless you happen to live in a perfect glass house.

Writers need to go where audiences are -- that's why so many still use Meta. And that's also why so many prominent progressives post on Substack -- they have the organizer's impulse to spread their message as widely as possible.

Personally, I don't post on Meta any more -- I can't stomach it, or the vast harm it has done in the world. But I know why others continue to use it, and if I publish another book, I'll probably find myself needing to get over my queasiness and go back -- it's one of the realities of publishing.

Denouncing writers for using a platform with a tiny fraction of the scale and power and evil impact of Meta is just freaking weird. I don't understand the pile-on that happens here, why there's such a fashion for going after the precarious for making a pragmatic choice in a shitty media landscape.

I'm not defending Substack, though I have tiny and infrequent newsletter there (it earns me about the cost of my internet service). But I'm weary of how denouncing it has become a fashionable purity flex, how the animus toward gross algorithms in our info hellscape gets directed at other writers.

It's sleazy and dangerous that Substack allows Nazi thinkers to use its platform, to be sure. But if we're rating sleaze, is there any comparison to Meta, which has been directly implicated in fomenting genocide? Yet somehow you never see writers scolding other writers for using Meta.

(Okay, it was a LOT of faxes. The district attorney declined to prosecute.)
www.nytimes.com/1997/11/23/n...

Yes -- this. And what paid organizing jobs exist are almost all entry-level and poorly compensated.

The more senior level jobs in progressive nonprofits rarely involve direct organizing.

Agree. In some circles people even refer to organizing as "the work," but it's work that people are somehow expected to do, indefinitely, without compensation, benefits, or support.

Fantastic - congratulations!