On peak newsletter and subscription fatigue
Vanity Fair declared we're at peak newsletter back in 2019. Yet Axios co-founder made a counter-argument in 2022: "It’s not peak newsletters — it’s the end of weak newsletters."
Clearly, the humble email newsletter is not yet done. Substack, Ghost, and Beehiiv are fueling the independent creator and alternative media era. With more newsletters launching daily, I can't help but ask: Have we finally reached peak newsletter?
In a podcast episode's final few minutes, Ghost's John O'Nolan thinks subscription fatigue is possible but we're not there yet.
Dot Social with Mike McCue, interview with John O'Nolan
We call it subscription fatigue. This theory that once everything's a subscription, you don't want any more subscriptions. We have thought about it, but what we've seen play out so far is it doesn't really seem to happen, or at least not in the space we operate in.
The reason for that is that it's not really 50 people subscribing all to the same three or ten publications. It's ten publications and 50 people, and each subscribes to something different. You might have this handful of really popular creators that everyone subscribes to, but broadly the way we see people interacting with subscriptions is far more niche.
They're all subscribed to different stuff. There's not necessarily a giant overlap. It's not quite like having Apple TV, Netflix, Prime, and whatever else subscription. It's more like following three individuals who cater to my specific hobbies, where I can't get that content anywhere else. I can only get it from this person.