Stay Out of Jail
Goal:10k
I’m a Hypocrite
As much as I’ve said don’t cull your subscribers, and I’m still saying it—mostly—but as much as I’m saying it, I did it again. The reasons against it are sound. With privacy actions taken by Apple and others, in many cases we don’t know if people are opening their emails. We could be cutting readers.
The main reason people cull subscriber lists with other providers is that you pay per email address. That’s not true here. So why do it?
Well, another member of the community has had publishing privileges temporarily disabled due to concerns with the mailing list. We hope it proves to only be temporary. The last instance proved to be a false accusation and took nearly two weeks to resolve, without Substack providing any communication along the way.
This had me looking at dropped emails, but you can’t just cut people because of dropped emails either.
Substack has updated their tools, and it’s a vast improvement in our ability to research a subscriber’s activity. Click on any email, and you’ll be given an overview along with trend details, a list of their comments, and “Events” which are the opens, reads, and dumped emails that we could research previously.
That list tells you a great deal. The person with lots of dumps may have been sending you to spam for months, but then there’s another subscription event… Hold on. I know it doesn’t make sense, but this isn’t hypothetical. A bunch of dumps. A subscription. And then they’ve been receiving emails ever since, even opening them on occasion.
If it looks like they’re sending everything to spam instead of canceling, that’s worth being culled. The percentage of our emails that end up in spam is important. That can impact our deliverability, and it may play a roll in our mailing lists being investigated by Substack.
Side note: I think it’s worth saying that the individual currently in Substack jail had recently culled a large percentage of his subscribers—for other reasons.
The Island of Misfit Sections
In the process of investigating email dumps, I came across something disturbing, and I’ll have to find a way to address this in upcoming posts. Subscribers would be receiving emails, but everything in a given series was being dumped. When I first noticed it, it was the Champion series, and my thought was I needed to review the series to see if I was using too many links or tags.
Then I noticed the pattern repeated with another subscriber, only this time the serial was being dumped and not the essays. That tells me that they’re sending to spam the series they don’t want and keeping the Inbox for the ones they do. Which is really aggravating. I’ve set up an entire system alerting subscribers how you can:
Manage Your Subscription
Every Section has a toggle. Toggle on the ones you want to receive and toggle off the ones you don't.
This is the Goal:10k series.
To choose which series come to your inbox, go to:
https://literarysalon.thaddeusthomas.com/accountTo subscribe to the series, click on the link above and toggle Goal: 10k.
To catch up on any installments you miss you can visit the Goal:10k page: https://literarysalon.thaddeusthomas.com/s/goal-10k
Book Funnel’s Role
One concern with these inquiries into our mailing lists are our imports from Book Funnel. It really hit home when one of our own was suspended, and he was giving up hope of ever coming back. It seems logical to assume that even though our uploads are being inspected now, they place us under increased scrutiny.
This concern came at a precarious time for me. In the coming months, I’ll have to decide if I want to upgrade my account to allow for more spots. It’s a 3k investment, and I can’t afford to spend that money, only to have Substack undermine the model.
In reality, though, fiction writers use Book Funnel. It’s how we grow our mailing lists, and before Substack, it was pretty much the only way. Even with all the advancements Substack has made, for those who use Book Funnel, the majority of our subscribers come to us that way. As long as they cater to the fiction community, this is the reality.
The review process has sped up, and I’d be interested to hear if anyone is having any issue with uploads being denied. It would be good news that the denials seem to have stopped, except that we’re seeing more people put in jail.
I for one plan to continue to use Book Funnel, and I’m leaning toward expanding my services.
Grab a Free Book and Support our Promotional Efforts
Generic Answers Worthy of Note
I looked up the standard advice for staying out of the Spam folder, and this is what the Internet tells us:
Use a Trusted Email Address: Make sure your sender email is recognized by your subscribers. Encourage them to add your email to their contacts.
Avoid Spam Triggers: Stay away from excessive links, misleading subject lines, and words commonly flagged by spam filters (like “free” or “limited-time offer”).
Engage Your Audience: If your emails aren’t being opened, email providers might start marking them as unimportant. Keep your content valuable and interactive.
Encourage Subscribers to Mark Emails as ‘Not Spam’: If your emails do land in spam, ask your subscribers to manually mark them as safe.
Optimize Your Subject Lines: Make them clear, relevant, and enticing—without sounding like clickbait.
