[ubac]

hey! Sorry, there's a lot of history here, Hamish has been very unpleasant to me and many writers I love, as well as wrongly continuing to bill me after I left his platform -- I realise otherwise I might have sounded unduly hostile, sorry for that.

The benefits I'm talking about are not the advances or guarantees, there's basically a ton of secret programmes at Substack where they give favored publishers special in-kind benefits to effectively pay back some of the 10% fee. Hamish knows what I'm talking about, but can't mention it publicly because their business model is reliant on a pretense that every publisher is paying 10% and not a hodgpodge of subsidies and kickbacks. Does that make sense?

[gonehome]

Sure, I didn’t know this but I’m also not surprised big fish that bring in massive revenue and readership get better negotiated rates (or some value equivalent) that are not publicized. They provide more value and have more negotiation leverage. Their use of the platform is basically marketing for substack.

It’s also possible to directly discuss this openly/honestly like you did in this reply (thanks for clarification) vs. indirectly via disingenuous hostile snark in your first comment.

Also looks like there might be some sort of conflict of interest based on the work you do in your bio which could be having a possibly unintended influence.