Why I Write on Substack

Interview w/ the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA)

Wiliam Caxton showing specimens of his printing to King Edward IV and his Queen, William Small, 1877

Next week,

Augusta Sagnelli

and my close friend

Christopher J

will be attending the 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair as indie publishers/representatives of my latest novel, The Requisitions, a historical metafiction set in Nazi-occupied Poland.

This interview initially appeared in the September/October issue of the Independent Book Publishers Association Independent magazine. Big thanks to Alexa Schlosser, managing editor of the IBPA magazine, for allowing me to reprint it here.

(if you’d prefer to listen to the audio up above, it includes some improvisational piano for your listening pleasure)

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What initially drew you to Substack?

I first heard of Substack in late 2021, when my wife, the photographer Augusta Sagnelli, told me about a platform where artists could share their work without fear of censorship or tyranny of the algorithms. When I saw what Substack was offering—a space built for readers and writers, a space where I could be me (and be discovered for being me)—I knew it was worth giving it a shot.

How has your experience with Substack evolved since then?

I’m a novelist by affliction, which is why my initial goal on Substack was to prove to myself that I could write something that was short, thoughtful, and of which I was proud every. single. week.

After spending my first year on Substack dedicated to the weekly discipline of sharing something of substance (e.g., an essay, a short story, a poem, a song on the piano, a drawing), I have since become much more interested in engaging with fellow authors via interviews and epistolary exchanges, which allows me to meet fellow creatives and learn a lot more about myself.

If Substack was initially a space for me to identify as a writer who wasn’t solely focused on writing novels, now that my second novel, The Requisitions, is out in the world, I’m ready to return to slower writing that can’t be shared every week, which means Substack is primarily now a space for me to engage with fellow

Substack Writers

and, secondarily, a space to create whatever makes me tick.

What specific strategies have you found most effective in enticing readers to share their email addresses with you on Substack?

I’ve employed two basic strategies:

1. I believe in the basic artistic principle that if I don’t care what I’m putting out into the world, nobody else will, either, so to that end, the discipline of publishing whatever speaks to me from week to week has been the most effective strategy for cultivating a following on Substack. Whatever I share, I share something consistently, which is why I don’t know if I believe in enticing readers so much as wearing my creative heart on my sleeve.

2. The other essential strategy is engaging with others. It feels silly to put the following into words, but it’s incredible how often we forget that if we want people to engage with our work, we have to engage with others’ work, too. You only ever get out what you put in, which means actively seeking out and engaging with other writers.

Can you give us an example of a successful email campaign that boosted your engagement or sales?

The initial launch of my Substack was by far the most effective of any campaign, mostly because for the first time since I published my debut novel (Slim and The Beast, Inkshares, 2015), I was actively reaching out to my readership and saying, “I’m back!”

Small wonder that the best way to build a readership is to identify those people in our lives who might actually want to read us: family, friends, old university acquaintances, close friends who want to understand a different facet of our lives, attendees at spoken word events, etc. If, as writers, we can’t count on our communities to support us, we will be hard-pressed to build a readership in an era when most people prefer screens.

To that end, the initial email sent to 100 of my closest connections that said, “I’m starting this new thing; it will involve fiction, essays, and music from Paris; you don’t have to pay for it necessarily, but if you do, you’ll get to see a deeper side of my creative life” was an effective strategy. I have over 80 paying subscribers as of today and over 1,400 free subscribers, but—and this is important—about 50% of my paying subscribers have been there since the beginning when I started with an initial “following” of 120. 

You sold 300 first editions of The Requisitions through your Substack. What were some key factors that contributed to this success?

Many of my Substack readers knew I was working on The Requisitions when I arrived on the platform because that was one of the reasons I started writing on Substack: to express myself in a way that wasn’t primarily related to finishing publishing a book that had taken me 10 years to get right.

Nobody likes to be told to purchase something—advertising is already ubiquitous in all of our lives—so the success of selling 300 copies wasn’t so much about a single post or even multiple posts but rather about a consistent mention that, yes, my latest novel is now available in a beautifully designed, signed, artisanal-printed first edition; there are only 300 copies available; and when it’s gone, it’s gone.

After six months of diligent posting on Substack (here’s my “query letter” to the Substack community) a few readings in Paris, stocking the book at Paris’ Shakespeare & Company and The Red Wheelbarrow, and some favorable reviews by fellow Substackers, I began selling two or three books every few days, and after six months, the first edition of The Requisitions was a thing of history.

How do you balance promoting your books with providing valuable content to your subscribers without making them feel pressured to buy?

If I promote The Requisitions, it’s only within the context of an excerpt, a review, or an interview with somebody about the book. One of the great challenges of being a published novelist in the 21st century is that however a book is published (traditionally or otherwise), writers are now their own PR team. Most traditional publishers expect writers to have large social media followings and/or a clear marketing vision when releasing a book. We all are aware of the lamentable reality of traditional publishing (see: Elle Griffin’s viral article on the antitrust case against Penguin, “No One Buys Books”) and yet somehow writers are still told (and tell themselves, it must be said) to march like lemmings to the proverbial cliff of “validation.”

