On Building Your Author Audience with Substack

On Building Your Author Audience with Substack

Having a website or blog is one thing. Getting people who don’t already know you to actually find your writing is another. For authors trying to build an audience before the next book comes out, Substack offers something particularly interesting: a place to publish your work and a built-in ecosystem for helping new readers discover it.

Substack coach Adrienne Clark joins Kathleen and Adanna to unpack how authors can make that ecosystem work for them. She compares publishing on your own website to being a fish in the Pacific Ocean hoping to be found, while Substack is more like being a fish in a lake—with discovery tools that give readers more ways to find you.

Along the way, you’ll discover:

• How Substack helps new readers find your writing
• Why the words you use in titles, subtitles, and Notes matter for discovery
• How restacks, recommendations, and collaborations can expand your audience
• What authors should consider before turning on paid subscriptions or putting content behind a paywall
• The four essentials Adrienne recommends setting up when you’re getting started
• Why building your Substack audience is a long game—and why that can work in an author’s favor

And then there’s the question every writer eventually asks: Can I make money from this? Adrienne gets into the realities of paid subscriptions and paywalls, including why monetization needs to make sense for the audience you have now and be sustainable if that audience grows.

Her biggest advice, though, is reassuringly simple: You don’t need to master everything at once. Start with the essentials, keep showing up, and give the right readers a chance to find you.

About our Guest

Adrienne Clarke is the founder of Substack Coach, where she helps writers, authors, creators, and small business owners use Substack with more clarity and confidence. Her work focuses on helping people understand how Substack fits into their larger goals, organize their publications thoughtfully, improve the reader experience, and use features like Notes, recommendations, sections, tags, and paid subscriptions strategically.

She teaches through one-on-one coaching, workshops, and practical resources designed to make Substack feel less overwhelming and more useful.

Learn more about Adrienne on her website: substack.coach

Connect With Us

Kathleen: kathleenkaiser.com

Adanna: maddannastudio.com

Podcast listeners receive a special 20% off all ProBookLaunch products. Use code TBPLISTENER20 at checkout.

Have a topic or guest suggestion?
Email us at podcast@talkingbookpublishing.today

Join the conversation on Instagram: @writerspubsnet

Transcript

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00:00:06 SPEAKER_01
Welcome to Talking Book Publishing.

00:00:17 SPEAKER_00
and welcome to this episode of Talking Book Publishing. I'm Kathleen Kaiser, your co -host, along with Adana Moriarty. And today we have someone that both Adana and I are excited to have as a guest, Adrienne Clark, who is a Substack coach. And she's also going to be doing a webinar for us in September. But what we really like is more authors are finding Substack as a way to get their work out, get feedback, a lot of different things. But there's so much more available on Substack. And that's why we've asked Adrienne to come on board. Welcome, Adrienne.

00:00:56 SPEAKER_02
Thank you. I'm happy to be here today.

00:00:58 SPEAKER_00
Great. We were talking before we started recording and... Really, all of the strategy to put together to really, because A, you can monetize your sub stack or you can do it for free. But money always is nice to have that people will pay to read you. But also how to just get it out and build an audience. And that's part of the strategic plan. And I'd love for you to talk more about that.

00:01:24 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, for sure. So I was thinking that with this strategy, one way to kind of put this into perspective. is a lot of authors are accustomed to the idea that if you want to be a published author, you probably need a website and maybe a blog. Nowadays on the internet, of course, that means you're kind of lost in this vast host of websites and blogs on the internet, kind of like you're a fish in the Pacific Ocean hoping to be found. On Substack with the discovery tools, also because it's still a growing platform, last time I looked at the numbers, it was about a third. the size of instagram so it's still very much in its growth stage and so having your blog on Substack as a companion to your author site, that becomes more like you're a fish in the lake with a lot of strategies and features and methods to be found that you don't necessarily have. And the nice thing about Substack is that because they encourage us to become paid authors, they're not actually taking or charging for the features that they give us. There's no upfront payments required to have access to all. of the discovery platform features and really how they get paid is taking 10 % of what we make when we decide to turn on payments. So they're invested in our success on Substack.

