Creators Flee the Substack Tax

High commission models (Substack’s 10% cut plus payment fees) can scale into large recurring costs as newsletters grow, incentivizing creators to move to flat‑fee or self‑hosted platforms. The migration is visible in concrete cases (a newsletter cutting annual platform bills from ~$5k to ~$2k and growing subscribers after switching) and in platform features that lock brands into ecosystems (followers/billing data that can’t be exported). — If platforms extract a growing share of subscription revenue and center their own social branding, creator independence, media diversity, and the economics of online publishing will shift away from individual authors toward platform control.