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This week, we wanted to share some inspiring examples from across Substack:
shares her process to set up a virtual book tour on Substack, through collaborations with over ten writers and creators. The model can be used to promote not only a book but a podcast, course, art project, or your Substack.
Welcome to the new writers and writers who recently launched their Substacks:
If you're new to Substack, welcome! We'd love to learn more about you and your Substack. Reply to this comment and introduce yourself. What brought you here? What do you plan to publish?
I am celebrating recently hitting 200 subscribers which isn’t huge I know but so soon after that I hit 250 and I’m happy people are appreciating some of what I’m putting out there 🥰
Lots of love and luck to everyone giving this a whirl, being consistent and showing up🔥
🧠 Hi everyone! This is a general tip and it's the third time I've made it in these threads, but I keep coming back to it because it's so immensely important and I still see so many new Substack writers not doing. So, in case it's helpful:
*EDIT YOUR WELCOME EMAILS.*
These are the first emails anyone will get when they sign up to read your Substack. They are therefore part of the first impression they’ll get of who you are, what you do and why you’re worth reading. They mean *so much* to your branding. But if you leave them unedited, with just the standard text that Substack has put into them – well, that email will be fine, and contain all the relevant info, but it also won’t sound like YOU. It will entirely fail to sound like you.
(It’ll also fail to point them towards your best stuff, or tell them a story that immediately makes them laugh, or any number of incredibly powerful things you can do to make a winning first impression.)
Substack already recommends you personalise these emails – for example, https://on.substack.com/p/setting-up-your-substack-for-the under “Housekeeping”. But to me, it’s as vital as what’s on your About page. If you spend all that energy to get them to sign up and then their first, damaging impression of your work is “meh, that’s boring” - was it really worth all that effort?
So – as a matter of priority, edit your welcome emails. Go to Settings > Basics > “Welcome email to free subscribers” and click on the Edit button. Make it sound like you. Be surprising and weird and warm and fun. Make it an amazing introduction that will totally make them love you from the starter’s pistol, while *also* making them aware of everything great you’ve done so far, and maybe what else you have to offer, if you have a paid Substack.
(And then, hey, go do the same for “Welcome email to paid subscribers.” And then look for other emails you can edit – there are some under Payments. Anywhere else you can customize? Go find it!)
Sounding unique and interesting from the get-go is incredibly important in this newslettering lark. Everyone is tuning out mechanical-sounding emails. You need to sound amazingly human. And this is an easy humanning win. Go edit those emails and make a rock-star entrance.
🧠 Celebrating...almost getting to 2,000 subscribers! I’m at 1,916 (and started with around 500; the growth is pretty much all from engaging on Substack). I’m also just a few folks away from 100 paid. I consider writing on Substack my most meaningful work, so those numbers mean far more to me than just dollar signs.
🧠 Hello, everybody! Office Hours was such a big help for me in my first months of Substack. In fact, the first time I posted here resulted in my fist big jump in subscribers (10-15 in one day!), and since then, I made a habit to post consistently. This week, since it’s the new year and all, I just want to introduce myself to the new crowd.
I’m Andrei Atanasov, an essayist and memoirist from Romania. If you enjoy hopeful tales, essays that make you consider the everyday in a new light, and CATS, I welcome you to my blog. I’m always eager to learn, and share what I’ve gathered. We’ve built a vibrant little community over at Practice Space!
In other news, the best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten was to just. Do. My. Thing. Draw inspiration from others, but never copy; what worked for someone else might not work for you. Furthermore, it won’t feel natural, and heady readers can spot that. Write from the heart, and eventually the path will reveal itself. Happy weekend!
🧠 I remember going into Office Hours and feeling defeated about my subscriber count. I celebrate everyone here sharing their numbers AND I want to celebrate the folks here who also enjoy the process of writing and connecting with their readers without the worry of numbers. Dan Blank's Note earlier this week was a lovely reminder of this and reiterates one of my New Year's Resolutions, which is to write for an "active an engaged audience" -- no matter the number. https://substack.com/@danblank/note/c-47417975?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=rc2rv
Here's what Dan said if you don't want to click on the link:
"As you consider how you share here on Substack, focus on the people, not the numbers. It’s so easy to become distracted by the data, and by those who are celebrating milestone numbers of subscribers. Instead, consider how you can have one meaningful interaction with readers and writers today."