00:02:50 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so the authors for finding your audience and also... growing on Substack,

00:02:51 SPEAKER_02
for finding your audience and also... growing on Substack, it really comes down to kind of a few basic items. One is setting up a Substack in a way that people understand who you are and what you're writing about. And when we do the webinar, Kathleen, I'll go more into details and share my screen and show people exactly how to set up. that Substack and show people what they're all about, what they're writing about and all of that. And then from there, it's how to use the discovery platform of Substack. Part of that is Substack Notes. Part of it is collaborations and different ways to kind of get ourselves out there. Substack has so many different networking features, it's hard to know which direction to go in first. But Kathleen, did you have any specific questions that we could start with?

00:03:47 SPEAKER_00
Well, I really think, because I've just launched mine, what do you need to do to attract more readers? Is it the hashtags they ask you to put in? you know where what what is the best way to find people because i don't have a lot of subscribers but half of them are people i don't know so they found me and i'm kind of curious as to how that happened yeah and so the hashtag

00:04:07 SPEAKER_02
i'm kind

00:04:10 SPEAKER_02
and so the hashtag This is a common issue on Substack. Substack's tags are different than any other platform. They're not hashtags. They're actually category tags. So if you have subtopics that you want to divide into categories, let's say you're an author, it's easier to use an example. You're an author who wants to have like their book chapters, like little excerpts published on your Substack. And then maybe you also want kind of like a behind the scenes journey that you bring want. people along with those could be two separate categories maybe one would be tagged with the title of your book and the other would be tagged as like my journey as an author and so you would have these different categories and then that creates a nice home page layout it creates different abilities in navigation for your readers journey through your content but they're not searchable tags and they're not hashtags but So finding your audience is more based on how Substack categorizes your articles, essays, posts, whatever you want to call them that you're sending out. And I can show you during the webinar with the screen shareability, I can show you how to kind of figure out who your audience is, what categories your topic belongs in. It's really organized by topic on Substack more so than by type of... with the, my mind is blanked on the word I'm looking for, but there is a literature category is where I'm trying to get to. So if you are writing literature, there is a specific category for that, but there is not, for example, a memoir category. There is not like a nonfiction category that would be sorted according to whatever your topic is, right? So there's kind of... Finding your audience is more about finding your topic on Substack and then seeing who else is writing in there, connecting and networking and that sort of thing. So when you're creating your posts and you're sending them out, they're also being sorted into the categories and subcategories of Substack in general. And then people who are interested in those topics are coming across your... your content in their feed. And that's how they're coming through to your Substack.

00:06:31 SPEAKER_01
I have a question about this categorization part of Substack. I am on Substack, but not as a creator. So when I'm going through my feed, obviously there's lots of like people I don't know that you get the little subscribe button that are being fed to me. But a lot of them seem to be like writers, but with no niche. they're just sort of out there writing and I don't know, hoping people find them. What happens if you're, say if you're an author and you're a poet and you're writing a nonfiction memoir and you're writing a novel, right? Like you're like kind of spread across a bunch of things. How would you work that? Would it just be the same? Like you're like, this is poetry, this is whatever. And then just hope and pray that people find you interesting.

00:07:09 SPEAKER_02
kind of

00:07:22 SPEAKER_02
So basically your entire Substack is, well, you can choose a couple categories and there is some ranking in categories and stuff like that, but that's a separate topic than audience. Each item that you create on Substack, whether that's a note. or a long form post the notes are like the social media side of sub stack is categorized by the sub stack algorithm automatically so you are not telling it this is where i think this belongs the algorithm is using the keywords that it finds in your title in your subtitle in your headings in your note especially it's finding those keywords and sorting you into different categories for that specific item that you have created okay so like a website you sort of need to work some seo throughout your your post that you're doing so people can find you is that

00:08:09 SPEAKER_01
so like a website you sort of need to work some seo throughout your your post that you're doing so people can find you is that Would that be accurate?

