WORDS THAT MAKE MONEY
the dangerous business of reading
Welcome back to 5 links you need to start the week right, your creative digest.
If you're reading this: CONGRATS!!!
You're doing MUCH more reading than everyone else.
Today we’re talking about words. Words that make money 💸 and those that don't. Written words. Spoken words. And why we should care.
Before you scroll, do this and save yourself.
1. HOW TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL NEWSLETTER
Beehiiv pulled data off thousands of paid newsletters. Paid subscription revenue hit $19M in 2025, up 138%. What does that mean to you? Since 2024, the median price has been $10 a month. Niche beats size: Matt Brown’s Extra Points has 27,000 subscribers, 2,000 of them paying, and makes over $200k a year covering the business of college sports because no one was onto it. Niche & retention is where the money is. How do you fare? Look at the data from your own sector as they can vastly differ. Execution and paywalls matter. As with anything, you should focus on what your reader gets.
2. IF THIS MADE YOU WANT TO START A NEWSLETTER
Substack just rolled out tons of new tools such as perks ( I LIKE NETWORKING is in the announcement!). The one thing I’m waiting for: kill the “follow” and ensure only subscribers (free or paid) read your work.
3. HOW TO MAKE SENSE OF THE LITERACY CRISIS
Seems ironic to write about this, but here we are. Heated Rivalry was a hit, they said, because it had such a loyal book-made fan base. Dua Lipa has a library. Dior made book totes. And in 2025, UK publishing hit a record £7.4 billion in 2025. And YET. The Atlantic says reading is ending: fewer than half of US adults read a book in 2022 and Americans now bet more often than they read. That publishing record? The growth was in audio and digital. America isn't illiterate, the piece argues. It's postliterate.
Writing detaches the message from the messenger, allowing for a more dispassionate spread of information than was possible in oral societies. “More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness” - The Atlantic
4. SHOULD YOU FIRE YOUR AGENT?
A piece about gatekeepers. Gabriel Hart signed with an agent in 2021, got 23 rejections over 11 months, then got ghosted. He self-published the book himself. “One un-agented author says she scans the acknowledgements page of every book she reads, fuming with jealousy and taking mental notes on names. (You can do that for free by pinching to zoom on Publishers Marketplace screenshots.)”. Go the self-publishing route, one expert warns, and you’re just “trading Big Five for Big Tech.”
5. THIS DOESN'T LOOK POSITIVE
Search is dying, AI is scraping your site, and 81% of teens now get theirs from influencers. The NYT editor Joe Kahn says they must met them on video, podcasts and newsletters that live entirely off your own platform. Refining text while everyone’s habits shift is, in his words, “head in the sand.”
ONE MORE THING
Thanks for reading,
Isabel