This absolutely makes sense to me. As I’m gearing up to start a long-running serial next year (and my current estimation is that it will take around 3-4 years to run), I’ve been thinking ahead to how I would handle publishing the books, and providing people easier access and in-points.
Up to this point I’ve been primarily a book publishing indie experimenting with shorter serializations, so this serial so far is shaping up to have easy end points for book publishing purposes, etc…less a traditional serial and more like a hybrid serialization of a novel, I guess.
But I still value long-term serial authors like you sharing these insights, because it gives my more book-shaped-product-focused brain things to think about.
The one big difference between you and the other online serialists is that you allowed your serial to become a massive, complex, interconnected thing, whereas others stick to the tight format of a novel and take up less of the reader's time...
Yup, and I'm not intending to do something on this scale again for a while. Short stories seem VERY appealing to me right now. :P
Time is an interesting thing to consider. Although the overall time for readers is large, both in terms of the total size of the project and the publishing schedule being long, the individual week-to-week commitment is very low. Perhaps 10 minutes, give or take?
The general idea is intriguing, and I'm sure some people could make it work.
My fear with having paperbacks to send out is that international shipping is expensive, and a lot of my folks are in other countries. (Well, the paid subs aren't, but they are a miniscule part of the total so far (6 out of 524).
In case this helps anyone, I'll share my funnel experience. I tried to create a system geared to the way I react as a reader. I don't mind reading on screens at all, but I do have a hard time trying to keep up with many serials at once. I make the effort because I want to support other authors, but I don't enjoy the experience as much as reading through a book. (In the same way, I'd rather binge TV shows than string them out over a long period.)
Anyway, I decided to put out ebooks of completed serials, divided into two categories. Free subs get ebook copies of all the serials written specifically for Substack. Paid subs get in addition the WIPS that I serialize here so that I can actually get them done (fewer workflows equals more progress).
The idea with the Substack serials was to get people on the fence to free subscribe. The idea of giving paid subs copies of new releases I'd already worked out before that.
I thought the idea was sound, but so far, It's been an abysmal failure. I've gotten a grand total of one Substack serial ebook request. New release requests from paid subs are the same.
Two odd things: First, I've also tried using the ebook form of the serials as reader magnets on BookFunnel, and they get gobbled up. So they aren't inherently unattractive products. And some of the very same people who don't take advantage of the free benefits do sometimes buy my books. So it isn't that they're uninterested.
Many of the Substack serials relate to published series, so I plug the relevant series at the end of each post. To some extent, that is an effective funnel from Substack to book purchase. That at least worked.
The idea makes sense, but I wonder whether it's inherently a bit too complex. Even explaining it here took you a fairly chunky comment. It could be that the combination of subscribing, serials, ebooks for free subs, ebooks for paid subs...this sort of thing can quickly get confusing, at which point the reader checks out.
Using the same ebooks for BookFunnel promos, on the other hand, skips all of that. The book becomes an appealing ebook in a clear and simple group promo. Everyone knows how it works and the exchange is simple.
I always think back to Steve Krug's book about internet design, Don't Make Me Think. It's extremely old now but the central point is still valid. Too many choices, or pathways that are too long, can be off-putting - especially when there are always infinite alternatives in someone's peripheral.
Bill, are you getting your subscribers to email you for the book? I was thinking about doing something similar because I don’t have a paid tier (with no plans to). It would be nice to offer a “catch up” option in a way that would make it less easy for someone to pirate. I’m sure there is code that could probably strip all the extraneous stuff from each published instalment and fold it into a book too but leave me with my delusions a little while longer please..
Actually, I have them fill out a form on my non-Substack website. (Because there’s no easy way to do a fillable form here.) Perhaps that’s the problem, but I’m trying to find middle ground between convenience for the subscribers and avoidance of giving away each book to the entire universe.
I thought I had the solution. I discovered that Substack allows an author to freewall a post (make it viewable by free subscribers, though I don’t know if that means only free or free and up—I could always accommodate the paid some other way). The problem was that Substack won’t let you do that with a page, only with a post. I wrestled with that for a while and finally gave up on it. However, it just now occurred to me that I could give the post a unique tag and make the tag a menu item. But would give me roughly the same effect as a page. I’ll have to try that.
Substack enables embedding of book files, both PDF and EPUB. Or I could link to a download page on BookFunnel, though that wouldn’t be as secure. Either way, that would be easier than filling out a form and perhaps lead to more people doing it. I may just have solved my own problem, so thanks for that!
On the subject of automatically stripping out the extraneous stuff, I did that by hand, and it wasn’t too cumbersome. Of course, the alternative is to compose the material in word processing software and then paste it into Substack posts. I was doing that, but it was cumbersome in other ways. Every time I decided to make a correction, it had to be done twice.
All but the first book, I've put into Scrivener (and I did the double corrections, so my files are up to date and I can just uncheck "previously on").
You're thinking is to embed the PDF/EPUB into a Substack post and not send it to anyone's inbox. They would be directed to find it? I think that a post made this way is still basically a public website page though? ... hmm ...
Wonder if I should dust off Zapier (is it still around?) ... and make a zap from submitting a Google form to sending an email automagically with the files in it.