00:08:21 SPEAKER_02
In a way. So with Substack, there is some stuff with SEO because your every article that you write will rank in Google search, just like a blog article on a website would. So paying attention to your post URL, paying attention to there's a little box that you can fill out for your SEO description and SEO title. But also with within the Substack ecosystem itself, their search works a little bit differently in that it literally reads the title of your. post, the subtitle of your post, the title of your specific publication, and also... the contents of the note that you create so if you're sharing a long form post that you wrote to the substack notes feed which i highly recommend doing then that is that's it's reading first the contents of the note and i can give an example of this um i went through i was going through the different categories and subcategories with a client showing them how to navigate that and we came across in the beverage category There was a, someone had shared their post and the note they wrote was, here's a little sip of crazy for you. And the word sip had sorted this into the beverage, but the post itself was about politics in the US for, to put it nicely. And so it should have gone into the politics. post. But because they used a specific keyword and they didn't put in keywords relating to politics, so had they said, here's a little sip of crazy for you, my latest article about so -and -so in the White House and how I don't agree with blah, blah, blah. Had they put some more context with that, it would have gone into the politics and the people who were interested in their post would have been much more likely to find it. But because they gave no context and they just said they used the word sip, it went into the beverage category, which maybe a little less interested in that type of content within that category that's a really good example and how like especially of how important it is to make sure that even in your small descriptions that you're telling people what you're doing i feel like that's across the board not just for sub stack like if you're writing a blog on your website it's the same and also you can repurpose your sub stacks into the blogs on your website

00:10:18 SPEAKER_01
a really good example and how like especially of how important it is to make sure that even in your small descriptions that you're telling people what you're doing i feel like that's across the board not just for sub stack like if you're writing a blog on your website it's the same and also you can repurpose your sub stacks into the blogs on your website

00:10:40 SPEAKER_02
yes you can yeah so you can you can hit both the ocean and the lake yes for sure you are kind of like in some ways you're splitting the SEO between the two so you'll show up in search results for both one instead of one ranking per maybe higher but they're both you so totally

00:10:41 SPEAKER_01
so you can you can hit both the ocean and the lake

00:10:46 SPEAKER_02
you are kind of like in some ways you're splitting the SEO between the two so you'll show up in search results for both one instead of one ranking per maybe higher but they're both you so totally up to how you and how you want to do it well i've already learned i've titled everything wrong so well the thing is like when we title things we're often trying to catch the human eye right we're not thinking about the keywords and the the search results we're thinking about like what would make someone click on this article because it sounds interesting or it's you know it invites them in so when that's the case i always recommend like do a fun title and then

00:11:00 SPEAKER_00
i've already learned i've titled everything wrong so well

00:11:04 SPEAKER_02
the thing is like when we title things we're often trying to catch the human eye right we're not thinking about the keywords and the the search results we're thinking about like what would make someone click on this article because it sounds interesting or it's you know it invites them in so when that's the case i always recommend like do a fun title and then do a descriptive subtitle, and then you're kind of hitting both of those worlds. So,

00:11:33 SPEAKER_01
yeah. So I want to know, Adrienne, how you came about this kind of Substack expertise. We've talked about some strategy now, but I always like to know why and how we get here. So do you want to tell us a little bit about your story and how you ended up here and as the Substack coach? Sure.

00:11:54 SPEAKER_02
In March of 2022, I started my Substack. I just wanted to get into writing again. And my husband had come across Substack and suggested I try it as a new blog platform. And then to make a little extra money to pay for a further education that I was doing at the time to get my herbalist certification, I decided to offer my services as a copywriter on one of the freelance platforms. Because I mentioned like... At the time, nobody was doing Substack coaching really. And I mentioned, you know, for examples of my writing, check out my Substack. People started messaging me on my copywriting gig and saying, hey, I love your Substack. Can you help me with mine? And eventually I got a lot more of those as compared to copywriting. So I just completely switched my gig over to, hey, I'm a Substack coach. Come and see me for help with your Substack. And it kind of snowballed from there. ended up doing more on my own website. For a long time, I didn't start a Substack about Substack because I strictly marketed to newbies that don't even know how to navigate the platform really. But in last year, beginning of last year, I started actually writing newbie related articles on Substack itself. And then that has also contributed to the business there but so about four and a half years now i've been substat coach and helping people and it's grown into what it is now

00:13:25 SPEAKER_00
Yes, I get your emails with your posting, and it's like, I should be doing that. It's like every time I read one, it's like, I didn't know that's how you'd do that. It's like I'm in a new world again, and I'm trying to figure out how to do this. It's really fascinating. Actually, I approached you about the webinar to begin with because our programming committee for the Writers and Publishers Network, there's a couple of us that are on Substack, and we're all lost. You know, and they said, can you find someone that, you know, can help us here? And so I think if there's three of us out of a group of eight, there's a lot more out there that are trying to do this because it's it's a really great way to get your writing out, you know, and find readers that I mean,

00:13:55 SPEAKER_02
know, and

00:14:09 SPEAKER_01
you know, and

00:14:11 SPEAKER_00
yes, you write because you love to write, but you would like people to read it and interact with them. I love getting the comments back.