This week I will be launching a new feature called "Flashpoint Fridays," for paid subscribers, who will receive a writing prompt each Friday and be invited to post a paragraph from their write on the CHAT feed, where others can read and comment on their work. This week "Everything is Personal" surpassed the mark of 7500 subscribers and is nearing 500 paid subscribers. Huge thanks to the network of curious, supportive, and generous readers, enjoying a marriage of literary expression and feminist consciousness.
🟧 - Substack is an amazing place for sharing and enjoying poetry! I think a few of us poets have these two items on our wishlists:
1. Highlighting text to quote in a Note is an awesome feature. But it doesn't work in the poetry block, which means we poets need to chose between formatting our poems or making them quotable, which impacts the effectiveness of Notes for us. So... Notes quotes from the poetry block! 😊
🧠- Here's a cool strategy I engaged in last week. There's been a lot of talk about writing a "hero post." It's sort of like your welcome page but instead it's a post pinned to the top of your homepage. Think of it as an intro and a road map for potential readers...it'll be the very first thing they see when they land on your publication...even before your about page.
Hello! I've been here a few months, watching quietly, reading avidly, posting timorously, but am finding my feet. This is the first time I've seen an invitation to introduce ourselves, so here I am! I've published three literary novels, a lighthearted travel memoir and several books on writing craft. I just judged a writing prize, which was an eye-opener. My substack is a creative diary, musings on writing craft and publishing, and my long quest to train a worried Irish horse.
🧠 ✏️ 🟧 - It's really great to see Kathryn Vercillo's community building work gaining some attention. She's an excellent connector for multiple writers, and her ability to produce useful, actionable content is impressive!
This week, I celebrate 400 subscribers! 400 people read my work? I don't even know that many people. I have another 100'ish that "follow" me. I could rent a hall and fill it up with that many people. (Not a BIG hall, but a Hall just the same.) It's been a slow and steady climb. I'm averaging about 1.3 subscriptions a day. I like that, when you average it like that, I mean. Some days go by and there's nothing. Some days go by and three people unsubscribe. But then two days later I'll pick up two, and the day after, three, and then the day after that, two more. If there's one thing I've learned, it's don't sweat the numbers. I LOVE that I've got 400, but I hit 400 eight days ago, and then lost three subscriptions the very next day, and didn't pick up another subscriber for five days. And then I get seven over the course of two days. That kind of yo-yo subscription is enough to drive you bat-shit. Instead of people subscribing, they were "following." They're still reading me, they're just not getting my emails in their inbox. Now I'm on my way to 500!
🧠 - I recently enrolled in my first writing class ever. On day one, the instructor told us: "As of now, you are all writers and you are taking your work seriously." The mindset shift I've experienced after internalizing this simple and obvious statement was huge. Tell yourself that today, and believe it!
Thank you so so so very much for this incredible support :)) I'm so very thankful to be here among these brilliant and creative writers and artists. There is so much to learn and experience! I'm so happy. <3
🟧 Substack team: sharing a great thread from the community on their top feature requests for 2024 from last week's office hours!
A few of the popular requests: better essay & writer discovery, DMs, more functionality for paywall & paid flexibility (not closing off comments to only paid subscribers):
Don't try to be a writer, because you might just succeed, and then you're screwed. Be a storyteller, and the reader might be able to get from A to Z without drowning in a glut of adjectives and adverbs. Another tip is to tattoo your Substack URL on your grandmother's head. Seek permission first, obvs. Then just sit back and let the magic happen.
Welcome to all of the new writers here! I’ve been here for 5 months and have just reached the 900 subscriber mark which I can’t quite believe!
The community here is the best part and I have met some wonderful people both virtually and in real life as a result of writing here.
I write about career change, life as a multi-hyphenate creative and I celebrate brilliant women through my podcast ‘Inspiring Creative Career Change’. I’d love to welcome you into the Chez Hanny fold ✨
Hello, I'm fairly new to Substack. I launched This Is The Day on January 1. The concept is that each day I will choose one historical event that happened on today's date in history and I'll tell you all about it. Then, I merge that event with Biblical truths and scripture presenting insights into both history and scripture in a comprehensive daily devotional.
(I'm over two weeks late with that NY greeting, but who's counting?)
This year, I'm aiming to collaborate more with the awesome community here.
One initiative was to introduce a segment called "AI Voices" to my Sunday column. Here, other writers on Substack chip in with their tips, advice, or real-world examples of using AI. (For reference, here's last Sunday's issue: https://www.whytryai.com/p/10x-ai-34-gpt-store-luma-labs-genie-website)
But I'd love to get a more diverse range of voices than "people who already write about AI."
As such, if want to contribute to future "AI Voices," I'd be delighted to hear from you.
