Visualizing Literary Substack
Who is recommending whom?
After writing about The Oracle of Bacon and the articulation of small-world networks a few weeks ago, I felt the urge to map one I’m familiar with and see what it looks like. (This is now possible, thanks to a product whose logo will be familiar to readers of a certain age.)
The result is an interactive network graph of the recommendation relationships among 366 literary (and para-literary) Substacks. It was created by using seven literary Substacks as “seeds,” then tracing out the network leaves to two degrees and removing Heather Cox Richardson, lest she swamp the whole canoe.
Two Substacks are connected to one another if there is a recommendation in either direction and, what you’ll see, is that recommendation behavior is uneven. Some do it, some don’t. Just three of the seeds I selected did most of the connective work, though the result uncovered most of the Substacks I’m familiar with, which is how small-world networks work. A few connectors, who don’t necessarily have the most subscribers, collapse the path lengths.
You can search for your favorites using the search box, but note that if someone doesn’t appear, it could be that they have recommendations turned off or hidden.
The node I’m most familiar with is anchored by original book blogger David Gutowski of Largehearted Ledger. He has the most connections on the graph and serves as the bridge from early book bloggers through the HTMLGIANT posse to the present. I assume this is because he either remembers how blogrolls actually work or because he is, in fact, a largehearted boy.