FARRAH STORR TO BOLSTER SUBSTACK’S UK PRESENCE
Farrah Storr has been recruited by Substack to spearhead it's transatlantic expansion.
Its writing community includes Salman Rushdie, Chuck Palahniuk and Jeanette Winterson. The number of people paying to subscribe to its content has rocketed from 250,000 last December to around a million this November.
Now, San Francisco-based email newsletter platform Substack, with one eye trained on opportunities this side of The Pond, has recruited Farrah Storr from her editor-in-chief role at Elle UK to be new Head Of Partnerships for the region.
Storr “will be helping some of the best writers from around the UK to build on the momentum that has started organically on the platform”, according to a spokesperson for Substack, which was founded in 2017 and is thought to be worth around $650 million. “It is the organic success of a litany of UK-based writers that has given us such confidence that making a serious investment in the UK is a smart bet.”
As well as Rushdie and Winterson, the legion of successful UK-based users of the platform being referred to here include Jonathan Nunn, editor of the food and culture publication Vittles; Dominic Cummings, Melanie Phillips, and Suzanne Moore, all of whom post political commentary on Substack; and historian Anton Howes, whose The Age of Invention expounds on the history of human innovation.
Substack - which allows writers to sell their work directly to readers, in the process also granting them greater editorial freedom than traditional outlets - is proving a lucrative platform for its most successful users: its top 10 writers together, it is thought, make more than $20m in revenue a year.
But the company is more than simply a new way of monetising journalism in the wake of print advertising’s gradual decline through the digital age. The company is also on a mission to foster a new generation of writers through its community initiatives and fellowships such as Substack Grow, as well as through exhaustive educational resources.
“Leaving a 22-year career in magazines was always going to difficult,” says Storr, who has won multiple awards in the course of a journalism career that has also included stints at Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Women’s Health. “But those of you who have worked with me will understand why the pull of helping ALL writers to be published and make money from that work was just too important to pass up.”
Adds Substack’s spokesperson: “We’re excited for what’s to come from a region with such a proud history of journalism and literature, and we welcome Farrah to the Substack team.”