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Claudia Befu's avatar

I found my corner on the internet with Substack. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & co never worked for me. But this is a great place! It feels dignified. I like the people with whom I interact on the platform, I like what I read from other authors, it feels like a space for gown up people. And I feel inspired to write here. What more can I ask?

Thanks for this article, it confirms that I’m for once in the right place at the right time.

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C.W. Howell's avatar

The muck and confusion of SEO practices (which will surely be made even weirder by Bard and Bing's AI) has made discoverability for sites on search engines difficult, too. It's hard to generate organic traffic that way (and it's made so many sites worse--it's now impossible to find a recipe for anything without a 1,000 word intro about how someone's great-great-great grandmother from the Old Country once baked such-and-such thing for the Sultan), and with Twitter's problems it's just as hard on social media. Reddit, likewise, had all those issues with third-party apps this summer. I wonder if we'll see a pendulum swing to more in-person writing connections and more localized self-promotion in bookstores and so on. I have no idea. It's certainly demoralizing.

I do think that some current writers will still be read in the future, though. We just likely don't know who they are. The greatest 19th century American novel is Moby-Dick and it was relegated to the dustbin and Melville faded into bitter obscurity for 75 years before it was rediscovered as the classic it is. It's not impossible something like that will happen again (though it won't mean much in terms of salary for whoever gets so resurrected!).

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