This is not a proper Post but a comment for anyone reading this who is newly on Substack. I started a Substack account a few weeks ago, along with many others who don’t feel good about Facebook, Instagram and Techbro world-control. I thought it might be a worthy substitute especially since it is completely ad-free and follows the basic principle that writers should get paid for their writing.

I do love Substack. It is the first thing I turn to every day, sometimes at 3.00 am on the Insomnia Shift. I feel I have learnt more in the past few weeks about what is happening in the Big World than I ever could discover via the Australian legacy media, on Facebook or Instagram. I have never gone for Twitter-X and haven’t bothered with the new Blue thing. I do subscribe to a couple of magazines, in the digital version (Atlantic, New York, N+1) and NLR, for a Brit/Euro perspective. But for a quick ad-free tour of the playground from people I feel close to, Substack has been the goods.

But the downside is: I have realised I can’t manage what’s happening in my email inbox. And, from what I can see on various other chats and comments, other people can’t either. Even my dear one doesn’t want to be on Substack any more because he is getting emails from accounts he didn’t even know existed.

I am drowning in Substack emails from accounts I did subscribe to. I’ve paid for several, and I am glad to hear from those writers via email. It seems only proper. All the rest: I love you, but I can’t afford to pay for you all. I want to read you, but not via my email inbox. That is pretty much reserved now for emergency pleas from alarmed relatives, the occasional “hullo” from a friend, but mostly for official stuff from every agency with which one is obliged to intersect, not to mention dentists, doctors, review-seekers, restaurant-reservation-persons, Paris Metro updates and the company which offers good deals on worm-farm blankets and other real world necessities.* (In order to write this post I have done some instant research on my own in-box, and I think it will take a week of steady work to actually unsubscribe to the advertising junk I have realised is now there).

Substack writing shouldn’t be included as junk, but as I woke up this morning I realised that if I don’t delete all the accounts I am following (the ones I haven’t paid for, I mean), I might have to. I went into my settings (on the computer, not on the phone) and there seemed to be no setting which allows access via App or website only, ie which does not send out an email every time there is a post or a chat or whatever.

I guess like others I had thought Substack would be an alternative to the “get an email newsletter list” instruction. This advice is given to all indie writers, who are told to send out a newsletter once a month to those who have bought their books or followed them in some other way. Subscribing to Substack is not like this. People are posting two or three times a week and sometimes more than once a day, so it is turning into a kind of Facebook but with much longer stories so it takes ages to scan them let alone read them.

Is there an answer? Have I missed something? Off to “research” the problem …

ANSWER: Apparently yes. There are two possible answers, so far I have tried only one.

If you go into your Substack on your IPhone (or equivalent) and go to your Settings, there is a Notification setting. There is a NEWSLETTER DELIVERY heading. Under that is Prefer Push option. There is also Prefer email and both email and push. So I have set “Prefer Push”. I don’t know what that actually means, but I guess I will find out. I don’t even know what a Push email is. I used to be part of a radical social movement in Sydney known as the Push, but I don’t think this has anything to do with them. Everyone’s pretty much dead already. Pushed out you might say.

Another answer: set up your inbox subfolders and instruct your mail provider to deliver all your Substack emails into that folder. That way, they will be there in scores, then hundreds, then thousands, and presumably you can then delete the folder. I haven’t tried this because it seems more protracted and I can bet my boots that I’ll forget to delete them, or will delete the wrong folder.

So I’ll wait and see how it turns out. I know there are some other good discussions on this subject on Substack but am having trouble finding them right now. I don’t want to become a Substack Email Refugee, so let’s hope we can all move towards a manageable system.

*If there happen to be any other worm-farm enthusiasts around, get in touch please! I’d love to have a chat about the ups and downs, triumphs and pains of worm-farming. Or maybe there’s a Newsletter I can follow. I guess another Newsletter won’t hurt!