M.G. Siegler identifies one problem with the modern rise of newsletters (via Andy McIlwain): “inundation”. My own problem isn’t so much that “there are too many newsletters that I now subscribe to and want to read” but that newsletters do not yet seem to have adopted, say, the manual discovery engines of the old—and hopefully the new—blogosphere. One of the greatest and most simplest things a platform like Substack could do is build a way for newsletterers to offer a blogroll emailroll of other newsletterers they consider worthy of note. Beyond even that, I still believe there’s sense in allowing Substack writers to “bundle” their newsletters together, or for more successful newsletterers to “sponsor” less successful ones, upon mutual agreement. The former idea helps address problems with finding newsletters you might find worth your time; the latter ideas help smaller newsletters find an audience when that audience can’t afford individual paid subscriptions to every single engaging newsletter out there.

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Addenda

1. Here’s another easy way to address the inundation problem: no, you don’t need to start a newsletter.