00:14:18 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, for sure. And I found to like what I like to tell people is that when I started four years. ago the platform itself was so much simpler like i can't imagine walking in now like i've had all the additions over the past years once one at a time and i've learned each one um this year they have gone flat out and i'm still i feel like i'm spinning in circles every time i have a new call my client's like and how do i do this and i'm like let me research that because that's brand new as of yesterday right so they're constantly adding new things and keeps me on my toes all right so

00:14:43 SPEAKER_01
do i do this

00:14:44 SPEAKER_02
and i'm like let me research that because that's brand new as of yesterday right so they're constantly adding new things and keeps me on my toes all

00:14:52 SPEAKER_00
right so So us being overwhelmed starting this year is not unusual. That's correct. Yes. It's a little crazy.

00:14:59 SPEAKER_01
It's a little crazy. I was playing around a little bit before we started recording today because I, as I said, before we started recording, I really want to start a sub stack for the podcast because I think that it will do really well there. And so I was playing around a little bit. And I'm a web designer by trade, as our audience probably knows by now. Because I mention it almost every time we have an interview. It definitely has a lot of features, but it seems kind of cool. It's like, God, it's all -encompassing ecosystem. You can have your website there. You can have your newsletter there. You can bring in subscribers. Like when I attached my Stripe account, it wanted to bring over my subscribers from Stripe, which are a totally different set of subscribers. But it's an interesting, the entirety of the ecosystem. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, how people could? as a strategy for going into their book launch and stuff like that, possibly use the entirety of the ecosystem in Substack? Sure,

00:16:02 SPEAKER_02
yeah. So Substack is at its heart, a blog and a newsletter put together. So instead of creating a blog and publishing it, and then creating a newsletter and sending it out. with a link back to the blog. You are creating everything that you create becomes a blog post on your Substack homepage, as well as a newsletter that's automatically sent out to your subscribers. So that is kind of the heart of Substack.

00:16:28 SPEAKER_01
that is

00:16:28 SPEAKER_02
kind of the heart of Substack. That's what it started at.

00:16:31 SPEAKER_01
That's what it was when I joined four years ago. It was just that.

00:16:34 SPEAKER_02
Now you can also create a podcast, as you mentioned, that has become quite popular on Substack. It exports automatically once you've hooked it up to Spotify. and Apple and any other podcast distributor platforms that you want to use. You can also create videos on Substacks. You can have video posts. And from that, you can have it published automatically to your YouTube. It'll break down clips. from the videos and you can publish those automatically to YouTube Shorts or to your LinkedIn if you have those connected. Everything you create on Substack, it's a click of a button to then share it to your social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter X. But Instagram, if you're an Instagram user, you have to kind of do a roundabout way where you download things and then upload them to Instagram. Instagram doesn't like off -platform stuff, so it doesn't connect as easily. So they've really made themselves from simply a blog and a newsletter into a content hub. So it can be, this is like your home where you publish from and then you send everything out from there to external platforms. One of them being also, which is not external, but it's kind of like a flip side of Substack and that is the Substack Notes. And Substack Notes is where all that categorization really comes into play. where you're going to find other people to connect with and where you're going to find other subsects that have overlapping audiences with yours is the best way to put it. And then there are several different strategies on how to use that effectively to grow your audience, which will be a lot easier to talk about. when we have the webinar, because I can actually show as I talk. And then that will make a lot more sense than just trying to blindly describe navigating the platform. Yeah. So go ahead. I just want to say, if you are listening to this podcast after the webinar,

00:18:32 SPEAKER_01
just want to say, if you are listening to this podcast after the webinar, which is September 14th, it will be available as a replay on writersandpublishersnetwork .com. So don't... worry if you're like, man, I really wish I've gotten there for the live. There is a replay that's available always.