You can respond here, but it's even better if you drop me a line at whytryai@substack.com. (You can still leave a comment here saying you've done so, in case you somehow end up lost in the Spam Valley of my Inbox.)
I'm also open to other ways of collaborating, like co-writing articles, participating in workshops, and whatever else it is people do when they "collaborate" "together."
I'm celebrating getting my largest audience with my last Substack. Seventeen of them in and it's starting to make a little headway. I love this platform!
Hey, everyone. I've almost been here a year and started from scratch - zero, zilch, no emails no lists to bring over. I'm still working out my thing but it's all going really well. My writing is free to everyone but people can pay if they want to, the archive goes behind a paywall after three months. I've got 289 subscribers and 6 paid (none of them family!). I have a growing group of regular people that I talk to and respond to and. they are all terrific. Last week I started an audio voice-over with my posts and that has had really good feedback. I'm very excited about continuing to write and talk and growing a group of like-minded people who write and talk about the same sort of things. I'm more than happy for it to be slow and I'm loving Substack.
My 2024 wish-list from the ever ambitious Substack tech development team is....
-A minimalist drawing tool within a New Post, as an easy alternative to drawing images with a mouse instead of uploaded photos or ai,
-A Substack-specific ebook creator with great featurea- credit to Winston Malone at the below post for starting this discussion, which we continued in the relevant comments:
-also (but more for other kinds of creators than us fiction authors) it might be cool to create more directories of data, or create synergies with companies that do real-time data output. Think what Marine Traffic does for real time shipping data, or astronomy and weather sites, or Astro.com does for ephemeris and other collections. There are huge creator markets Substack could tap into if it provides the data libraries that would simplify their work.
✏️ Fellow writers who have an organized archive of posts.... how do you organize it? I'm in the process of rebuilding my fiction archive to make it a bit easier. There's a parent page that has links with a quick synopsis of each story. But it's getting a bit long. I'm thinking of breaking it down by collection... or alphabetizing. I'm not really sure what the best way is to handle this!
✏️What I would be so grateful for would be help getting my essay contest widely seen. There's $12,000 in prize money, it is that important to me to get entrees to deal with this unworkable world -- what my Substack is all about -- but my skills here on Substack are shabby and my time is tight. Is there anyone I can pay to guide me? (PS: From my efforts so far -- not great but something -- one result has been a lot of new subscribers!)
ESSAY CONTEST with Cash Prizes!
It’s January 1, 2050. How, in 2024, did we pull off saving the world?
Next 28 January it will be 16 years since I started a blog in Spanish, Cosas que (me) pasan. In November 2022 I turned it into a newsletter on Subtack. So far I have published on both the blog and Subtack, but from 28 January next year I plan to move completely to Subtack and start taking paid subscriptions. With almost 4300 subscribers, I will start with a post explaining the reason for the paid subscription, what I am offering (among other things an online podcast listening club) and hopefully get lucky. Any advice?
And a suggestion: Why not celebrate "writing hours" in Spanish? There is a huge community.
New here, just started this week. A former indie book publisher (25 years), I write about some of my favorite topics (and the focus of Conspire Creative, a book business agency I own): creating holistic, sustainable, income-generating author business you love; entrepreneurship for authors; creative book marketing; outreach for authors; and why/how authors are in a growth industry in the age of automation.
✏️ I'm interested in the relationship between publishing on Substack and publishing in publications (like newspapers, magazines, etc. that pay writers). How much does it harm the chance for publication in the latter if it's first on your substack? Is it worth it to hold back essays on Siubstack while trying to have them published elsewhere? And strategies on this?
🧠 Hi everyone 👋🏼 I'm celebrating 1 year on Substack 🎉. I finished the year with 459 subs, including a few paid. One thing that I've really enjoyed doing is experimenting with different formats and seeing what works for my audience and what doesn't. For example I tried doing regular threads but didn't get loads of engagement so stopped those. My readers seems to enjoy my narrative essays the most so that's what I'm focusing on for 2024 including sharing more about my writing life and I'd also like to do some collaborative work 😊
I'm curious to know what unexpected outcomes have come up for you as a result of publishing on this platform. New friends? Job opportunities? Exciting collaborations? Creative breakthroughs?
✏️ For writers who write about several topics, and who want to provide value to readers (thereby increasing readership, and monetization), what is a good strategy ?
1. Create one publication only, and use Sections or Tags to group the topics
2. Create multiple publications, one for each topic, use Sections for the type of writing, not the content
3. Create multiple author accounts, one for each publication, so that the About of each author will be specific to that publication (each author could be @real_name_topic1 and @real_name_topic2🙏🏼
4. ____ ?
