It was reported, late in January, that Facebook was working on its own newsletter platform for writers and journalists that will be deeply integrated into its vast social media empire and will also let them monetize their content. Well, looks all of it was accurate. Facebook has today officially announced plans of an upcoming publishing platform for independent writers that will go live in the coming months and will offer a ton of tools ranging from customization, audience reach, and of course, monetization.

We will start by partnering with a small subset of independent writers: Facebook

While Facebook is coy about how exactly it is going to partner with independent writers, a report by Axios mentions that the company will offer them paid deals to gain some traction for its publishing platform. Yes, Facebook is chasing its own piece of pie from the rising trend of newsletters – one that is currently dominated by Substack. But the company plans to gain an early lead by offering a more robust set of features such as:

Of course, Facebook is going against Substack, but will have much more to offer.

Facebook has made it clear that it is focusing on independent writers, and with its publishing platform, it aims to support independent local journalists. We don’t know what the social media giant’s publishing platform will be called, but from what Facebook has announced so far, it appears to be a fully-fleshed out service that will offer both customization and audience reach tools from the get-go, thanks to its social media platform that already clocks hundreds of millions in monthly active users.