{"id":7115,"date":"2026-11-06T09:40:39","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T09:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/?p=7115"},"modified":"2026-11-06T09:53:53","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T09:53:53","slug":"an-email-list-is-not-a-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/an-email-list-is-not-a-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"Why an email list is not a relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Direct relationships build trust.” That is how Hamish McKenzie, cofounder of Substack, introduced his new book, How to Save the Media<\/em>. He took six months off to write the case for a media system built on direct relationships between writers and readers, and against the social feeds that ran journalism for a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I agree with the premise. Most of what I have worked on for years starts from it. So the claim deserves a closer test than a nod: if you build on Substack, which parts of the relationship do you own, and which parts belong to Substack?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a writer does own<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Start with the credit, because it is real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can export your subscriber list at any time. Paid subscriptions that run through the card checkout sit in your own Stripe account, so those paying readers can move with you to Ghost, Beehiiv or your own stack. Your archive comes with you too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is more than any social platform ever offered. Nobody exported their Facebook page audience. When a writer outgrows Substack, they leave with names, emails and a revenue line. Substack makes this point itself when critics call it a walled garden, and on these three items it is right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What stays behind<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now look at what the export file leaves out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest gap is followers. The Substack app nudges readers to follow writers the way they would follow an account on Instagram, and a follow needs no email address. So part of your audience never lands in your export file, and the only place you can reach those people is inside Substack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is the login. Your readers sign in with a Substack account rather than one at your publication, which means Substack sees who reads you, who else they read and how they drift between writers, while you see the part that concerns you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discovery works the same way. Whether a new reader finds you through Recommendations, Notes or the app feed depends on Substack’s ranking, and that ranking stays behind when you go. If much of your growth comes from the network, you have swapped one feed for another, which is the dependency the book sets out to criticise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two smaller items close the gap further. Anyone who subscribed inside the iPhone app pays through Apple, and that billing does not transfer, so those readers would have to subscribe again wherever you move. And while you get opens and clicks, the reading behaviour inside the app, the signal that feeds the ranking, stays with Substack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Substack does not hide any of this, and a network has to work this way to function. Still, it changes what “direct” means. The writer holds the email address and the card. The reader’s daily habit belongs to the app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An address book is not a relationship<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An email list tells you where to send something. It does not tell you who the reader is beyond an address, how they found you, what they talk about with other readers, or whether they would notice if you stopped writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have used a pinboard picture before. Every reader is a pin. Every relationship between two readers is a thread tied between two pins. A list is a box of pins. You can carry the box anywhere, and that is worth something. But the threads, the comments, the chats, the readers who know each other because of you, are what make people stay. On Substack, the threads that form across writers run through Substack’s network, not through yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the useful question is not “can I export my list?” Ask instead: when I leave, what do my readers lose? If the answer is their login, their feed, their conversations and the writers they found through you, then the relationship was shared with the platform all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The incentive moved<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Substack began as a tool. You brought an audience, it handled email and payments, and it took a cut. Today it takes ten percent of subscription revenue and is building an app, a social feed, a follow graph and a recommendation network. The company’s value now grows with how much reading happens inside that network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is a reasonable business. It is also a different business from the one described as “direct”. A tool profits when writers leave with a strong list. A network profits when readers stay in the app. Some writers have noticed. The Verge reported in May that a growing number are moving to Ghost, Beehiiv, Patreon and smaller platforms, and the fee and the lock-in both come up in their reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McKenzie’s diagnosis of the old media system holds up. The cure he describes has the same weak spot as the problem: someone else owns the room where readers meet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five questions before you build on any platform<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

These apply to Substack, to us and to anyone else who promises ownership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Can I export every reader, including the ones who follow without an email address?<\/li>\n\n
  2. Do readers log in to my product, or to the platform’s?<\/li>\n\n
  3. Who decides which readers see my work: me, or a ranking I cannot see?<\/li>\n\n
  4. If I leave, do paying readers keep paying without signing up again?<\/li>\n\n
  5. Do conversations between my readers happen in a space I run, and do they move with me?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    If the answer to most of these is “the platform”, you are renting a channel. That can still be the right call for a solo writer starting out. For a publisher with a brand and an archive, it is a dependency you should choose with open eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What owning the relationship takes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    For a newsroom, owning the relationship means owning more than a list. Readers sign in to your app, on your domain, under your brand. Conversations between readers happen in your channels, so the threads stay when you change vendors. You decide what each reader sees, and you keep the data that comes from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That used to need a product team most publishers do not have. It no longer does. On tchop, publishers run their own app on iOS, Android and the web, readers talk to each other in channels the newsroom controls, and the newsroom’s own AI agents can handle curation, publishing and moderation, with editors signing off on what ships. All data and reader relationships stay with the publisher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Direct relationships do build trust. Make sure the relationship is yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Request a demo for your own community<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Substack sells direct relationships. Writers own the list and the payments. Followers, logins, discovery and app billing stay with the platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5879,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,174],"tags":[716,714,711,622,322,715],"coauthors":[132],"class_list":["post-7115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news-and-media","tag-audience-ownership","tag-direct-relationships","tag-platform-dependence","tag-publishers","tag-reader-loyalty","tag-substack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7127,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115\/revisions\/7127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7115"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tchop.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}