Dear Amazon Chronicles Members,
Some of you have read (or have in your inboxes right now), the first Amazon Chronicles newsletter entry since December. That’s right, I am back at the steering wheel, with an update on the newsletter’s future and a short roundup of the best Amazon news from this week.
But this will likely be the last newsletter I write for Substack. I’ve decided to migrate the archives and the mailing list over to Revue.
I did this for a number of reasons. First, my agreement to publish on Substack had ended right about the time I put the site back on hiatus. I had to debate shuttering the newsletter altogether, restarting it under a different mandate, and/or changing newsletter platforms. Continuing it as it was on Substack was not a live option.
If you haven’t noticed, the overall editorial direction on Substack has gotten bizarre. There are a lot of good people here, writing good newsletters. But the high-profile writers Substack has worked hardest to champion are no longer folks like Grace Lavery, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Jamelle Bouie, Danny Ortberg, and Helena Fitzgerald. In fact, Danny and Helena are the only writers in that group who are still here.
A huge amount of money is being pumped in by and for anti-vaccine, anti-trans, and other politically retrograde views that are offensive, dangerous, and odious to be associated with. I neither want or need that just to send out my emails about Amazon.
I also worry way more than I should that my Amazon-critical position is politically or economically useful to SOMEbody who has the ear of folks high up at Substack, and that this is why I was offered what ended up becoming known as a “Substack Pro” contract in the first place. I don’t want to be a useful idiot for anyone’s benefit either.
Finally, it was clear that my plan to publish nearly all of my posts for free, with reader support operating under the patronage model, was not conducive to Substack’s vision of maximizing reader revenue. I was pushed to write more subscriber-only posts. I tried to make these about engaging readers in the comments, trying to start a conversation among my members (an idea I shamelessly lifted from Helena), but that doesn’t really work for a newsletter like mine. I had nothing to put in the members-only posts but things like this: messages specifically for readers about what was happening on the site and to their memberships. The successful writers on Substack are doing something quite different. It was time to leave.
So I am taking the Amazon Chronicles show to Revue. I know it’s possible I could run into the same problems there, or all new ones. But a long look around suggested that Revue was the best platform for a site like mine, that’s largely driven by my Twitter following, and with a lot of free subscribers and a comparatively small number of paying members. They also made transporting the post archive over a great deal easier than did Buttondown, Ghost, or the other platforms I considered. All in all, I wish I had done the switch much sooner.
That doesn’t mean Elon Musk couldn’t buy the company or Twitter could radically change its priorities and I’d be stuck in an awkward situation once again. But my data remains portable, and it’s a calculated bet I’m willing to take.
So: how does this affect you, my paying members?
Well, paid subscriptions are the one thing I can’t take with me from Substack to Revue. Revue doesn’t have your credit card numbers, and its policy wouldn’t let me sign you up for a service you didn’t volunteer for to begin with. This also means that if you had a balance on an annual subscription for Substack, that doesn’t carry over to Revue.
So I’m asking you to consider supporting this continued version of the newsletter — the sequel, if you will — as you did the old one, by signing up to be a member of the Amazon Chronicles at Revue.
A few things will be different.
- First of all, to the best of my knowledge, there’s only a monthly option, not an annual one. (On the plus side, it’s much easier to cancel, if it comes to that.)
- I’m asking members to pledge $6/month, not $5. This reflects the shifting market for newsletter subscriptions, which has changed quite a bit since I set my original price in early 2019, as well as the fact that $6 a month nets me about $5, which makes my mental math for how much revenue I’ll be getting much easier to figure out.
- I’m going back to an irregular schedule, not a weekly or 2x/week one, until and unless I can get 500 paying members for the site, which will make it economically feasible for me to publish at least weekly. (So if you decide to become a member, and would like to see more content, spread the word.)
A few things will be the same:
- Your membership support will pay not just for you to have access to members-only perks like being able to comment on the site and occasional behind-the-scenes posts, but for everyone to be able to access all of my news roundups and original reporting. I call this “unlocking the commons,” and I think it’s a particularly valuable model for patronage in a world of digital abundance. (It also makes sharing my newsletters particularly easy.)
- There’s still going to be a mix of news roundups, original reporting, and commentary.
- The focus on Amazon will be augmented by looking at companies and industries that are not Amazon but part of the same universe, either partners or competitors or those who illustrate something important about where Amazon comes from and what it’s up to.
- I’m also going to continue to look closely at the communities affected by Amazon: its workers, customers, neighbors, the cities where it operates, and the broader world that it impacts.
- The newsletter is going to continue to be written by me, a longtime Amazon customer and admirer who nevertheless finds a lot to criticize about the company, the industries in which they operate, and the broader regimes that make it such a dominant force.
- The guiding star remains this quote by Marshall McLuhan: “Nothing is inevitable if we are willing to contemplate what is happening.”
I know the various stops and starts to this project have left a lot of you in the lurch, especially my earliest supporters. All I can say is that all of them were necessary, and that I’m ready to get back to work.
There’s a lot happening with Amazon, with good writers and reporters on the beat, but still not enough is being done to cover it the way it deserves to be covered. I bring something different from the newspapers, the trade publications, the politicans, and the activists. I hope you’ll come with me to see what we can do next. And I promise at the very least that I’ll be as transparent with you as I can every step of the way.
We can do this!
I have had a lot of caffeine today! :-)
I hope I will see you at Revue.
— Tim Carmody