If you also have thoughts on what your preferred approach does to the monetization aspect (integration with Stripe etc) please share.
I've been writing since I was a kid. Started when I was 7, and I'm 77 now. I know practice makes perfect, so I'm still practicing. All I ever wanted to do was read and write, and now that I'm retired I'm doing a lot of both. I've been a soldier, a chef, a corporate worker, a community organizer (20 years,) and a producer of spoken word and music events. My interests are wide and varied, and my poetry covers a lot of territory. My wife and I split our time between Seattle, and Guanajuato, MX, also a lot of territory.
I’ve been writing on Substack for about three months, but never actually introduced myself at one of these. My little corner of the internet is titled: “Bright Side Writings – optimism-led, fortnightly stories to brighten these dark times of climate emergency and global strife.” If you read my piece It’s All About The View (https://matthewcurlewis.substack.com/p/its-all-about-the-view), that might give the best idea of where I’m coming from.
I’m an Australian writer/creative professional living in Amsterdam, by way of Tokyo and New York, and I look forward to communicating with many of you. Feel free to say G’day and I’ll swing that back in your direction as soon as I can.
Hello! I literally just got my 47th paid subscriber a couple of minutes ago! I started serializing my memoir on Dec. 7, for free. I have more than 360 subscribers in total (the number goes up and down) but what's really exciting to me is how many people are reading my writing–more than 7800 views cumulatively so far, and 306 today as I write this. Which is a whole lot more eyeballs than when the manuscript was stuck on my hard drive as I tried, unsuccessfully, to find an agent and/or publisher. I've got a lot to learn and there's so much on Substack to take in, but I am very glad I took this step (which I did after getting a lot of encouragement).
I’m at 360 subscribers! I love my audience. I wish I could invite them all over for milk and cookies. Granted it would be coconut milk and gf, df cookies. 😉
✏️ 🟧 Hi folks, this is my first time jumping in to office hours so HELLO! I'm a former music and brain scientist turned multimedia creative (author, podcaster, speaker, creative director) and when I started here I really wasn’t sure whether I would have the brain space to write regularly given my other work streams but it has been such a JOY. So first, thank you Substack team for creating/maintaining/evolving this platform.
My question is: I am soon to celebrate one year on Substack and am wondering if anyone has interesting ideas for how to celebrate this milestone. I have seen some friends offer discount subscription rates but that doesn’t appeal to me, I think because I feel a bit bad about people who have subscribed at the full rate (what can I say, I am a Libra + enneagram #1 with a serious streak of desire for fairness). Thanks in advance!
Thanks for sharing the virtual book tour post. I really hope to see many more people do their own variations on this. My experience of connecting and collaborating with others in this way was so powerful. I also invite ongoing collaboration:
Hello -- I thought I'd take advantage of your invitation to introduce myself. I'm a veteran journalist and the author of The Unmooring, a historical novel about the 1960s: www.kenfireman.com.
I recently started a Substack newsletter called Liticisms, which explores the relationship between books and contemporary issues in the world: https://liticisms.substack.com/
🟧 I have this idea of using Substack the way the 17th century writers published serial literature in fascicles. I have written (but not published) a nonfiction book, and I thought I’d release it chapter by chapter to subscribers. I’m also looking at doing companion audio recordings. Is there precedence for this? Are there suggestions for making it work?
Are you celebrating something this week? Whether it's an anniversary or a new subscriber milestone, reply to let us know.
If you're new to Substack, welcome! We'd love to learn more about you and your Substack. Reply to this comment and introduce yourself. What brought you here? What do you plan to publish?
To help organize the conversation, please use one of the following emojis when you start a new comment.
🧠 - when sharing strategy or advice for fellow writers
✏️ - when asking questions or seeking feedback from fellow writers
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Use your emoji keyboard or simply copy and paste the emoji at the beginning of your comment.
I am celebrating recently hitting 200 subscribers which isn’t huge I know but so soon after that I hit 250 and I’m happy people are appreciating some of what I’m putting out there 🥰
Lots of love and luck to everyone giving this a whirl, being consistent and showing up🔥
🧠 Hi everyone! This is a general tip and it's the third time I've made it in these threads, but I keep coming back to it because it's so immensely important and I still see so many new Substack writers not doing. So, in case it's helpful:
*EDIT YOUR WELCOME EMAILS.*
These are the first emails anyone will get when they sign up to read your Substack. They are therefore part of the first impression they’ll get of who you are, what you do and why you’re worth reading. They mean *so much* to your branding. But if you leave them unedited, with just the standard text that Substack has put into them – well, that email will be fine, and contain all the relevant info, but it also won’t sound like YOU. It will entirely fail to sound like you.
