Rockwood Notes Moves to Ghost

I started Rockwood Notes on Substack. Then, I broke my Substack. Or something.

So, I've migrated to Ghost.

What This Means for Subscribers

Not much should change for existing free and paid subscribers.

• All free and paid subscriptions have been transferred from Substack to Ghost
• All posts are on the new Ghost site
• Old links should automatically redirect
• I'm testing the email with this article, so we'll see how that goes
• Once I post paywalled content, paid subscribers should be able to click on the log in, enter their email and have a password emailed to them, automatically recognizing their paid access

Overall, it should be business as usual. If you notice any issues, please let me know.

I'll be deleting the Substack account soon after this publishes.

A Second Site

I also made a second site, www.ryanlundeen.com, which is where all non-Pritzker content will live (present-day market research, investment case studies, and histories of people and businesses).

The second site will help keep Rockwood Notes organized and focused solely on the Pritzker family history. It will also give readers more flexibility depending on their interests.

I did not transfer any Rockwood Notes subscribers over to it. If you want it, you can go sign up. For now, all content there will be free. If I ever paywall content, Rockwood Notes paid subscribers will get complementary access to it.

These changes were driven by requests I keep getting, and is hopefully a step towards a more sustainable platform for research, writing and teaching.

That's all you need to know, so feel free to stop reading here.

If you want to read my experience migrating from Substack to Ghost, continue on.

Full disclosure: I'm technologically illiterate.

Why I like Ghost(Pro)

First, Substack takes 10% of paid subscriber fees. Ghost does not. That's nice.

I've already paid many years worth of Ghost(Pro) fees to Substack thanks to their revenue sharing model vs Ghost's fixed fee.

Second, despite my technological illiteracy, Ghost is a lot more customizable.

Third, there's no "enter a email and if there's an account you can log in but if you enter the wrong email we'll just create another account for you to deal with."

The lack of 'network effects' is a downside. But, most of my paid support has been from Twitter and/or word-of-mouth.

So, whether you're a free or paid subscriber, your help spreading the word on articles is more important than ever.

The Transition...

...was easy.

They have a free concierge program that provides quick response times (1 day given the difference in US and UK time zones) for any questions you have, and steps to follow throughout the migration.

But, you don't need that if you know what you're doing (I did not).

I read a lot of articles on how to migrate from Substack to Ghost. They were either outdated, or long and seemingly complicated. Maybe that's only if you self-host. I don't know.

But here's the steps I followed (with the help of Ghost's concierge service):

Step 1: create a Ghost account, familiarize yourself with the platform and select a theme (they have free trials).

Step 2: Transfer content and free and/or paid subscribers from Substack to Ghost. Ghost has a migration tool that does this for you. It took 2 minutes or less.

Note: I only had two articles to transfer. There were some small aesthetics to fix with a couple pictures, footnotes and block quotes. I can imagine a substack with more content could get messy.

Step 3: Go into Stripe and revoke Substack's access to the Stripe account (Ghost's concierge service will send you screenshots of all this if you reach out).

Step 4: Receive email from Substack saying you incorrectly disconnected from Stripe. Ignore that.

Step 5: Double check Substack is not connected to your Stripe account anymore. Then, go to the Subscribers page in Substack's dashboard, filter the subscribers to only list paid, select them all, click the [...] and select Remove.

A scary box will pop up saying "If any of these emails have paid subscriptions, they'll be issued a pro-rated refund before being removed from the list."

But, because you triple checked (go do that) that Stripe is disconnected, refunds won't happen.

Step 6: click "Remove email" (after verifying for a 4th time that Substack is disconnected from your Stripe account). Confirm your decision on the next popup.

Step 7: Go to Stripe public settings, account settings and business detail settings and change any names, URLs or email addresses associated with your old Substack to your new Ghost site.

Step 8: if you have a custom domain, follow the instruction here.

That's basically it.

If anyone any with a Substack wants to move to Ghost, I have an affiliate link.

Some people get weirded out with affiliate links, but you get a discount. I get a commission. It's a win-win.

Either way, I hope everyone moves to Ghost (or an equivalent) because most people I've talked to don't actually like using Substack. I'm bitter from my experience and think we should all harness our inner Milton from Office Space and set the building on fire– metaphorically of course.