32 Comments
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David Roberts's avatar

Best office party (I think holiday): my old firm taking over MOMA I think about 15 years ago. I was able to be alone in silence with some of the collection for a while. Perhaps antisocial of me but it was a unique opportunity.

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Irene Kim (김애린)'s avatar

I’m curious what incentive brands have to go through Substack and have them broker ad placements when brands can just reach out to writers directly, as they’ve already been doing, per Hamish. We shall see!

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Emily Sundberg's avatar

Great question. Maybe in the future it will be like "Substack, here is $100k -> we trust your partnerships people to place this on the right publications"

Reducing the back and forth for brand teams with writers.

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Brian W's avatar

Yes... some brands/media buyers will want one stop shopping with their budgets instead of researching and negotiating directly with all content creators. Would also allow for Substack to promote some form of programmatic/algorithmic placement based on context and genre of content. Engagement is high here therefore cuts through the clutter of other advertising... also comes through the inbox rather than getting pushed to junk or promotions tabs

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Dina Fierro's avatar

Brand person here, my guess is it will simplify the process–just as agencies and influencer marketing platforms do. It's labor intensive to reach out to writers individually (though it obviously allows for a closer relationship.)

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Rachel Johnson's avatar

Very excited about sponsorships - right now it’s so clunky and manual for us. Would love to make it seamless via the platform to keep it all in one place

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Emily Sundberg's avatar

How have you been doing it until now?

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Rachel Johnson's avatar

Lots of emails back and forth. Set up a payment link on stripe and have a Squarespace page to sign up for sponsorships - not terrible but definitely not seamless!

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Tatayana's avatar

Every best seller list should also tell you how many books the author bought themselves to resell later just so they could make the list

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Elli Ament's avatar

Can we talk about how McNally Jackson closed their Seaport cafe/bar? Devastating.

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Emily Sundberg's avatar

(yes we can talk about this)

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Emily Sundberg's avatar

WHEN???

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Elli Ament's avatar

two weeks ago... there wasn't really any warning it just was a converted to a stationary store section basically overnight :(

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Sumeet Shah's avatar

Yeah they closed it at the end of November - it's now more stationary and writing tools https://www.instagram.com/p/DRNnZGhEaTX/

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Kate Citron's avatar

They did?!

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Jenovia 🕸️'s avatar

What?! Noooo 😭

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Claire Akkan's avatar

Super interesting that only 19 of the bestselling books were actually published this year. Besides a big dose of self-help, this is an impressive list of literary novels that would make a high school English teacher happy.

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Lauren Gallo's avatar

For my day job, that sponsorship pilot completion and launch will be handy. I'm aiming to work with more authors in 2026.

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Anabel Pasarow's avatar

Feeling nostalgic for Vice/Refinery29 2019 holiday party…so hot and fun

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Hannah Spears's avatar

V interesting convo going on in B&N Reddit about store employees being pressured by corporate to push the books they deemed “best of the year” (which I believe is not based on sales)

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Emily Sundberg's avatar

Can you link us?

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Emily Sundberg's avatar

damn, what brought you to that subreddit?

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Hannah Spears's avatar

Insomnia

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Emily Sundberg's avatar

all girls are the same

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pickle's avatar

This is interesting bc my group chat was just talking about how unsettling it was to go to B&N recently and the employees were so annoying about Mona’s eyes being “supposedly really good” and how flesh won the booker prize so it was probably a good read— THEY hadn’t even read the books! Can’t wait to get into the Reddit

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June Joo's avatar

So the Golden Globes’ Best Podcast noms are essentially all… celeb interviews? That’s reductive to the growth that the podcast industry had over the years including the past year

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Tamzin Astani's avatar

These bestsellers lists will never be rid of Just Kids or the Artists way

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Virginia Roberts's avatar

I’m gonna test out the live from desktop functionality at noonish my time (~20 min from now) if anyone wants to peek at it 🤷🏼‍♀️ that’s way better for me than ever going live on mobile because I usually wanna be sitting down and thinking (and maybe even streaming with OBS to show stuff on my desktop since my content is often more technical)

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Desiree Adib's avatar

Oliver darcy reports about the best podcast noms at the GG are worth reading…he writes that, the Globes pitched full-suite marketing packages to podcasts on the show’s short list, offering plum coverage from Penske media brands. It’s all basically pay to play…nothing new for awards of course.

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