Need an editor?
Allow me to recommend Emil Ottoman.
My Solution
I showed you my solution early on, and perhaps by doing this, I have fewer people discarding unwanted solutions into the spam folder.
As many sections as there are, it could be worse, though. For my various essay series, I broke them into two major categories—Re:Read and Re:Write—depending on whether the intended audience is reader or writers. My guess is I’m the only one who cares if an essay is in the Prose Techniques series or the Fiction Theory series, but a reader might not want either one.
For my serials, however, I have not simplified things. “Serials” could be a tag instead of a Section, I suppose. Each individual serial is also its own thing, so you can shut off one without losing every serial to come, ever.
But by showing my audience how to access an maintain their account, maybe I’m reducing the amount of unwanted mail.
We want readers to look forward to our mailings, and that’s the other thing that struck home while researching my subscribers. There are some who visit every or nearly every post I write. Most subscribers rarely visit.
After a moment’s reflection, I had to admit that’s only natural. Some of my favorite writers here, I don’t read everything they post. They’re important to me because I really loved a few short stories, and I’ll be back. I just don’t have the time to always be there.
I’m not a very good true fan.
Goal:10k
The true fan is our ideal. The idea comes from Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine. He introduced this concept in a 2008 essay titled 1,000 True Fans where he argued that the true fan is someone willing to pay $100 a year to buy anything we create. That’s 2008 money, which is close to $150 today.
Most of our readers will only interact with a sampling of our work. Others will devour everything and be hungry for more.
Goal:10k isn’t about a quick and easy way to riches and success. If I knew the way, I’d be there. Instead, it’s realistic approaches to move ahead at a realistic pace.
Researching your subscribers reading habits will reveal when you have potential true fans. Like most milestones, I believe a true fan is something to prepare for and then get blindsided by when they arrive. The goal is less about obtaining the true fan than being able to keep them when they arrive and having in place the mechanisms to sell when they’re ready to buy.
Turn on paid subscribers, even if you’re at a stage where you wouldn’t buy from yourself.
Don’t worry about paid-only materials too soon. But if you need my thoughts on paid-only materials, I share my current philosophy in The Mystery of Readers on Substack. It will change, everything changes, but for my size and needs, it makes sense now.
Have a founding level, even if it’s just to give people room to be generous.
When people begin to pay for subscriptions: let them. I couldn’t do that in the beginning. I refunded everyone and gave them free subscriptions.
When the paid subscribers come and you’re comfortable that what you have to offer warrants a subscription, ask for paid subscribers. Speak up, and people will respond.
Sell your books.
Visit the new Literary Salon Bookstore
Once again, I feel like a hypocrite with that last one because I’ve pulled away access to my direct-sales book store, and I’ve been slow to build another one. I have however, finally started a Literary Salon book store where I offer books from all my paid Literary Salon and Bookmotion members. If you’re not on it, holler at me. It’s brand new. You haven’t missed anything.
It’s not direct sales. Instead, it’s a Book Funnel sales page, linked to a bookstore where your book is offered.
A Climactic Ending
The latest prisoner of Substack jail has been released and has passed along important information.
First of all, he’d grown very big, very quickly—like 30k subscribers big—but his open rate had plummeted to 10%. His ability to publish was temporarily paused yesterday, but it was reinstated today on certain conditions.
First, his issue was resolved in a day while the first case took nearly two weeks. Why? I have no evidence for this, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because our first prisoner had no paying subscribers, while prisoner number two has added ten just this week. They were motivated to resolve the situation before paying subscribers were lost.
Second, the condition Substack insisted on was that they would perform a pruning of his free subscriber list, but if he agreed to this pruning, his publishing abilities would be turned back on. He agreed, and Substack sent his free subscribers an email, giving them he option to choose to stay subscribed. Should they fail to do so, their emails will be pruned from his list.
He’s happy with this result.
How much is Literary Salon worth to you?
Substack subscriptions tend to be pricey, I know, but right now my paid subscription is discounted to just $10 a year. Better still, you keep that price for as long as you keep your subscription.
If Literary Salon is worth $10 to you, may I recommend you buy a subscription?
And if Literary Salon is worth more than $10 to you? The Founding-level Subscription allows you to pay any amount you want.
For $50 a more, you get a story critique.
See? I’ve learned to ask.
—Thaddeus Thomas