00:18:53 SPEAKER_00
Right. Right. Right. So let's start out with, you're starting your page. You've got, you know, four or five lined up that you want to do. I love the scheduling. It's so simple to do. So you set all that up and the drag and drop, the way that you can insert images and different things is so simple. It was really, really easy to use that way. So you've set it up. You're ready to go. You know, like I sent out, I went up on Facebook to my several hundred little friends and said, hey, I'm doing this. And some of them went over there and I sent an email out to certain people. But what other way, what else can you do when you've, you know, you set it up and here I am.

00:19:37 SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So. there substack is a very uh collaborative platform so once you have reached the point where you're like okay so everyone that was part of what i was doing in writing and what i was doing for sharing my content before substack has now joined me my friends my family my facebook people all of that sort of thing right they've all subscribed or anyone who's going to now i need a new audience this is where substack notes really comes into play and also the collaborations on substack so creating your notes and sending them out is just like a very probably about a fifth of all the things of the other things that you can do maybe even a smaller portion so what you're wanting to do is go into the Substack platform, find other people through Substack search or through browsing categories that are writing on similar topics or just simply are writers like you, authors, that are open to things like, so first of all, you will have to subscribe to them and then start commenting on their content. Restacking is a really great thing to do on Substack. It really tells, first of all, it sends a notice to the person that you've restacked their stuff and they'll, pay a little more attention to you that you're not just someone who likes and moves on, but you're actually really interested in their content. But it also tells the Substack algorithm that you're restacking this person's content because your audience is interested in what they have to say. Therefore, their audience is probably interested in what you have to say. And your content should probably go into the feed of people who follow that person that you have just restacked. What do you mean exactly by restack?

00:21:25 SPEAKER_00
do you mean exactly by restack?

00:21:27 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, this is a specific button on Substack. So when you read someone's post or their note, it looks almost like a recycle symbol. It has the two little arrows going around in a circle. And when you click it. Then you have the ability to either restack or restack with a note. You always want to restack with a note. And then you can talk about how this person's essay really touched you and it was exactly what you needed. And they were talking about this and it was so applicable to something you were writing about at that time. So you're sharing with your audience why that person's content was. worth restacking to you. And so then beyond that, when you have followed someone for a while, not follow, I'm sorry, I always, Substack introduced the ability to follow and not subscribe relatively recently, but you want to be subscribed to them and then you can recommend them to your audience. So recommendations will, what it means is that your audience, once they subscribe, when they subscribe to you, will then get a notice saying, or the next screen will say, do you also want to subscribe to these people that Kathleen is recommending? And oftentimes they will choose to do so, or they'll read through them and choose some and not the others, right? And so recommending people, I usually recommend like five or six people at a time that are like related to what I'm writing about. And oftentimes the other people will then also recommend you and people as you start to become known within a circle. the substack ecosystem they'll the people within your circle will recommend you just as you're recommending them and then Beyond recommendations, there's things like collaborations. So those can be like guest posts that you write for someone. Or maybe you do a live together if you're confident on video where you both sit down and discuss book publishing or you discuss writing memoirs or you discuss what it's like to try to get your book published in today's publishing world or however, whatever it is that you would want to discuss that you both. have like almost like we're sitting and talking now, except for that it's on live video. Both of your audiences are notified as, and it also goes up just that there's a live in this topic on the Substack platform. And often you'll have complete strangers joining and then becoming a subscriber. So like Substack pulled from like all of the platforms,

00:23:51 SPEAKER_01
Substack pulled from like all of the platforms, like Instagram, Twitter. Facebook, like the way that they do it, because like you can retweet on Twitter, which is the same function. You hit the retweet. You can put a note up. You can do that on. Instagram now too. So it does kind of sound like they have just been like, oh, this feature is cool. Let's put that in here.

00:24:14 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it definitely feels that way sometimes. And like the lives are very much like YouTube lives where you have like that scrolling chat and people can click the heart button and it kind of floats up above your ear picture and stuff like that. Right.

