How To Go "Independent" on Substack
A closer look at the Top 10 bestsellers of major Substack categories and whether they are truly independent
Comrades: How “independent” are the top writers on Substack?
Substack deserves praise for protecting free speech. Its team has stood strong at critical junctures while scaling a great platform. Writers covering every conceivable topic are flourishing here. We have only captured a small portion of the total addressable market. Substack’s bestseller leaderboards reveal who has the largest audiences across ~20 categories, while the rising section allows readers to discover fast-growing smaller samizdats.
Today, I will score each category on how independent its top 10 writers are. I define independent as a publisher who has not recently worked for MSM and has not received external funding. Root for the underdogs as we sniff around outside of our own bubbles. We can’t claim victory in the culture until our poasters grow larger than the establishment hacks. Every Substack I recommend is a true independent and we all appreciate the support - it makes a big difference.
Politics: 1.5 / 10
Politics is by far the most lucrative and demoralized category. Matt Taibbi (#9) is the only real independent here. The Free Press has raised external funding and combines solid investigative reporting with somewhat predictable punditry, so they get half a point. Everyone else is part of the Trump Derangement Substack human centipede of slop. The former MSM hacks regurgitating the same copy pasta here as if they still worked at CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, etc. Since the election, most of Substack’s growth from 4 to 5 million total paid subs has come from this mass migration while most independents have plateuaed.
What the propagandists lack in originality, they make up for in sheer volume and repetition. Queen HCR has 2 million readers and each of her daily screeds cites MSM dozens of times. They frequently host each other on Substack Lives to discuss the only topic they cover - orange man bad - a digital deluge of No Kings protests. Now they are serving as the bootlicking welcoming committee for several 2028 presidential candidates who have recently launched Substacks: Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttgieg, and Chris Murphy. Their engagement relative to audience size is suspiciously low, perhaps a result of imported email lists and ActBlue money laundering.
Everyone in the top 20 of politics has a purple check, which means they are making around $1 million per year. Their writing could easily be replicated with an AI prompt: “Generate an essay about why Donald Trump is wrong/evil about [INSERT TOPIC].” Perhaps that is already occurring - commissars all the way down…
They did the meme chart and have created a BlueSky level echo chamber:
World Politics: 4 / 10
World Politics is more diverse and polarized than US Politics.
, , and are top notch commentators. Snyder, Hedges, Ben-Ghiat, and Drop Site are broken records about how Trump is literally Hitler. I am not as familiar with Malcolm, Freedman, and Hickey but they appear to be independents focusing on Canada, UK, and NZ respectively.
Health Politics: 10 / 10
Hello, based department? Everyone on this list has been justly rewarded for speaking out against COVID tyranny with rigorous scientific analysis. Perhaps this category was created to keep true independents segregated from the Politics shills.
, , and are legends.
News: 4 / 10
Aaron Parnas has quite the grift. He streams several videos a day of him reading MSM articles - the younger version of Jim Acosta and Scott Dworkin. Shellenberger and Hersh are heavy hitters worthy of respect. Bishop was the OG Substacker focused on China. Lankenau covers Mexico. The rest appear to lean towards the establishment.
The Rolling Stone raving that Parnas is cooler than Joe Rogan shows how far they have fallen:
Culture: 5 / 10
If Substack is the economic engine for culture, then the culture category is a reflection of its intellectual diversity.
’s JRK is a maverick at the heart of the MAHA movement. B&R and Welch are heterodox enough, while Sam Harris and Jessica Valenti are predictably insufferable. Random white pills - an Italian ranks #1, while Harbison shows us how he saves dogs. Peterson, Jaouad, and Nahman appear to be conventional AWFL modern feminist types.
Business: 7 / 10
Noah Smith is the millennial Paul Krugman - a lefty economist who knows nothing about business and blocks people for criticizing his bad takes. Lenny and Richard dominate Silicon Valley and Hollywood, respectively. Emily is the NYC it girl who covers AWFL luxury life in NYC, the white parts of Brooklyn, the Hamptons - true to stereotype, she endorsed Zohran. The rest are high quality independent domain experts.
Science: 6 / 10
Follow the science! Which “experts” can we trust?
, , and deliver incisive analysis. Jetelina and Topol (Ground Truths) are Big Pharma Shills. Astral Codex Ten is the rationalist regent. Congrats to Dr. Vinay Prasad for joining fellow Substacker Dr. Jay Bhattacharya in the Trump adminisitration.
History: 7 / 10
If the news is fake, imagine how fake the history is - quite the mix of narratives here. Note how “historian” Heather Cox Richardson is not in this category. She has more readers than all of these scholars combined.
Humor: 3 / 10
Ironically, some of the least funny people are on this list. Kalb wrote for Jimmy Kimmel, while Maurer wrote for John Oliver. Weingarten is a WaPo TDS merchant. Yuri is #15.
The Top 10 of more creative categories of Literature, Fiction, Design, Music, and Art have noticeably fewer readers than the major categories above. Hope they attract more attention. Food & Drink and Fashion & Beauty writers have more purple checks because everyone loves to eat and look good.
For previous surveys of Substack:
How To Make Millions from Trump Derangement Substack AND Win the Pulitzer Prize
Comrades: Welcome to the first annual Substack Correspondents’ Dinner!
How To Calculate Substack's Total Addressable Market
Comrades: Substack has only reached less than 1% of its total addressable market. The upside is immense. LFG!
How To Make a Substack Meme
Comrades: Substack is the new economic engine for culture. Let’s make the culture of Substack fun and free. Here are a bunch of fresh, spicy Yuri original memes for Substack.
Thanks. The firehose of info, or whatever, gets stronger every day. I feel lucky to have found you, Matt & Walter, Sasha, el gato, Shellenberger, Eugyppius, Khan, Ruy Teixeira, and a few other of more specialized interests. Hard to understand the Bulwark thing. . . . It’s sad what happened to my former favorite Bari Weiss & TFP, does anyone know who is funding her? And the non-transparent censorship is disturbing.
I have no idea how these things are calculated. I've cracked the top ten in Culture five or six times. It's typically when something is gaining traction with regard to the number of views. Then, a day or two later, I drop off. Do you know how they calculate these things? Just curious, from a data nerd perspective.