Grow: How Mikala Jamison turned her newsletter into a book deal
The Grow interview series is designed to share the nuts and bolts of how writers have gone independent and grown their audience on Substack. It has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
We invited
, who writes , to share insights on finding success as a “little guy,” and how she went from unanswered pitch emails to a book deal.
Key takeaways:
Be consistent: Just find your beat, keep writing, and connect with other writers and readers.
Ignore the metrics: Completely ignore your results for the first year if you start a newsletter as a relative Who? like I did. Assume you’ll have few readers other than your mom.
Adjust your paywall as you grow: As Body Type has grown and I’ve demonstrated the quality of my work for over three years, I’ve started to paywall more of it.
What’s your Substack about in one sentence?
examines and critiques body culture (our values around exercise, eating, body image, weight, etc.) and helps people think productively about their own body.What do you uniquely offer readers?
I’ve been through the wringer with my own body—I had binge eating disorder for much of my life, went through recovery, fell in love with strength training as a means of reconnecting with my body, and eventually became a certified group fitness instructor and competitive powerlifter. With those insights, and from working as a freelance health and culture reporter, I’ve gained unique expertise and a well-calibrated bullshit detector about wellness content.
Growth by the numbers
Started Substack: November 2021
Launched paid subscriptions: December 2022
Free subscribers: 9,346
Paid subscribers: 140
How has your life changed since starting Body Type?
I’ve never felt more creatively fulfilled than I do right now. Writing Body Type has given me the chance to commit to a writing practice, sharpen my skills, connect with fabulous readers, and be more thoughtful about my subject, and it has cracked open other writing opportunities, including my book—The Forever Project, out next year. Starting my newsletter is the best writing-related decision I’ve ever made.
What was your online presence like before Substack, and what made you decide to launch?
I had left full-time journalism for a communications job and was trying to continue to freelance, but it felt so difficult; outlets were closing, editors would move around before I could establish a working relationship with them, budgets were dwindling, I couldn’t get responses to my pitches. I wanted to write but kept hitting walls, so I decided to jump into doing it on my own.
Before I started Body Type, I didn’t write regularly enough for legacy media publications to build a meaningful audience—I still only have around 2,500 Twitter followers (all OnlyFans bots at this point, probably) and relatively few followers anywhere else. Body Type is where I finally cultivated a niche and a space where readers could get familiar with my topic and voice.
I think I’m a good example of how the “little guy” can still do well in the newsletter world. I didn’t start Body Type with an existing audience, I’m not super well-connected, and I suck at social media, but I became a Substack bestseller, got a literary agent, and got a book deal from my newsletter. I simply dedicated myself to writing and interacting with other writers and readers, and the growth followed. (I also do this on the side of my full-time job! I can’t publish as much as I’d like, but still manage to connect with people.)
Why did you decide to go paid?
As a professional writer, editor, and reporter, I consider writing a job and a business as much as a calling and a creative practice. Writers should be paid for their work (in fact, I didn’t commission a guest post on Body Type until I could pay the writer a fair rate for it).
Since I started Body Type with basically no audience, though, I had to earn it a little—I had to offer my work up to whoever could find it to demonstrate what my whole deal is before anyone would pay for it. But once I had about a year under my belt, I gave people the chance to pay me.
Considering most of my posts have been free, I’m delighted that even one person does, let alone over a hundred. One day, though, I’d love for my writing to represent much more of my income. Working entirely for myself as a writer is the years-from-now dream, and now that I’m more confident that it could (possibly, maybe, trying not to jinx it) happen, I’m running faster at it.
What’s your editorial strategy?
I publish at least twice a month but usually more; I published four posts this January.
I post a mix of longer essays and discussion posts, which have been a huge joy because I have an engaged audience who bring a lot of life to the comments section. As I have to spend more of my long-form energy on the book, I’ve considered the kinds of shorter but still valuable posts I’ll offer:
I’ll be rolling out more curated roundups of body culture news from around the internet (called The Body Culture Bulletin); guest posts from other writers, like this one from author Margo Steines; answers to my call for reader questions; and a snappy service journalism series for paid readers I’m calling The Take Your Body Back Initiative, all about how to regain a grip on body-related habits like sleep, movement, better nutrition, and more.
How do you use Notes?
In October 2023, I wrote a post that was shared around by some more widely read writers on Notes. I’ve seen a huge upward trend in growth since then. Notes has been a big help for me (a few times, I’ve gotten dozens of subscribers from a Note I fired off in two seconds) not because I’ve hacked some optimal way to use it for relentless growth, but because I just have fun on it. I follow cool people and cool people follow me, we share each other’s work, and I have a good time in conversation with people there.
What’s the sharpest insight you can offer other writers about growing a Substack publication?
Completely ignore your results for the first year if you start a newsletter as a relative Who? like I did. Assume you’ll have few readers other than your mom. Assume you’ll make little money even if you go paid. Assume you’ll write into the void for longer than your ego can bear to imagine.
I started Body Type with the bar set low and very little in the way of a plan—I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, I just wrote and read and shared. That kept me from getting distracted by a bunch of strategies and expectations and disappointments. Screw around for a while, I say, and then come up with a more targeted strategy once you prove to yourself that you like to write even when it feels like no one’s reading.
What advice have you received about growing your publication that didn’t prove to be helpful?
In over three years, I have never seen any evidence that it matters what time of day or week I post. I’ve had sleeper hits on a Sunday at 9 p.m., and I’ve posted at the ostensible golden hour of midday on a Wednesday to nothing but crickets. Posting time doesn’t seem to matter; posting regularly does.
What has been a meaningful moment for the growth of your publication?
In April 2023, when I had fewer than 2,000 subscribers, my now-literary agent Kayla Lightner from Ayesha Pande Literary emailed me cold, saying she was a fan of Body Type and asking if I’d ever considered writing a book. Writing a book has been a lifelong goal, and I’m still a bit stunned it’s happening primarily because I was pissed off that I couldn’t land freelance pitches. And in a little twist of fate, the COO of my now-publisher, New Harbinger Publications, was already a Body Type reader.
You never know who’s reading. I hope other aspiring authors know it’s possible to land a publishing deal without a million BookTok followers. Just keep putting out work you believe in, and someone who sees its potential might find it.
What questions do you have for Mikala that we didn’t ask? Leave them in the comments!
To read more from this series on growing your publication, see our interviews with Wendy MacNaughton, Noah Smith, Carissa Potter, Jørgen Veisdal, Anne Byrn, Nishant Jain, Michael Fritzell, Glenn Loury, Erik Hoel, Jessica DeFino, Mike Sowden, Elizabeth Held, Jonathan Nunn, Polina Pompliano, Michael Williams, Judd Legum, and Caroline Chambers.
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