No! You're not broken. Neither is Substack

I’m taking a break from “McAllister’s Mates” this week (my round up of reviews of the brilliant works on Substack) as I have a pressing issue to tackle.

I’m afraid I have to start with a negative and point out some very real, very disruptive influences.

Then I will move onto why you are probably doing a lot better than you think you are.

Finally I will give some thoughts on my own way forward, which I hope you will find interesting.

Gurus Be Gone!

My notifications are currently being bombarded by ever more frequent and aggressive posts mocking the poetry and fiction community as “stupid”, “dead” or “lazy assed” (that last one is particularly charming). Now of course these are not merely complaints and slurs - they always come with a promise of “remedy” and “salvation”. I am becoming very aware of the damage this is doing both to individual authors and the spirit of this joyful community, and I have had enough!

Now pitching Internet, marketing, and editing services is nothing new and is not - I REPEAT NOT inherently bad. Not at all. There are many talented and hard working marketers, SEO experts, editors, and web designers out there who care deeply about their craft and their customers. My complaint lies with the gurus and their cult-like personas preying on and engorging authors’ vulnerabilities and ‘offering’ messianic interventions….

Genuine professionals will never insult you, the writing community at large, or pretend to have ALL the answers. They offer targeted, specific services with clearly defined outcomes. If an article or offer sounds too good to be true, or if you feel diminished or bad after reading it - RUN! (BTW none of this is a lead-in to an offer or sales pitch - I am just recording my thoughts on where we are.)

Where Does Substack Naturally Flow For Authors and Poets?

Yes - Substack runs on a subscription model -you gather followers who pay you X per month to sustain your publication. Now - achieving this monetisation is often difficult for many authors and poets. While some do indeed succeed with admirable numbers, it is my experience (one shared with many others) that it is VERY difficult to reach that point with Substack alone.

Don’t panic! Don’t despair. Don’t hit the delete account button. Substack actually gives you something else - something precious that is often achieved seemingly effortlessly (although it requires actual work). You very likely have already achieved it - you just haven’t noticed.

Substack can give you (naturally and easily) a solid foundation of respect and good standing amongst your peers. If that sounds “airy fairy” - we can say it builds a platform of social proof and amasses respect in the literary community. The key to evaluating your success in this is quality over quantity (remember quantity and fear of lacking is where the gurus will target you). On the question of quantity, there is an important metric that you may be overlooking (and with it your successes), we’ll get to that soon.

Now. For those of you who’ve been on Substack for a few months or maybe a year or so - I’d like you to take a look back over your portfolio. Re-read some of the comments you’ve received - don’t worry about the counts, this is about depth not numbers. I’ll bet there’s some really insightful and encouraging words, (engagement here tends to be much deeper than social media). Who’s made those comments? Who’s subscribed? Take a moment- visit their portfolios, read some of their pieces. Likely people you instinctively respect and admire. Those authors who’ve engaged with you, given you their time- who understand you, aren’t their thoughts more worthy than a guru or influencer throwing out insults and ridicule? The gurus haven’t read you, they haven’t walked with you into the depths of your soul. They’ve just identified some common vulnerabilities and cheap linguistic tricks to stir basic (but intense) negative emotions.

If you’d like more of the same or if you still feel lacking in quality engagement - the answer is simple pay it back and pay it forward. Comment on or quote from pieces by those authors who’ve engaged with you, go forth and find writers you admire - tell them how their work touched you. It’s easy and fun! Please don’t try and “strategise” this process- just enjoy it. Engage with the work that excites you - not something that’s going to position you into a better spot. Sincerity shines, schmoozing slumps - we are NOT the gurus! The payback isn’t always immediate and it isn’t always in a one to one relationship (shout out to my fellow database developers 😉) but it comes. You will build a following and very real friendships and doors to professional collaborations will open. I started my “McAllister’s Mates” review section for fun and because I was blown away by the quality of the work I was coming across. I have since made some very dear friends here and have started laying the foundations for a collaborative project that I’m hugely excited about.

The Hidden Metric

It may seem like I’ve downplayed statistics and metrics but I fully embrace their importance and relevance. However, I do think you have to be careful not to overreact to every spike, surge, and slowdown.

