Building a Relationship with a Reader
The Four Stages of a Reader/Writer Relationship
The first part of what you’re about to read was written as I prepared to leave for vacation, and it was scheduled to be published immediately upon my return. In the meantime, I had the idea for the Right-Reader Method and pulled it back into drafts. I thought it would be interesting to share it now.
Awareness. Reputation. Habit. Desire.
Awareness: readers know you exist. They recognize your name, your brand, your image.
Reputation: readers have an opinion of your work. They know your style. Your voice. Your genres.
Habit: Readers develop a practice of reading your work when it comes up.
Desire: Readers anticipate the next release and actively seek out more.
And one hard reality: on Substack, someone can subscribe to your publication and still not be aware you exist.
However, if they’re subscribing and actually getting your emails, you’re on your way to achieving that first level. Awareness comes for the repetition of exposure.
Awareness is something we earn by showing up, doing the work, and publishing.
We earn a reputation by doing the work well.
Reputation becomes habit when you combine our consistency with a connection with a reader. Our writing has quality in their eyes and meets a need, and that need becomes a habit of returning to our work time after time.
Now we’re looking at 1) doing our best work at a consistent pace and 2) giving a reader something she needs to keep her coming back. Maybe you know what that need is. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you ask yourself what need your work might satisfy, and maybe you never give it a thought. That’s up to you, I suppose.
How do we move from being a habit to being a desire?
Is it something we help happen by understanding the need we fill and playing to that? Is it just a question of reaching enough readers, knowing its a percentage game that determines how many will need the very things we offer?
Is it something we just don’t have to worry about?
Short Answer: No, you don’t have to worry over it.
Also Short Answer: I do.
Do you know why I write these? This is where my thoughts are, but also, it doesn’t hurt with awareness. Many writers have the same questions I wrestle with. I can work out my thoughts on “paper” and the writer/readers here can relate. If what I have to say is of value, then that can help with my reputation, and maybe that bleeds over into more people reading my fiction.
But I need to be aware of what I’m doing. I’m with Cogsworth on this one. I can’t just wait and hope. I need to ask myself the questions.
I want a good reputation as a writer. I want people to be in the habit of reading my stuff when my name comes up, and ultimately I want to earn that last position, where our writing is in the reader’s awareness as something they really enjoy and where they’re eager for more.
As a writer on Substack, you have the same options before you. Let it happen or be self aware so that help make it happen wherever possible.
How do you do that?
Pro-tip: I’m new to Substack with about a hundred followers. How much am I really going to know?
You ask yourself these questions to determine if you’re going in the right direction.
Literary Analysis: When I started this Substack, I knew I couldn’t just talk about myself and my writing. I needed something to write about that had the potential of tying into my own writing. My background prepared me well for certain types of literary analysis, I plan on keeping it up, on a slower pace. Analysis takes time. It’s an investment; but I enjoy it, and it’s relevant. The issue is my interest is in analyzing modernist fiction, but I write literary fantasy. It’s not enough. Plus, analysis takes research. It’s important for me to see what others are saying, and I’ve been very open about how impatient I am with that. I hate so much of what passes for literary analysis. There’s a good side to that because that anger crystalizes my thinking and inspires my response, but I don’t enjoy the frustration and anger.
Articles about Substack: We’re Substack publishers here. We relate to the meta articles, but I consider this subject dangerous, like a sushi chef serving fish that’ll kill you if it’s not cut right. If I have something to say, fine, but this is not something to pursue. It is the easiest topic to present as having great breadth and yet have no depth.
Articles on Writing: Writing advice abounds, and people are sick of it. However, this is naturally relevant, and if I have something of value to say, then it’s fine. It’s a lot to prove though, that my thoughts on writing are worth anyone’s time.
Just by publishing, awareness increases. If there’s quality of thought in the majority of these, then the reputation builds. Maybe it helps build the reading habit. That’s a hard phase to enter as a fiction writer.
I suspect fiction requires multiple successful interactions between a reader and the text.
Herein lies the problem and the goal: get people to come back, time and time again, to read something you’ve written.
I left on June 10th and probably wrote this the night before. My first notes on the Right-Reader Method were written on June 16th. What follows, I will write now, on July 22nd.
Oddly enough, when I said I had about a hundred subscribers, I was talking about ThaddeusThomas.com. Literary Salon was a quiet and hidden substack used as meeting place for our little community to support one another, and it had 44 subscribers. It just passed a hundred yesterday.
The Pro-Tip still stands. I’m new to Substack—began the middle of April.
I also love this line: How-To Substack “is the easiest topic to present as having great breadth and yet have no depth.”
That haunts me. Recently, I wrote an article about it:
The first half of that article was me grappling with imposter syndrome, but that bit of insecurity took a big hit with today’s article:
Why was that so important? Because I proved to myself I had other ideas to offer beyond the Right-Reader Method and that there are other ideas to be had.
As this is becoming a rundown of recent articles, let me say that if you’re new here and haven’t been introduced to my marketing plan, this is the place to start.
Here I streamlined the first four articles on the subject, making them more attainable.
If you’re new to Substack as a platform, allow me to share my first few lessons for coming to Substack as a fiction writer.
If you look at the dates, these were created over an obsessive four days. I’ll need to go back and check for typos at some point, and perhaps I’ll still do more.
The original article ended with a summary of what I’d been writing on ThaddeusThomas.com, not too dissimilar from what I’ve done here. It was my attempt to answer the challenge:
Herein lies the problem and the goal: get people to come back, time and time again, to read something you’ve written.
I hope to earn your repeat visits here.
Until next time,
I’m Thaddeus Thomas
I haven't gone back to the Literary analysis that was the originators excuse for my first Substack to exist. Yes, part of that is the anger I feel reading other lit analysis in preparation. I try to maintain my peace, and my peace was routinely ruined in the work. But another factor was that the illusion of developing a podcast drove much of that early work. When I realized almost all the "downloads" were just people listening on Substack with maybe 15 people listening on Apple and elsewhere, it took the air out of my sails really quick.