(It’ll also fail to point them towards your best stuff, or tell them a story that immediately makes them laugh, or any number of incredibly powerful things you can do to make a winning first impression.)
Substack already recommends you personalise these emails – for example, https://on.substack.com/p/setting-up-your-substack-for-the under “Housekeeping”. But to me, it’s as vital as what’s on your About page. If you spend all that energy to get them to sign up and then their first, damaging impression of your work is “meh, that’s boring” - was it really worth all that effort?
So – as a matter of priority, edit your welcome emails. Go to Settings > Basics > “Welcome email to free subscribers” and click on the Edit button. Make it sound like you. Be surprising and weird and warm and fun. Make it an amazing introduction that will totally make them love you from the starter’s pistol, while *also* making them aware of everything great you’ve done so far, and maybe what else you have to offer, if you have a paid Substack.
(And then, hey, go do the same for “Welcome email to paid subscribers.” And then look for other emails you can edit – there are some under Payments. Anywhere else you can customize? Go find it!)
Sounding unique and interesting from the get-go is incredibly important in this newslettering lark. Everyone is tuning out mechanical-sounding emails. You need to sound amazingly human. And this is an easy humanning win. Go edit those emails and make a rock-star entrance.
🧠 Celebrating...almost getting to 2,000 subscribers! I’m at 1,916 (and started with around 500; the growth is pretty much all from engaging on Substack). I’m also just a few folks away from 100 paid. I consider writing on Substack my most meaningful work, so those numbers mean far more to me than just dollar signs.
I write about addiction, sobriety, soulful living, and Chinese Medicine here: https://danaleighlyons.substack.com/
🧠 Hello, everybody! Office Hours was such a big help for me in my first months of Substack. In fact, the first time I posted here resulted in my fist big jump in subscribers (10-15 in one day!), and since then, I made a habit to post consistently. This week, since it’s the new year and all, I just want to introduce myself to the new crowd.
I’m Andrei Atanasov, an essayist and memoirist from Romania. If you enjoy hopeful tales, essays that make you consider the everyday in a new light, and CATS, I welcome you to my blog. I’m always eager to learn, and share what I’ve gathered. We’ve built a vibrant little community over at Practice Space!
In other news, the best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten was to just. Do. My. Thing. Draw inspiration from others, but never copy; what worked for someone else might not work for you. Furthermore, it won’t feel natural, and heady readers can spot that. Write from the heart, and eventually the path will reveal itself. Happy weekend!
🧠 I remember going into Office Hours and feeling defeated about my subscriber count. I celebrate everyone here sharing their numbers AND I want to celebrate the folks here who also enjoy the process of writing and connecting with their readers without the worry of numbers. Dan Blank's Note earlier this week was a lovely reminder of this and reiterates one of my New Year's Resolutions, which is to write for an "active an engaged audience" -- no matter the number. https://substack.com/@danblank/note/c-47417975?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=rc2rv
Here's what Dan said if you don't want to click on the link:
"As you consider how you share here on Substack, focus on the people, not the numbers. It’s so easy to become distracted by the data, and by those who are celebrating milestone numbers of subscribers. Instead, consider how you can have one meaningful interaction with readers and writers today."
This week I will be launching a new feature called "Flashpoint Fridays," for paid subscribers, who will receive a writing prompt each Friday and be invited to post a paragraph from their write on the CHAT feed, where others can read and comment on their work. This week "Everything is Personal" surpassed the mark of 7500 subscribers and is nearing 500 paid subscribers. Huge thanks to the network of curious, supportive, and generous readers, enjoying a marriage of literary expression and feminist consciousness.
🟧 - Substack is an amazing place for sharing and enjoying poetry! I think a few of us poets have these two items on our wishlists:
1. Highlighting text to quote in a Note is an awesome feature. But it doesn't work in the poetry block, which means we poets need to chose between formatting our poems or making them quotable, which impacts the effectiveness of Notes for us. So... Notes quotes from the poetry block! 😊
2. A Poetry category! 🙏
✏️ Hi everyone! What are some tips you could share to get more paid subscribers?
🧠- Here's a cool strategy I engaged in last week. There's been a lot of talk about writing a "hero post." It's sort of like your welcome page but instead it's a post pinned to the top of your homepage. Think of it as an intro and a road map for potential readers...it'll be the very first thing they see when they land on your publication...even before your about page.