00:24:28 SPEAKER_01
Okay. We've talked about kind of setting it up and finding your audience. I would like to talk about monetization because I think that Substack is really unique in this way. You don't have to have a million people to start making any money like you do on Twitter and Instagram. And there's some real strategies to this, which is sort of whatever you're comfortable with. Would you just speak to... the things that you think really work for people that are getting people to subscribe and pay for subscription, not just kind of follow along, subscribe.

00:25:07 SPEAKER_02
Yes. So in a nutshell, because this could be an hour or more, but one thing that I like to let people know to start with is that monetization on Substack is not going to be an instant, like you're just going to make money, right? It's more of, so you get, let's say you have a thousand free subscribers. of those free subscribers how many are your active free subscribers if you have a 30 open rate it's 30 of that free subscriber number, then your paid subscribers or possible paid subscribers are probably going to be about three to five percent of your active subscribers. So that's just kind of like the realistic numbers to break it down and say, OK, is it worthwhile for me to turn on the paywall and or to turn on payments altogether? Because you don't have to paywall in order to get payments. Subscriptions are completely editable. It's whatever you want to offer your. people. So for example, some people just say, hey, if you love what I'm doing and want to support an author, you know, throw me five bucks a month. I'm super happy to do that. Thank you so much. All of my appreciation, heartfelt gratitude, right? And that's basically what it says in their paid benefit. And they don't pay well anything. They don't offer anything extra for payments. It's just, you want to support me? go for it. If they want to, the next level, if I think of it in levels is like paywalling or doing extra content for paid subscribers. So for an author, oftentimes they'll split their content in two or three possibilities. One is like the actual contents of the book, chapter one, chapter two, et cetera, whether that's an excerpt or sometimes people serialize their pre -published version. And if you're looking for If you're an author who's waiting to get a book deal, use caution here because some publishers won't publish if you've already published on Substack. So there's just a little bit of like, you have to be aware of what's okay and what's not. But some authors will pre -publish their work on Substack. And then they will have maybe a section of their Substack is dedicated to like, here's the research that I did. You know, here's chapter one. Here's the research that I put in to get chapter one. And or here's my journey as an author. Here's what I was doing. Here's how I came up with this inspiration. Here's all the things that I've been through to get to this book. Right. And so they have kind of their personal story behind the scenes kind of look. From there, you can choose like maybe your biggest goal right now is eyes on your book. And you really want people to subscribe, to read your book, to leave comments and to really be. invested in your story. That might be remain free in that case. And then maybe you paywall your personal journey or your research and that becomes the paid subscribers. They get to come behind the scenes with the author and the free subscribers just get the contents of the actual book. Other people flip that. They might write a weekly or biweekly blog about their journey or just about topics that they're interested in. And the book itself is what's paywalled. I have clients who have done both. And then from there, that's kind of that paywalled content. And the reason I started with the numbers is because if you say it's only $5 a month to become a paid subscriber and then you have access to all of my behind the scenes journey and one person upgrades and you've promised them a weekly post, is that one person upgrading? worth the time and effort to you like is that sustainable for you over the long term to create all of this extra content that you've promised when you're getting five dollars per month to do so right so you kind of have to think that through. The flip side of that is whether you have a thousand, two thousand or five thousand paid subscribers, you're still producing the same amount of content and it's no extra work for a lot more money. And the reason I mentioned that is because typically above and beyond that is people will offer access or community. So this is what I offer. I have like a weekly Zoom call for Q &A on Substack. You can jump in during some point during that half an hour, ask me questions. This works really great for my current paid subscriber level. If I had 5 ,000 paid subscribers, I can only wish. Those people, that would be overwhelming amount of work for me to try to field that number of questions. And I would have to like edit my... my paid subscriber level and probably because every time you change something, but I'd probably lose some paid subscribers by changing things. So you really have to kind of think about like, where am I now? What makes sense sustainably in the long term for me? Is it community? Is it access to me? Is it just paywalled content that I'm already writing? I just put a paywall partway down. Or is it extra content? Or am I just wanting people to support me if they feel like it and I don't want to worry about paywalling content? So you have to think what's sustainable for you now and what's sustainable for you throughout your journey on Substack. That's my, in a nutshell, but kind of long at the same time.

00:30:25 SPEAKER_01
That was perfect. I think that was a lot of information and it gives people a place to start thinking. I know it did me, so.

00:30:33 SPEAKER_00
My brain's going. Yeah, so we're not trying to overwhelm.

