Guiding Readers to Read Fiction
This is the invitation. Do nothing and you won't receive articles in this series again. This is an opt-in Section ONLY.
I’m starting a new series that’s entirely opt-in, and I’m beginning by inviting a few people to participate. I’ll be brainstorming strategies for us as authors to find readers on Substack, and that may not be your thing. If not, do nothing, and you won’t get these emails.
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This post isn’t restricted to those who I name, but I wanted to reach out to my most active readers and those I thought would be receptive of the effort I’m recommending.
Invited guests:
Goal: 10k
There’s been rumbles lately about publishers viewing 10k subscribers as the threshold of interest. I don’t know if that has any merit, and even if it does, it might apply more to nonfiction than fiction. Our goals might not even include trad publishing. All that being said, it’s a sizable audience to whom we can market our books and a sphere of influence we can use to market ourselves to publishers or whoever needs convincing.
It can’t just be numbers, though. We need readers, not metrics, but 10k subscribers should mean that 2k (at least) are opening any given email.
They say the secret is 1000 true fans—1000 people who will want anything you produce. 10k subscribers is a good step in that direction. I don’t believe that 10% of our subscribers are true fans. My current, unscientific guess is 0.66%, but if that were somehow accurate, 10k subscribers should net us about 66 true fans. It’s a start.
One Year on Substack
April 17th marks my one year anniversary on Substack. I celebrated by hitting #8 on Rising in Fiction on April 5th!
Efforts to Boost Fiction
Present efforts of note, off the top of my head:
I’m going to mess up the attribution, I’m sure, but I think
, , and are spearheading the effort to get authors on the Rising in Fiction board.Book Funnel continues to be a strong way to bring in outside readers. When I have spots available, I offer discounted spots that I manage. If interested, you can subscribe for free to news.bookmotion.pro. Don’t buy a paid subscription without talking to me first. Spots are not always available.
I run the Champion series where authors lift up other authors here on Substack.
- hosts the rap fiction battles, a competition where writers face off to write a piece of flash fiction about topics chosen by the audience.
There are Top in Fiction and the various themed days.
For those I’ve invited, none of this is new information. Neither is the probable reality that there are no short cuts, as much as I wish it were otherwise.
There are, however…
Unfair Advantages:
Nonfiction is an easier sell than fiction.
Meta essays on the art of writing do well with authors.
Meta essays on Substack growth do well and raise just as much ire, usually for good reason.
It pays to be famous.
Coming to Substack with credentials can help, but just as often it produces people who think they’re owed a better result than they got. They might even be right.
Being a really fine writer helps.
Publishing frequently, but not too frequently, helps too.
Which of those help…
Sell Fiction?
Fame: Being a known figure around author Substack helps. Anything that gets you talked about in a positive light helps. It usually takes repeated exposure before someone will take a chance on you.
Skill and talent: The quality of the work has to come first.
Other than that, anything that brings people to your publication increases the exposure of your name and your work and increases the chance they’ll give it a try.
The efforts that interests me right now are the autopsies by
(and the Emil is My Editor effort, spearheaded, I believe by , and—similar in spirit—the effort puts into his comments following the stories he’s read.These efforts bring the draw of several unfair advantages and focuses them fully on the fiction. ARC ‘s efforts are maybe more fully on the reading experience, and that focus is what we need more of.
I tried this in post form with:
and…
And I’ve been wanting to write on Andy Futuro and M.P. Fitzgerald’s work.
The views on these pieces were 684 and 624 respectively, which is in line with other articles I posted at the time. What I think is important about these efforts is that they’re nonfiction meta articles about reading. The weakness in my efforts is that I focus too much on exploring the stories as a writer. We need to provoke our readers to read.
Reviewstack:
My proposal is we post more reviews and critiques of stories on Substack, written with the reader in mind. We look for those stories that move us and write about them.
I suggest we consider using a common title word, something brief to allow room for the actual title—something like: Reviewstack.
If an author thinks it would be more beneficial to publish the review on Literary Salon, I’m open to that, but that’s not the push here. Publish reviews on your own Substacks. Use that social proof to guide readers into your favorite stories.
Neither the Champion series nor this is a one-and-done deal. Write about your favorite stories, no matter how many people have already done the same for the same story. There’s strength in numbers.
Write a killer story and others should do the same for you.
Keep in mind: this is different from the Champion series as that one lifts up an author and their body of work. This focuses on one story and not its author, beyond what would be normal in a review.
—EDIT: There’s been some confusion. This email is opt-in only because it’s growth related. The reviews shouldn’t be opt-in only. Your readers should appreciate getting a review of a good story to read.
Poop butterflies!
Thaddeus Thomas
Thank you for the invite, good sir! This is sort of what I had in mind when I started doing my seasonal sci-fi recommendations last fall as it was more for my readers to find something while they waited for my ADHD dino-brain to write something in the meantime. I'm down for any and all of what's on this post. Social proof to a reader is a neigh-impossible from self-promotion, I appreciate that you have opened your publication for others to build that proof.
...also I would die happy if you wrote about something of mine, even if it was a single sentence that said: "don't read this" ;P
I absolutely love this idea. This falls right in line with the entire point of EIME, too—good deeds, good writing, extra eyeballs.