Can Substack help you stay connected with your readers? Simon Whaley chats to two authors about how they use the service for their author business.
Who remembers blogging? It was a brilliant way to share our ideas with followers and engage with them through comments.
From a marketing perspective, we couldn’t always guarantee a follower would see or read every blog post, though. Nor did we have access to our followers’ email addresses. So many of us then switched to mailing list providers like Mailchimp, Mailerlite, and Kit (formerly known as ConvertKit) to send out newsletters to our readers.
When followers signed up to receive our newsletters, they agreed to hand over their email addresses. This then became our data, which meant if we wanted to move from one mailing-list provider to another, we could. We could export our followers’ email addresses from the old service and import them into the new one.
Owning our followers’ data is important. If Facebook suddenly closed down our author page with its thousands of followers, we would have no way of getting in touch with those followers again, because Facebook owns that data, not us. Imagine having a Facebook Author page as your only way of communicating with your followers and then losing it.
Most mailing list providers tempt authors with free plans, which is ideal when we have fewer than five hundred or a thousand followers (depending upon the provider). But once our subscriber base exceeds the maximum allowed for the free plan, a monthly subscription fee then applies.
Not only that, but a newsletter offers no direct way for our subscribers to interact with other followers, or comment publicly, like they could with our blog.
Content Control
The Substack platforms resolves this and more. Not only is it a free way of reaching out to readers regularly, but we also own the email addresses readers share when they sign up to our newsletter. In fact, on Substack, we own everything. We own our content and we own our followers’ email data.
Substack merges the benefits of blogging, with its community interaction element, with that of a basic newsletter service. But we’re not restricted to just using written posts on Substack. We can post video and audio files, too.
While we don’t pay to post content on Substack, the service allows us to charge for content. It shares similarities with the Patreon platform (see Patreon Patronage feature) in that creatives can have a free tier followers can subscribe to, but we can also have extra tiers where subscribers pay a monthly fee to unlock extra material.
Substack’s free service encouraged many authors (including me) to switch their newsletter service across to the platform. British-born Canada-based suspense novelist Hannah Mary McKinnon (https://hannahmarymckinnon.substack.com/) whose latest novel is A Killer Motive, switched to Substack for this very reason.
‘I was in a pinch because I’d just figured out how to use MailChimp when their free offering was cut down to just 500 subscribers,’ she begins. ‘As I have a few thousand subscribers, I needed a new option. To be honest, I dreaded figuring out a new service, but learning Substack took barely any time at all. It was incredibly easy and very efficient.’
Direct Dissemination
Hannah Mary finds Substack is an important part of her author business and a great way for her to connect with her over five thousand followers.
‘It’s another but different and targeted way for me to connect with my readers. It’s not at the whims of social media algorithms, and it’s direct communication, which I value. I only send out around four to six newsletters a year, so having a free option is incredibly helpful, too.’
Currently, Mailchimp charges about £75 per month for authors with over 5,000 subscribers.
Sometimes it’s difficult to know what to share in regular newsletters, but Hannah Mary resolves this by splitting hers into key sections.
‘I typically have the same categories, e.g., what I’m reading, my book news, any trips I’ve taken, and so forth. There are often more and different details than what I share on social media, so it’s a little more exclusive content.’
Having content that isn’t available elsewhere can be a great incentive to encourage readers to sign up to our Substack posts. Ultimately, the more followers we have, the better. Not because it’s important to have thousands and thousands of followers, but because with Substack, we’re in control.
When we self-publish a book and upload it onto the Amazon platform, for example, Amazon may email readers who bought our previous books to let them know there’s a new book to buy. But we have no way of knowing who those readers are. Nor can we control when or even if Amazon sends that email.
Whenever we post content on Substack, whether it’s an article or a newsletter, the service delivers it to all our followers. Subscribers choose whether to receive the content as an email or a post in the Substack app.
We can also schedule content in advance, which is perfect for those busy book launch periods.
Substack Serialisation
Jon Cronshaw is a Lancashire-based fantasy and speculative fiction author (download his Ravenglass Universe starter library at joncronshaw.com/starterlibrary) who has over six thousand followers on Substack (https://joncronshawauthor.substack.com/). However, for Jon, Substack is not just a way to keep in touch with his readers, but somewhere to serialise his fiction.