00:30:34 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so we're not trying to overwhelm. We might have to have Adrienne back and we can grill her some more. The making money part as a writer is just always a place where I think all of us as writers are like, hmm, how do we make money? Because it's kind of a labor of love and it's laborious. Like it is, it's a time consuming. affair with writing. And how do you monetize that? How do you make money so you can continue to do it? And I know a lot of writers out there who are like on this hustle of doing webinars and workshops and like taking things that they're good at in their own writing and offering it as services to other writers and stuff like that. So I think that Substack is... is unique because it is a place where you can really take your writing and have an opportunity for it to grow and for it to find its audience, which means that when you have a book, you're more likely to sell your book, right? When you have an audience already warmed up to you. So I don't know.

00:31:37 SPEAKER_00
When you have

00:31:40 SPEAKER_01
don't know. I think it's great.

00:31:41 SPEAKER_02
I think it's great. Yeah. And that's definitely the main reason why authors come to Substack is for the audience building and discovery. tools that are embedded in Substack so that they can grow that audience. Because a lot of the publishers want to see that you have people that would be interested in purchasing your book when it comes to market, right? So it definitely helps with that if you know how to use the tools effectively.

00:32:08 SPEAKER_00
Yeah. the thing you were talking about, about recommending other people, because I have someone, I know, in fact, she was the one that wanted to do, that brought up, let's do a thing on Substack. She has a good one and it's in rock and roll and mine's in rock and roll in the 60s and 70s. So she's been referring people to me and I'm trying to figure out, I couldn't figure out how to refer people to her. Okay. What am I doing wrong?

00:32:37 SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So assuming you're subscribed to her, which I'm sure you are, if you go to your dashboard on the left side menu, there is a recommendations tab that you can click on and then you can scroll down and you should be able to manage or add recommendations. And then you just search for her.

00:32:45 SPEAKER_01
there is

00:32:55 SPEAKER_00
then you just search for her. Yeah, she's right here. Okay. Yeah.

00:33:00 SPEAKER_02
And then you can just recommend back. I think it would give you that option.

00:33:05 SPEAKER_00
Yeah. Okay. Fabulous. She's been so helpful. I want to, you know, go back. She's gotten me three or four subscribers and every little one helps. I have a question. I only have about 40 subscribers, but I'm getting like a 50, 60 % open. Is that good? That's great. Yeah.

00:33:13 SPEAKER_01
one helps.

00:33:22 SPEAKER_01
Oh, okay. Very good.

00:33:22 SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay. Very good. Yeah. Okay. I mean, it's a small circle, but. You know, when half of them, I don't know who they are, they found me somehow. I'm just like, okay, there's one gal, she comments on everything. And it's like, wow, I found a fan. And I don't even know, I just know her email. So if you were to search for,

00:33:40 SPEAKER_02
if you were to search for, say, rock and roll on Substack, if you go to substack .com, there's a search bar in the top right corner. you would be able to come across all the publications that are related to that. There's also a music category with a rock and roll subcategory. So if someone is very interested in that, they may regularly scroll through that subcategory and come across your work that way. This is kind of like that's part of that discovery. Like you haven't actually been trying and you've been attracting very aligned people based on your open rate. And from that, then if you are using the tools effectively, once you know how to do so and you're sharing with specific keywords, you're searching, you're connecting with other people, then your growth is probably only going to get a little bit. faster for you.

00:34:35 SPEAKER_00
Okay, great. I have a question because we're almost out of time.

00:34:36 SPEAKER_01
have a question because we're almost out of time. So, Adrienne, if you were meeting someone for the first time and they had never opened Substack, what would be your advice to get started and be successful without getting too overwhelmed? Because there are definitely a lot of features. I could see if you're not techie, you could open it and be like, no, thanks.

00:35:00 SPEAKER_02
Yes. So Substack is a long game. Don't join Substack expecting to get 10 ,000 followers within the first couple of weeks because you have amazing content.

00:35:06 SPEAKER_01
followers within the first couple of weeks because you have amazing content.