If I sound sassy about industry gatekeepers, it’s because I am. I used to be in an indie rock band, was signed to a label, toured Europe, and the same exact problems plague the music industry: exploitation, payment via “exposure,” and a general impossibility of making money as a professional … this was a primary reason I got out of the music game and also bought back the rights to my debut novel so I could independently publish The Requisitions.

For me, self-promotion is most effective when it involves readers in the creation process. My first novel, Slim and The Beast, was the flagship novel for Inkshares, a crowdfunded publisher that told me: “Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish, is our first author. He’s doing a children’s book with us because his publisher won’t let him do it. However, we’ve never done novels before. If you can raise $10,000 in preorders in three months, we’ll send you on a book tour.” A few months later and I was doing a reading at McNally Jackson’s in Manhattan … by telling the 232 people who preordered the book that they were not only buying a novel but also participating in a better system for writers, this provided my supporters a deeper sense of purpose.

For indies looking to start on Substack, what advice would you give them?

Consistency is key, which means 1) consistently publishing work that is meaningful to you so that if exactly zero people read it (which may be the case when you’re starting off), you still feel fulfilled and 2) consistently engaging with other Substack writers by commenting on posts that move you, reaching out to writers who inspire, and generally being generous with your attention and time .

This is one of the problems of social media in the 21st century: everybody wants followers, but followers imply leaders, and if we’re only trying to lead people to a paid subscription, we’re no better than the trolls, politicians and celebrities that want to dominate the digital space.

In a society that values everything monetarily, artists should also value themselves, which means occasionally paywalling our work, but this is a philosophical choice and one everyone has to consider themselves. If I’m going to ask people to pay for my art, what am I providing (and do I think it’s worth paying for?).

I tend to know when I’ve created something of value because it requires real effort and reflection, just as sure as I know when I’m pandering to the commodified crowd. It’s essential to continually remind myself of this difference, which is why just like Substack pays writers 90% of all royalties, I also offer about 90% of my work for free.

Are there any common pitfalls or challenges they should be aware of when using the platform?

There’s a nefarious philosophy that has developed in this cultish, identitarian era of individualism, which is that just because everyone has a story, each story is by definition worth telling selling. The biggest pitfall I’ve seen on Substack is writers who get frustrated that nobody is reading their oh-so-important work, and that it must be the world’s fault, not theirs.

If I as a writer want to be discovered, I have to discover others, too. It’s a cliché, but it’s especially true on Substack: you only ever get out what you put in, so if I start sharing work with the expectation that the masses should bask in my genius, I’m not only missing out on a genuine dialogue, but I’m also exposing myself as a phoney.

It’s taken two and a half years of almost weekly posting for me to get where I am as a still very-much obscure writer on Substack. I can’t pay my rent yet with the income, but I’m getting close, and while yes, I’d like to think this has something to do with my writing, it has more to do, I suspect, with consistently engaging with the community.

In your opinion, what makes Substack a game-changer for serious writers?

It’s a revolutionary opportunity to professionalize, and I mean the word in the most basic sense: going paid as a writer.

The most famous example of a writer’s life being changed on Substack might be that of Heather Cox Richardson, a Boston College history professor who started writing a daily newsletter called “Letters From an American” in 2019. Lo and behold, Richardson is a deep thinker and diligent professional, which means that each and every day she showed up for herself and wrote, slowly building a readership until she was clearing $1 million/year (as of October 2024, she has 1.6 million followers on Substack, hundreds of thousands of whom pay her a few bucks a month).

How do you see the role of platforms like Substack evolving in the publishing industry over the next few years?

I strongly believe Substack will become one of the main arenas for discovering new books in a few years time. John Pistelli, author of a sweeping metamodern novel called Major Arcana, is as far as I know the first literary fiction author to secure a publishing deal after serializing their novel on Substack—and this is just the beginning.

By allowing writers to connect directly with readerships, well-established authors like the musicologist and journalist

Ted Gioia

have been able to garner massive followings (we’re talking hundreds of thousands of readers) by simply being themselves and bidding farewell to the gatekeepers of old.

There’s just simply no ceiling to the amount of control and income a writer can harness via Substack, primarily because Substack has a modest but vested interest (10%) in seeing its writers succeed. Given the reality of Print-on-Demand (POD) services and associations like IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association), all of the tools are in place to subvert the systems of old in favor of a more viable, scalable way to take back control from traditional gatekeepers.

If we as writers, publishers, readers, and humans actually believe in freedom of expression, independence, and authentic writing and literary communities over social media fame/content creation ego, I have no doubt Substack will continue to thrive for years to come.

As with anything, though, it’s not a given, which is why now more than ever, we have to stand up for what we believe in: the enduring values of artistic integrity, equitable publishing, and cultivating a supportive and genuine literary community that favors purpose over profit and authenticity over ego.

Alexa Schlosser is the managing editor of IBPA Independent magazine. Are you an independent publisher or author-publisher with an interesting story or approach to your work? Email her at alexa@ibpa-online.org.