‘I started posting on Substack in 2023,’ he explains, ‘as part of my ongoing habit of trying new things. I’ve always had an interest in serialised fiction, and Substack struck me as a platform that could combine storytelling, community, and direct reader connection in a fresh way. I’d used other services before—like MailerLite—but Substack felt more reader-focused and better suited for monetisation.’
Interestingly, it’s the fiction posts that generate most of Jon’s reader feedback.
‘The stories definitely get the most engagement. I post a short story and a chapter each week, and right now RAF Dragon Corps—a WW2 fantasy with dragons—is striking a real chord with readers. The rest of the content, like weekly updates, is imported from my website via RSS, so it’s more about maintaining a presence than sparking discussion.’
Revenue Raising
Besides having a free tier anyone can subscribe to, Jon also offers a paid tier. Free tier subscribers get access to his public posts. The paid tier, which is £4 per month or £39 per year, gives readers access to subscriber-only content, including the archived posts, and access to his community where followers can make comments and interact with each other.
‘I introduced the paid tier not long after starting on Substack. It’s simple: one level gives readers access to everything. RAF Dragon Corps is now behind the paywall, while my other stories remain free—with the occasional promo for paid books or a nudge towards Patreon, which I’ve found to be a better fit for fiction overall.’
Despite having the paid tier, Jon feels the free tier has still boosted his author business by enabling him to reach more readers. It’s also helped him save money while keeping all reader contact details.
Newsletter services like Mailchimp and Mailerlite have tiered charging structures, which means costs increase as the number of subscribers increase. When authors find their subscriber numbers are getting close to the next payment threshold, there’s a temptation to delete those subscribers who’ve not opened and read the last few newsletters. That’s not an issue with Substack.
‘Substack has been a useful tool for my author business, not so much for direct paid subscribers—that’s where Patreon performs better,’ he explains, ‘but for audience growth and efficiency. It’s helped me reach new readers and acts as a low-cost way to stay connected with less active subscribers. Rather than delete them from my main list, I can keep the door open through Substack without the overhead.’
So how does Substack make its money? It takes a ten per cent commission from any money authors receive from paid tiers. It also passes on the credit card transaction fee charged by their card processor Stripe (2.9% plus $0.30). As a rough guide, authors charging £5 a month for their paid content would receive approximately £4.05. This might not seem a lot, but if you only have fifty paid subscribers, that’s still over £200 every month.
Trial and Test
With several platforms like Substack and Patreon about, it can be confusing knowing which platforms to try, but as Jon explains, it’s worth experimenting to find which ones work best for you. Remember, you own your followers email data, so if it doesn’t work out, you can take it elsewhere.
‘I’ve seriously tested three subscription platforms: Patreon, Ream, and Substack. Patreon is by far the best fit for my needs. I’ve kept Substack as a backup newsletter and marketing tool. It’s also worth considering genre. I write epic and high fantasy, and many of my readers see Substack as a space for political or conspiracy commentary—not fiction. Ream leans heavily towards romance and erotica. Patreon, in contrast, offers much less friction and has proven more adaptable for my audience.’
So, if you’re looking to set up a free basic newsletter service for your readers, or want somewhere to post written, video, or audio content, interact with readers through comments and through private chat spaces, then Substack could be right for you.
The ability to create paid tiers means our Substack can grow as our author-business grows. And, unlike social media platforms, Substack gives us complete control over our content, and we do not have other people’s adverts competing for our readers’ attention.
The best way to get a better understanding of the platform is to follow some of your favourite writers. Check out Hannah Mary’s and Jon’s Substacks. And if you want to know more about the business of writing, you can find my Substack Business of Writing newsletter at thebusinessofwriting.substack.com/.
Substack Step-by-Step
To create your Substack publication, or newsletter:
- Go to Substack.com
- Click on Create Account.
- Substack will ask you for content you’re interested in reading, and also suggest publications to follow, but you can skip this.
- Enter an email address and tick to accept the terms and conditions.
- Upload an avatar (if you wish) and enter your name.
- Substack asks for your handle. This becomes your Substack domain name. If you enter FirstNameSurnameAuthor, then your Substack domain name will be FirstNameSurnameAuthor.substack.com (if it’s available).
- You’re now setup!
- The screen displays a Home page with suggested posts to read. To write your first post, click on the Start Writing or Dashboard button in the top right.
- Follow the setup process where you can give your newsletter a different name to your handle if you wish, upload a logo, and import a list of subscribers (csv format).
- Then you can create your first post!