Total followers increase smoothly but at a lower rate than before.

While subscription numbers make no sense. Total subscribers are just about what they were 6 months ago, when I hit 50,000. Paid subscribers have dropped by 22% since the peak, or 367 subscriptions.

And althought I have an alleged 50,000 plus subscribers, only 47,000 are getting the emails. Are the rest dead email addresses, or is there another explanation?

Here is something else that is pretty weird. Substack says that 31.4% of readers open each post on average—which is not bad.

But then substack tells you the actual number of emails opened—and in some cases it is over 50% of emails delivered, a great number. Why the discrepancy?

It appears that substack is no longer keeping track of those who go to the post directly, without an email, perhaps referred by friends, from browing substack, or using the info provided to followers.

I don’t think I can fix any of this. But I thought I would share it, as it could be useful for other substack authors and my readers.