It's Time Again — For Our Weekly Share Thread

Happy Friday!

It’s been a whirlwind of a week. I’ve been away from home and had to (mostly) step away from Substack this week.

I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things next week.

There’s a lot of conversation in the Substack world about whether/why paid subscriptions might be collapsing — it’s come up in our recent Midstack cohort and meetups — and I wonder how much of what people are panicking about this summer might be attributable to people (like me) having different sorts of schedules and obligations during the summer months.

In any case, I do admit that’s not the full explanation.

If you’re at all interested in this discussion and what to do about it — and I realize many of you are not yet at the point in your Substack journeys where it is relevant — I recommend this from Karen Cherry of PubStack Success.

She has several great recommendations and a re-framing:

If you’re new to Midstack and our weekly share thread, welcome!

• In the comments of this post, tell us about yourself and your Substack (in just a sentence or two)

• Tell us about (again briefly) what you’re sharing this week

• Drop the link to your post

• Take a few minutes to comment on, restack, or share other people’s work

• If another Midstacker’s writing pulls you in, subscribe. Let’s help us grow together!

• Come back throughout the weekend and into next week.

If an essay connects with you, share this in the comments of the piece itself, not just here in the comments. And if you’ve already engaged with someone’s work outside this thread, please like here too, so they know.

In the comments, you can also tell us if you’re seeing “a collapse” in subscribers recently and how you’re feeling about it.