What Should be Our Goal and Why are We Here?

Toward the end, I'll include my philosophy for publishing on Substack--for those of you making the rookie errors. As for the big goals, this isn't a how-to; it's an existential cry.

When we first come to Substack, we think everything is stacked against us and the system is broken. The initial reasons for the conclusion are flawed, but the conclusion lingers. I’ve only been here now 14 months); my journey is just beginning (I hope), and if you want me to teach you how to come this far, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that anyone who’s been around long enough learns the basics that many are getting wrong. The bad news is that even if my current position were a goal, I haven’t set a healthy example of how to get here. For my first six months, I gave myself permission to focus on nothing else.

All my writing was Substack writing.

I did that because Substack gives us everything we need in one place, and I’m comfortable here. The unhealthy side of it is that I came here as a renewed effort to get my writing before an audience—after locking myself away for a few years, writing for an audience of me—and if audience means a paid audience, as a community, we really haven’t figured that one out yet. We have our paid subscribers—God bless them—but you know what I mean: it’s a long way to Substack providing a significant part of our salary.

How do we get there? I don’t have those answers. But I have a few kernels of truth to sustain us along our quest.

• Know why you’re here beyond the hope for money and more subscribers.

• Build relationships. Interact with people. Don’t make this little more than a marketing space.

• Let go of the negativity and the idea of hating all the things people do to earn a buck. We don’t have to be like them, but we need to be ready to learn from anyone.

• Look for ways to make Substack support your passion, not take you away from it.

• Don’t burn yourself out.

“Support your passion / Don’t burn yourself out.”

I threw that last one in there for me, and I have a confession. As I began work on a book based on my collection of essays and knew I would be writing less often about prose techniques and prose theory, I had a bit of a crisis. That series transformed how Substack saw me, and with it slowing down—who am I?

Call it my Substack midlife crisis. I brainstormed everything, and then scheduled myself to do everything as soon as I was back from vacation.

I’m not going to talk about all of that here. Wednesday’s edition of the Literary Salon Magazine will have more information about everything that’s going on, but there is one project that could help with that all-important goal of Substack supporting your passion.

It has me focused on mine, and there are a few of us gathering in the forum to talk about our projects. It’s been really healthy. I call it MmmFA, and it’s about us holding ourselves accountable to write that novel. You don’t have to be a paid subscriber. Just click on the forum link and follow the instructions.

The first thing that Substack needs to be is healthy. Protect your passions. Protect your real life and the chance to live it.

—Thaddeus Thomas

I made this a complete thought you could stop here if you want to, but this post continues after the break.

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This article is part of Literary Salon #3.

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My Paid-Subscriber Philosophy

Basic:

1) Turn on paid subscriptions.

2) Don't offer anything extra.

Advanced:

3) All posts start free.

4) Posts that make good introductions to your work should remain free.

5) More niche, difficult posts-- posts more likely to scare off new-comers-- should fall under a paywall after an initial free run.

Expert:

6) Exclusive, paid content can begin when you have a paid reading audience sizable enough. If your posts have no readers, you'll get frustrated and stop writing.

7) The focus on exclusive posts is FOMO material. Your paid readers don't see any difference between paid and free material. They don't care. The writing needs to be good. That's what matters. That's all that matters. Exclusive material WILL matter to free subscribers, and that's a danger. Don't annoy your free readers. Do entice them with subjects they don't want to miss.

Bonus:

8) Offer a founding-level subscription. Those who get the most value from your work will want to support you on a higher level. They're not asking for additional value. They already get it and want to reward you.

Mistakes That Hold You Back

Help people find you:

Your Substack @, your newsletter address, and your Substack name: two of those need to be intuitively linked.

Help people find your chapters:

Serial posts need links to a table of contents. Don’t make people hunt.

Help your serial find readers:

If you’re new, a serial won’t help you find subscribers. Serials are tough. Build up an audience first. Begin with articles and short stories.

Help people pay you:

Enable in-app payments, and for the pricing options, select to have the subscriber pay the Apple / Google fee. We may hate that the companies charge as much as they do, but if that’s what a subscriber chooses, don’t stand in their way.

Speaking of which! Turn on your paid subscriptions! Let people pay if they want to.

I keep seeing the choice being presented as paywalls or “Buy Me a Coffee,” and it’s not true. You don’t have to have paywalls at all if you don’t want to. $30 is the minimum subscriber price you can set, but you can discount it from there if you want.

I’m not suggesting you follow my pricing strategy, but my base subscription can currently be had for 10 USD.

—Thaddeus Thomas

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LiterarySalon.ThaddeusThomas.com/account