How to Substack

Does anyone truly know though?

Holy crap, my paperback of my most recent novel, A Reason to See You Again, comes out next week. I’ve seen it out in a few shops already but if you want to pre-order it, I’d love that for the both of us.

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Hi friends.

In honor of five years of this Substack, for the next week (through September 30) I’m lowering the annual subscription rate to $45 for the year. (It’s usually $60.) This gets you access to every letter I send out plus the archives too, and also regular chats with me where I offer writing advice plus the ability to comment and chit-chat with all the other nice paid subscribers. I appreciate your support so much as I try to make my way through this creative life, and I hope these letters do something good for you. I will do this for as long as I believe I am being helpful and interesting!

I was chatting with someone at an event recently about this newsletter and I realized I don’t actually write very much about How To Substack. I guess maybe it feels too meta for me, to write about how to write a letter in a letter. Plus I really hate all those pyramid-scheme-sounding letters I see floating around out there that are like, “How I made six figures in a year on Substack and you can too.” I mean good luck to you if you joined this whole situation with a business plan already in place! I certainly did not. (This may reflect bigger issues of mine, but such is the life of a “creative” person.)

In fact I joined Substack in 2019 just to have a place to hold more subscribers for the two weeks of #1000wordsofsummer—I had maxed out my tinyletter capacity—and then I never touched it otherwise. And then there was the pandemic, of course, and that summer the audience really grew, and it was then I decided to commit to being part of a bigger conversation more regularly. Over that time I have added a little more than 40,000 subscribers. (I have 53,000 subscribers to this letter, and 65,000 followers total.)

This past week I read through the archives a bit and boy, was I really feeling my way around that first year. I do like where I’ve landed though. So I thought maybe I’d reflect on a few things I’ve learned and offer you a few good tips and one helpful link.