00:35:10 SPEAKER_02
Start slowly. Build your content. Be predictable. Be reliable. Take three to six months, even a year with Substack if you can, just building your audience and building your content. There are really, there are a ton of features, extra things and all of that. If you just want to write essays, there are four essential items to have in place. There is, besides your profile, but once you start a publication, there's your, sorry, title and short description, your about page, your hero post. and your welcome emails. Those four items will A, attract the right people to you and tell them what you're all about on Substack and B, show those people once they have subscribed where to go and how to find your content. And from there, you can start layering in the other things, a podcast if you want, categories for your posts within your Substack if you want. But those are kind of those four. basic items to start with and we'll probably go through those when we do the webinar and talk more about them and where to find them and how to put them in place and why they're important there's branding there's all the extra things but those are kind of your basics and then you can just write and kind of get used to the platform and share your work and find other cool people and substack and have fun with the platform, and then circle back around and worry about the next layer of more complex features. So you don't have to figure it all out at once.

00:36:41 SPEAKER_01
Well, I think that's good advice. And we need to add Substack into our year to launch, Kathleen.

00:36:48 SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know. At least a year in advance.

00:36:49 SPEAKER_01
least a year in advance.

00:36:52 SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that'll go into the, I think I'll do a new blog for what we're doing on the one -year book launch plan. I'm going to add Substack because I'm seeing the potential. You know, finding people you don't know. I'm saying this again, but that's just like, wow, somebody liked it, you know, and they found me. So encouraging.

00:37:02 SPEAKER_01
know, finding

00:37:10 SPEAKER_01
they found me. So encouraging. It is.

00:37:12 SPEAKER_00
is. And I think the benefit of having a more long form place to write and think and show people what you're doing,

00:37:14 SPEAKER_01
I think the benefit of having a more long form place to write and think and show people what you're doing, like. As we see people turn away from the hyper information of like TikTok and Instagram, having a solid sub stack is probably a good idea, especially for us writers, because it is specifically to write.

00:37:37 SPEAKER_02
Yes. And the audience wants good quality, long form content. They're not looking for quick fixes and flashy things. They're looking for something that they can dive into and sit down and read on a Sunday morning and enjoy. Yeah, it's a good fit, for sure. Yeah,

00:37:54 SPEAKER_00
I started with Substack, I think, about four years ago with political things. Some of the people I like suddenly were doing that, and then they would have these longer ones. It's like, oh, I really like this. I would save those emails announcing them and then read them at the end of the day. Yeah. So that's how I found Substance.

00:38:15 SPEAKER_01
Well, Adrienne, it's really nice to be able to chat and I'm looking forward to your webinar. I think that there's really going to be some great opportunity to learn and ask questions and dive a little deeper into what we sort of touched on here today. Again, if you are listening to this after the webinar on September 14th, it will be available as a replay and you can register at writersandpublishersnetwork .com.

00:38:41 SPEAKER_00
beforehand. If you can't attend you will automatically get the video. So you'll be able, if you can't attend, but you really want to know about it, please do that. Because that's why if you've registered, you get the replay automatically. Okay. Well, Adrienne, I'm so glad I found you. And this has been sort of making me rethink everything I've got to redo now. But at least I'm only about 10 episodes into my sub stacks. And I'm doing them weekly. So I can try and get things. a little bit more up to speed with how it's supposed to be.

00:39:13 SPEAKER_01
can try

00:39:18 SPEAKER_02
Yes, and everything on Substack is editable. You can change things anytime. Oh,

00:39:22 SPEAKER_00
can change

00:39:24 SPEAKER_00
so I could go back and change the headlines on the other ones?

00:39:28 SPEAKER_02
You can, absolutely.

00:39:30 SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay. That's good to know. I will be doing that, you know. Just more fun stuff to do late into the night.

00:39:37 SPEAKER_02
Yeah.

00:39:38 SPEAKER_00
Well, thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for coming today. Adrienne, it's been an overwhelming education, and I'm looking forward to the webinar. And this is just, I'm just like, my brain's buzzing. It's like, oh, I got to do this. I got to do that.

00:39:41 SPEAKER_02
for coming today.

00:39:53 SPEAKER_02
You have to re -listen to this later, probably.

00:39:56 SPEAKER_00
I will be. I will be. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here.

00:40:00 SPEAKER_02
be here. Thanks for having me.

00:40:15 SPEAKER_01
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