Here's mine as an example:
https://wildhoodwanted.substack.com/p/welcome-to-your-wildhood
Hello! I've been here a few months, watching quietly, reading avidly, posting timorously, but am finding my feet. This is the first time I've seen an invitation to introduce ourselves, so here I am! I've published three literary novels, a lighthearted travel memoir and several books on writing craft. I just judged a writing prize, which was an eye-opener. My substack is a creative diary, musings on writing craft and publishing, and my long quest to train a worried Irish horse.
🧠 ✏️ 🟧 - It's really great to see Kathryn Vercillo's community building work gaining some attention. She's an excellent connector for multiple writers, and her ability to produce useful, actionable content is impressive!
✏️ Thinking about collabs on Substack for 2024!
Which writers do great collabs with other Substacks? What are your favorite collabs?
This week, I celebrate 400 subscribers! 400 people read my work? I don't even know that many people. I have another 100'ish that "follow" me. I could rent a hall and fill it up with that many people. (Not a BIG hall, but a Hall just the same.) It's been a slow and steady climb. I'm averaging about 1.3 subscriptions a day. I like that, when you average it like that, I mean. Some days go by and there's nothing. Some days go by and three people unsubscribe. But then two days later I'll pick up two, and the day after, three, and then the day after that, two more. If there's one thing I've learned, it's don't sweat the numbers. I LOVE that I've got 400, but I hit 400 eight days ago, and then lost three subscriptions the very next day, and didn't pick up another subscriber for five days. And then I get seven over the course of two days. That kind of yo-yo subscription is enough to drive you bat-shit. Instead of people subscribing, they were "following." They're still reading me, they're just not getting my emails in their inbox. Now I'm on my way to 500!
🧠 - I recently enrolled in my first writing class ever. On day one, the instructor told us: "As of now, you are all writers and you are taking your work seriously." The mindset shift I've experienced after internalizing this simple and obvious statement was huge. Tell yourself that today, and believe it!
No Nazis! Clean up Substacks reputation please.
Thank you so so so very much for this incredible support :)) I'm so very thankful to be here among these brilliant and creative writers and artists. There is so much to learn and experience! I'm so happy. <3
🟧 Substack team: sharing a great thread from the community on their top feature requests for 2024 from last week's office hours!
A few of the popular requests: better essay & writer discovery, DMs, more functionality for paywall & paid flexibility (not closing off comments to only paid subscribers):
https://open.substack.com/pub/on/p/office-hours-97?r=2bds6&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=47087073
Don't try to be a writer, because you might just succeed, and then you're screwed. Be a storyteller, and the reader might be able to get from A to Z without drowning in a glut of adjectives and adverbs. Another tip is to tattoo your Substack URL on your grandmother's head. Seek permission first, obvs. Then just sit back and let the magic happen.
Welcome to all of the new writers here! I’ve been here for 5 months and have just reached the 900 subscriber mark which I can’t quite believe!
The community here is the best part and I have met some wonderful people both virtually and in real life as a result of writing here.
I write about career change, life as a multi-hyphenate creative and I celebrate brilliant women through my podcast ‘Inspiring Creative Career Change’. I’d love to welcome you into the Chez Hanny fold ✨
https://chezhanny.substack.com
Hello, I'm fairly new to Substack. I launched This Is The Day on January 1. The concept is that each day I will choose one historical event that happened on today's date in history and I'll tell you all about it. Then, I merge that event with Biblical truths and scripture presenting insights into both history and scripture in a comprehensive daily devotional.
Learn about history. Learn about the Bible. Learn about both. Check it out at https://christiandevotionals.substack.com/.
FYI, today's post is about the first recorded UFO sighting in America...in 1644!
✏️ Happy 2024, fellow Substackers!
(I'm over two weeks late with that NY greeting, but who's counting?)
This year, I'm aiming to collaborate more with the awesome community here.
One initiative was to introduce a segment called "AI Voices" to my Sunday column. Here, other writers on Substack chip in with their tips, advice, or real-world examples of using AI. (For reference, here's last Sunday's issue: https://www.whytryai.com/p/10x-ai-34-gpt-store-luma-labs-genie-website)
But I'd love to get a more diverse range of voices than "people who already write about AI."
As such, if want to contribute to future "AI Voices," I'd be delighted to hear from you.
You can respond here, but it's even better if you drop me a line at whytryai@substack.com. (You can still leave a comment here saying you've done so, in case you somehow end up lost in the Spam Valley of my Inbox.)
