The Successful Fiction Substack

1. What is the promise my theory offers?

It’s 4:30 PM, and I got home from my vacation last night at midnight. Tomorrow, I go back to work, but in between cleaning up the house and dealing with laundry, I’ve spent today prepping my Substack publications to begin the process of proving my theories. The bed calls for me to take a nap. I’m exhausted, but I’m back at the computer because I must get these ideas out in the open.

Let’s begin with a clarification of the promise. What is it I believe my methods will provide? The answer to that is a sliding scale, but the ground level, fundamental promise of the theory is this: I’m going to give you a solution to the greatest frustration of fiction writers today.

How do I find readers?

More than that, how do I find readers who aren’t just other writers? Writers are readers, sure. Absolutely. But a cannibalistic community of writers pushing their stories on one another isn’t enough, even when it’s as positive and supporting as Substack. We need more. We need readers who aren’t writers too.

It goes deeper than that, and we’re still just on the ground-level, fundamental promise of my theory. We need the right readers. Normally, I don’t imagine that even enters our minds. We think in terms of percentages. A certain number of readers will become subscribers and certain number of those will become fans. We treat it like a numbers game because we have no other option. The idea never occurs to us that we can draw in readers who are the most likely to connect with the stories we tell, but I’m saying that’s exactly what my theory promises to do.

Then we can let our imaginations go wild because that’s just the fundamental promise of the theory. Add the excellence of your work to that, and… I’m at my keyboard shaking with excitement at the possibilities.

Excellence is a big, scary word. You will have to be good at what you do, but here’s the good news, excellence in fiction is whatever the writer and her readers agree upon. I love literary and classic fiction, but this is something the literary crowd often misses. I’ll never forget a tweet I saw the day Terry Pratchett died. This literary type said that he’d read a few sentences of Pratchett, and we need to stop rewarding mediocrity.

First, I’m so glad Substack replaced my Twitter addiction. Second, the beauty of the sentence is only one possible measure of excellence, and Pratchett was a beloved and great author, not a mediocre one. There’s no one thing our fiction has to be. You enter into what I’ve called a contract of awesomeness with your reader, stating that these are the things that define greatness in fiction, and you promise to deliver upon those frequently. Nothing outside of that contract matters.

Now, all you need is a way of getting your stories with people who are more likely to share in your contract of awesomeness.

There are a lot of aspects to that, but my theory takes one of those key components and pre-selects for an audience ready to plug in to the kind of story you’re telling.

I feel like this is the part where I should scream WAIT, THERE’S MORE and then throw in some steak knives. I’m very cynical about this kind of stuff, and I’m a horrible, horrible, very bad salesperson. Only, this is different. I so fully believe in what I’m telling you that while I’m nearly drunk with sleep deprivation, I have to be here. I have to tell you this RIGHT NOW.

Being as sober as I can right now, I know that the only thing my theory can truly promise to a competent implementation of its strategies is the right, non-writer audience, and that in itself is huge.

The possibilities beyond that are staggering, but there’s a difference between a possibility and promise. Possibilities rely on other unpredictable factors. With this in mind, the possibilities are that with the right audience, we can build a bigger, better fan base who is both eager for our stories and who sees their value. These are the people to whom you send your email about the presale of your next novel and they jump on it. These are the free subscribers who upgrade to paid.

Earlier this week, I said:

It seemed to begin with a debate over serialized fiction, and the crescendo for me was one guy asking, “Has any fiction writer really made it on Substack? Even one?”

The assumed answer was no, not even one. Depending on our definition of “making it,” I doubt many of us would challenge that assertion. Substack wasn’t made with fiction in mind.

And that doesn’t matter.

My theory uses Substack as it is to accomplish one of the most hard-to-achieve goals shared by fiction writers, and once we’ve implemented these strategies broadly enough, there will emerge from among us those who will qualify as having “made it,” by whatever metric we care to apply.

Most of us aren’t looking to make a living off of Substack. We just want to build an audience. That I can offer, and for some, they’ll come away with much more.

The next thing to consider is the challenge you’ll face implementing these theories. The biggest hurdle isn’t the work involved but simply getting your mind right.

We’ll talk about that next time.

Until then, I’m—

Thaddeus Thomas

Go to Part 2: The Mindset Reset

Michael Ancher