Posts views will fluctuate wildly as will traffic and visits- try not to let your adrenaline follow them! If you zoom out - you may notice interesting and useful patterns in the rises and falls - time of day, title/description length, tags on your post (or lack there of). I’m not an SEO expert but I have found your titles require almost as much thought as your articles.

Tags can be incredibly useful as they naturally group your posts together and give your newsletter structure. You can also use these to create your own indexes and navigation links to make your Substack easier to navigate.

If you find your posts are getting more reads when launched earlier or later in the day - remember you can always schedule publication ahead. You can also track your audience’s geographical location. If the majority is in a different timezone than you are then it makes sense to schedule your posts so that they don’t publish at 2 am in the morning for your main audience.

Now I promised a hidden metric (although overlooked might be more accurate). If you open your Substack and go: Dashboard>>Stats>>Audience. The top section of this page shows your total followers. This is a VERY important number which includes not only your subscribers but also people who clicked follow on your publication. This number (in my experience and others I’ve talked to) is often 300% or 400% higher than your subscribers. Readers who are actively engaging with your work but haven’t (yet) hit subscribe for whatever reason. There are numerous thought pieces and resources on why this split occurs and how to convert followers, I’m not pretending to have any secret knowledge, I’m just making you aware of this number as it is an often overlooked measure of success.

Supplementing Substack

This next section is really something of an ideas dump. As I said earlier - I don’t believe that Substack alone is a direct path to critical or commercial success, but it can be a powerful foundation and cornerstone. Having worked on Substack for over a year now I feel that I have a rock solid platform to launch (and relaunch) a few endeavours from.

My personal situation is that I used to have a personal portfolio site that was frankly a bit of a deadzone. As my engagement and friendship with Substack blossomed I basically turned graememcallister.com into a direct link to my Substack - (there are instructions on how to do this for yourself here). However, I am slightly rethinking this - looking forward I plan to create a section (subdomain) of my site for Substack to live on, as I would like to move into other areas. I have no regrets about linking graememcallister.com to Substack - I fully believe a connection between my Substack and domain name empowers both. However, I also have four ebooks published on amazon, the same books in full colour hardback format on lulu and a Redbubble framed print shop. I have links to these across my articles but nothing feels cohesive or centralised. Going forward I will be working on a website overhaul to bring these activities together, I may well post updates and technical details on what I’m doing here.

I hope that last paragraph didn’t bore you. My main point is this: I believe that we (as authors and poets) need to branch out our activities across multiple channels AND THEN find ways to unify and connect those activities. If you run a facebook or twitter (I’ve found they’re not for me personally) then why not cross post your articles? You can also add Substack subscribe links on Facebook or Facebook follow links on Substack.

Are you running a Youtube channel? You can embed the videos in your Substack posts - maybe you could even approach Subscribers who’ve left really positive or insightful comments to see if they would be willing to record a reading of their feedback on audio or video.

Are you approaching traditional publishers? Why not include a link to your Substack in your covering letter? Or even some of your best feedback? (Provided the commentator is open to this of course).

My main point is that as your Substack builds into a solid writing portfolio and a storehouse of character references and endorsements, you gain energy that can be channeled into other (maybe more commercial or transitory) channels with an amplified and more mature presence.

Summing Up

I hope this acts as something of an antidote and a balm to the negativity that comes across our feeds almost constantly, and the niggling self-doubts we sometimes feel. To repeat my opening title: No! You’re not broken. Neither is Substack.

We all experience slow periods, visitor drops, or movements when the posts that we put our hearts and souls into don't catch fire when they first land, but Substack (in my experience) is a game of consistency and patience - keep the big picture in mind and try looking at your progress in terms of months NOT days. Remember also, numbers are only a small part of the story. Think about how your writing, your voice, and confidence has developed, the friendships and connections you’ve made - these are the real metrics.

Finally, don’t be afraid to share your frustrations or setbacks with the community - you may find you have more people championing you than you imagine, by the same token reach out to other writers who are having a tough time or have fallen prey to the nagging doubts both internal and external.

Enjoy the journey - and by all means let me know what you’re up to - I always need something inspiring to read!

Take Care,

Graeme