I'm also open to other ways of collaborating, like co-writing articles, participating in workshops, and whatever else it is people do when they "collaborate" "together."
With that said, have yourselves a wonderful day!
I'm celebrating getting my largest audience with my last Substack. Seventeen of them in and it's starting to make a little headway. I love this platform!
Hey, everyone. I've almost been here a year and started from scratch - zero, zilch, no emails no lists to bring over. I'm still working out my thing but it's all going really well. My writing is free to everyone but people can pay if they want to, the archive goes behind a paywall after three months. I've got 289 subscribers and 6 paid (none of them family!). I have a growing group of regular people that I talk to and respond to and. they are all terrific. Last week I started an audio voice-over with my posts and that has had really good feedback. I'm very excited about continuing to write and talk and growing a group of like-minded people who write and talk about the same sort of things. I'm more than happy for it to be slow and I'm loving Substack.
My 2024 wish-list from the ever ambitious Substack tech development team is....
-A minimalist drawing tool within a New Post, as an easy alternative to drawing images with a mouse instead of uploaded photos or ai,
-A Substack-specific ebook creator with great featurea- credit to Winston Malone at the below post for starting this discussion, which we continued in the relevant comments:
https://storyletter.substack.com/p/selling-ebooks-on-substack-could
-also (but more for other kinds of creators than us fiction authors) it might be cool to create more directories of data, or create synergies with companies that do real-time data output. Think what Marine Traffic does for real time shipping data, or astronomy and weather sites, or Astro.com does for ephemeris and other collections. There are huge creator markets Substack could tap into if it provides the data libraries that would simplify their work.
Keep up the good work and happy 2024,
Chris
✏️ Fellow writers who have an organized archive of posts.... how do you organize it? I'm in the process of rebuilding my fiction archive to make it a bit easier. There's a parent page that has links with a quick synopsis of each story. But it's getting a bit long. I'm thinking of breaking it down by collection... or alphabetizing. I'm not really sure what the best way is to handle this!
✏️What I would be so grateful for would be help getting my essay contest widely seen. There's $12,000 in prize money, it is that important to me to get entrees to deal with this unworkable world -- what my Substack is all about -- but my skills here on Substack are shabby and my time is tight. Is there anyone I can pay to guide me? (PS: From my efforts so far -- not great but something -- one result has been a lot of new subscribers!)
ESSAY CONTEST with Cash Prizes!
It’s January 1, 2050. How, in 2024, did we pull off saving the world?
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/an-essay-contest-its-january-1-2050
✏️ Hello everyone,
Next 28 January it will be 16 years since I started a blog in Spanish, Cosas que (me) pasan. In November 2022 I turned it into a newsletter on Subtack. So far I have published on both the blog and Subtack, but from 28 January next year I plan to move completely to Subtack and start taking paid subscriptions. With almost 4300 subscribers, I will start with a post explaining the reason for the paid subscription, what I am offering (among other things an online podcast listening club) and hopefully get lucky. Any advice?
And a suggestion: Why not celebrate "writing hours" in Spanish? There is a huge community.
New here, just started this week. A former indie book publisher (25 years), I write about some of my favorite topics (and the focus of Conspire Creative, a book business agency I own): creating holistic, sustainable, income-generating author business you love; entrepreneurship for authors; creative book marketing; outreach for authors; and why/how authors are in a growth industry in the age of automation.
✏️ I'm interested in the relationship between publishing on Substack and publishing in publications (like newspapers, magazines, etc. that pay writers). How much does it harm the chance for publication in the latter if it's first on your substack? Is it worth it to hold back essays on Siubstack while trying to have them published elsewhere? And strategies on this?
Thanks.
🧠 Hi everyone 👋🏼 I'm celebrating 1 year on Substack 🎉. I finished the year with 459 subs, including a few paid. One thing that I've really enjoyed doing is experimenting with different formats and seeing what works for my audience and what doesn't. For example I tried doing regular threads but didn't get loads of engagement so stopped those. My readers seems to enjoy my narrative essays the most so that's what I'm focusing on for 2024 including sharing more about my writing life and I'd also like to do some collaborative work 😊
Substack has a rich and growing poetry community, but no Poetry category. Please, please, add a category for Poetry.
✏️ Hi, fellow Substackers!
I'm curious to know what unexpected outcomes have come up for you as a result of publishing on this platform. New friends? Job opportunities? Exciting collaborations? Creative breakthroughs?
Would love to hear about your wins!
✏️ For writers who write about several topics, and who want to provide value to readers (thereby increasing readership, and monetization), what is a good strategy ?
