Product news for writers: Boost, Subscriber report, Chat on the web, and more
Learn about the new tools we’ve built for writers
At Substack, we believe great writing is valuable. We’re focused on building simple tools that allow you to grow your audience and earn an income directly from subscribers, on your own terms. Learn about the new tools we’ve built for and with writers below.
Please chime in, in the comments section, with your feedback.
Do your best work all in one place
We’ve shipped new tools like Chat on web and editable post embeds that make it simple to kickstart or maintain a publishing cadence on Substack.
Editable post embeds create an interesting design and help focus readers’ attention by displaying a preview of another post. Now, when you drop in a link from your own publication, you’ll see a fresh design with increased controls. Use editable post embeds to share a recent post, create a roundup of posts from the archive, or publish a digest.
Web Chat makes it easier than ever to build a community around your publication on Substack. Designed to be a private group chat with your subscribers, Chat is now available on the web in addition to the Substack app, and you have the option to let all subscribers or just paid subscribers start a thread.
Promote your book from your profile. Your Substack profile is a simple way to share all your social handles, web-profile presences, and now books, all in one place.
Great writing is valuable
Few things express trust in media better than a paid subscription. We build tools that help writers supercharge their paid-subscription strategies so they can earn more money.
Boost is our biggest investment to date in helping writers accelerate their earnings. Three features are currently available to writers who have turned on Boost: an upsell email to engaged subscribers, a multiple-subscription discount, and a pre-cancel offer.
Group subscriptions’ most recent update makes it seamless to sell and manage subscriptions for both writers and group administrators. Send a targeted group subscription offer or create a general group subscription offer.
The founding tier allows your most loyal readers to subscribe annually to your publication at any amount higher than the regular subscription price. We’ve created a standalone page for the founding tier so that you can market this plan to your most loyal fans.
Grow your audience
When you publish on Substack, you not only get the best, easy-to-use tools for subscription media businesses, you also get a world-class growth team that is always searching for ways to drive growth for your publication.
The Subscriber report is a new addition to your Substack stats dashboard. Nurturing your publication’s audience is important as it grows, and gaining insights into the health of your audiences helps you determine where to focus your energy. In the Subscriber report writers with paid subscriptions can learn about paid subscriber retention and paid growth rate. Additionally, all writers have access to audience insights and audience overlap in this tab.
SEO power-users wanted more control and customization over their posts. We added the option for all writers to directly edit the SEO title (title tag) and SEO description (meta description) of your post.
Guest posts encourage discovery and give you exposure to another writer’s audience. Now you can simply click the “+” sign under a post title and search for the name of any writer on Substack. The writer will receive an email to confirm they are an author of the post.
Unlocking the power of the subscription network
Substack Notes is a new space where you can publish short-form posts and share ideas with other writers and readers on Substack. Since Notes launched, we’ve made some fast-follow improvements.
Paid replies allow writers to limit replies to only their paid subscribers. Our hope is this new tool will help you encourage good-faith discussions on Notes, while also offering new value to your paying subscribers.
My Subscribers tab displays notes from the people who subscribe to you. We’re experimenting to see if this tab helps writers and readers build stronger connections through Notes.
For more information on the new and improved tools and features, visit the hyperlinks above and What’s new on Substack. We hope you give them a try.
As always, please feel free to leave feedback and ideas in the comments.
Share this post