1. Create one publication only, and use Sections or Tags to group the topics
2. Create multiple publications, one for each topic, use Sections for the type of writing, not the content
3. Create multiple author accounts, one for each publication, so that the About of each author will be specific to that publication (each author could be @real_name_topic1 and @real_name_topic2🙏🏼
4. ____ ?
If you also have thoughts on what your preferred approach does to the monetization aspect (integration with Stripe etc) please share.
Greetings! Thanks for the invite. Not brand new, but new enough to want to introduce myself. https://richardwells.substack.com/
I've been writing since I was a kid. Started when I was 7, and I'm 77 now. I know practice makes perfect, so I'm still practicing. All I ever wanted to do was read and write, and now that I'm retired I'm doing a lot of both. I've been a soldier, a chef, a corporate worker, a community organizer (20 years,) and a producer of spoken word and music events. My interests are wide and varied, and my poetry covers a lot of territory. My wife and I split our time between Seattle, and Guanajuato, MX, also a lot of territory.
Hello Everyone, my name is Matthew.
I’ve been writing on Substack for about three months, but never actually introduced myself at one of these. My little corner of the internet is titled: “Bright Side Writings – optimism-led, fortnightly stories to brighten these dark times of climate emergency and global strife.” If you read my piece It’s All About The View (https://matthewcurlewis.substack.com/p/its-all-about-the-view), that might give the best idea of where I’m coming from.
I’m an Australian writer/creative professional living in Amsterdam, by way of Tokyo and New York, and I look forward to communicating with many of you. Feel free to say G’day and I’ll swing that back in your direction as soon as I can.
Merry 2024!
Hello! I literally just got my 47th paid subscriber a couple of minutes ago! I started serializing my memoir on Dec. 7, for free. I have more than 360 subscribers in total (the number goes up and down) but what's really exciting to me is how many people are reading my writing–more than 7800 views cumulatively so far, and 306 today as I write this. Which is a whole lot more eyeballs than when the manuscript was stuck on my hard drive as I tried, unsuccessfully, to find an agent and/or publisher. I've got a lot to learn and there's so much on Substack to take in, but I am very glad I took this step (which I did after getting a lot of encouragement).
I’m at 360 subscribers! I love my audience. I wish I could invite them all over for milk and cookies. Granted it would be coconut milk and gf, df cookies. 😉
✏️ 🟧 Hi folks, this is my first time jumping in to office hours so HELLO! I'm a former music and brain scientist turned multimedia creative (author, podcaster, speaker, creative director) and when I started here I really wasn’t sure whether I would have the brain space to write regularly given my other work streams but it has been such a JOY. So first, thank you Substack team for creating/maintaining/evolving this platform.
My question is: I am soon to celebrate one year on Substack and am wondering if anyone has interesting ideas for how to celebrate this milestone. I have seen some friends offer discount subscription rates but that doesn’t appeal to me, I think because I feel a bit bad about people who have subscribed at the full rate (what can I say, I am a Libra + enneagram #1 with a serious streak of desire for fairness). Thanks in advance!
Thanks for sharing the virtual book tour post. I really hope to see many more people do their own variations on this. My experience of connecting and collaborating with others in this way was so powerful. I also invite ongoing collaboration:
https://createmefree.substack.com/p/opportunities-for-create-collaboration
Excited for the fact that - As a newbie writer my latest article got the best response to date!
And - I found out yesterday that I can build a landing page on Substack 🙌
I'm celebrating 55 new subscribers since the beginning of this year.
Happy Thursday friends!
You have made it to here, so you will make it to the next step as well. Well done. Your writing is valued.
Keep at it and keep enjoying it.
a new ..news for new me .Anniversary of my Husband's death. ;feeling quest . A new Year. New adventure. Renew try at improving skills. ..exploring .
the sun. It just emerged. Us snowed-in folk have milestones that are, well, basic.
Hello -- I thought I'd take advantage of your invitation to introduce myself. I'm a veteran journalist and the author of The Unmooring, a historical novel about the 1960s: www.kenfireman.com.
I recently started a Substack newsletter called Liticisms, which explores the relationship between books and contemporary issues in the world: https://liticisms.substack.com/
I just hit 900 subscribers for my substack, Casey's Catch! woo-hoo! Thank you for all the support from this community!
🟧 I have this idea of using Substack the way the 17th century writers published serial literature in fascicles. I have written (but not published) a nonfiction book, and I thought I’d release it chapter by chapter to subscribers. I’m also looking at doing companion audio recordings. Is there precedence for this? Are there suggestions for making it work?