I know just not sending out the email leaves the page public. Take a look at settings on one of our draft or scheduled posts. Under “Audience”, click on “Other Options.” The bottom one is “free subscribers only.” That’s what I meant by freewalling. No one has to pay to see it, but one does need to be at least a free subscriber.
I’m looking for a way to provide free subs with an option to download the books as easily as possible. Creating a post as described with a unique tag I can make into a menu item seems likely to do that. I just haven’t had time to try it yet.
Is that definitely what that option does? My understanding was that it sends out an email to everyone EXCEPT for paid subscribers. According to Substack docs, it then is not available in the publication's web archive (I'm unclear on whether it can be linked to directly?).
The lack of 'freewalling' is a weird oversight on Substack's part.
Yeah, it’s true it isn’t immediately visible in anyone, me included. I thought the post in question hadn’t gone out at all (which might indicate that it didn’t go out to any paid subscribers). “Free subscribers only” might indicate that, but “Paid subscribers only” posts also go to founding members—I think. Maybe they’re exclusive, too. It would make more sense if the tiering were “free and higher,” “paid and higher,” etc.
It is possible to force a kind of visibility by giving it a unique tag and then making the tag into a menu item. But that’s a little cumbersome, and it doesn’t seem to do what I wanted—making a page/post visible to any kind of subscriber, but no one else.
Perhaps my problem is that I’m trying to do something that Substack developers clearly didn’t anticipate—provide downloadable rewards for subscribers, while trying to limit their distribution only to subscribers. The additional paid and founding rewards I handle through gifting, so that works. But the rewards that include the free tier (an effort to get followers and passersby to take the next step) aren’t published in a way that allows me to do that.
I could just include the necessary links in emails, then immediately remove them from the posted version. But the people who don’t open that particular email wouldn’t get them, so I’d have to keep doing that periodically, for that reason and to pick up the newbs. That could be annoying to some subscribers who’ve already claimed the rewards.
What I wanted was an easy, “Go to this page and click on the books you want,” scenario. What I may have to settle for (again) is “Go to my (non-Substack) website, fill out a form for each download, and then wait for another email. At that point, I could email them directly or send them a BookFunnel link or code. Either way, that requires more work on their part and intervention on my part every single time. I’ve had minimal claims, which was why I was looking for an easier way to do it.
Well, I just basically did this. I took the first "Season" of my episodic novel (18 episodes) and turned them into a paperback that I sent to my annual paid subscribers. Cost about $5 each (for about 100 + shipping.)
Anecdotally my regular readers appreciated it either to catch up or have as a reference. Practically speaking I only maybe got one paid subscriber and lost 3 (probably having more to do with renewals). For reference I have about 800 subscribers 80 paid. And about a 40% open rate. And, btw, for the most part a reader can dive in anywhere and enjoy it. Although I have minimal engagement which also flummoxes me. And clearly the paperback was not about money.
I haven't used any of the regular distribution channels (Ingram etc.) and would be surprised if they helped much. I could offer it to regular subscribers (not paid) but I'd have to ask for $15 or so. Since I have nothing behind a paywall and most readers are supporting me not the project itself, why should they subscribe for $60? And frankly, my instincts are that not many unpaid readers would buy it.
Since after many years of writing for other people [marketing documentaries] I'm doing this so I can put some of my own writing into finished form, the lack of paid subscribers doesn't bother me too much except that it'd be another form of engagement.
Still, I'll probably do Season Two the same way and maybe combine with Season Three.
Sorry for the long answer but clearly I'm dealing with the same issues so hope it's interesting to some.
Definitely interesting! And I agree with your general sense of paid subs: every time I've experimented with creating incentives for people to go paid, it hasn't really worked. The most effective tactic has been to keep everything free, at which point lovely people (yourself included, thanks!) come along to offer support in more of a patronage model. As you say, in the book newsletter (especially fiction, I think) world, subscribers are supporting the writer rather than any specific project.
How did you logistically handle the sending of those paperbacks? Did you do all the shipping etc yourself?
I do indeed do Notes! Though, only because I enjoy it. I think it probably does help a bit, in keeping me on people's radar. I try to keep my Notes at least tangentially related to the newsletter, so that if someone finds a Note interesting, there's a good chance they'll find my newsletter interesting as well.
I rarely stray too far from the newsletter's general themes. e.g. I don't tend to post about politics and current affairs - not because it isn't on my mind, but because it's not relevant. In that regard I see Notes as an extension of the newsletter, rather than a social media channel like I used to use Twitter etc.
But! The important thing is that I try to do it on my own terms. I don't scroll, I don't spend much time there each day. I will only continue to use it as long as it functions as a way to keep in touch with cool writers. So far, so good - I rarely feel like Notes is wasting my time, or trying to whisk me down unwanted rabbitholes.
I'm planning on starting my first serial early next year, and I've been thinking about it along exactly these lines. So much of it has to do with meeting each of your potential readers where they're at. The serial isn't the product; the story is the product, and the serial is just one possible format for it, and there's no reason not to offer as many different formats as you can reasonably manage.
Also check out Draft 2 Digital. They do ebook and print all on one platform. I have found the flexibility of the print forms not a good as ingram though.
I'm planning something similar with my serial work as well, but going at a much slower pace. It's the idea that there are different types of readers that's important. You can serialize online AND create a print version AND an ebook version. You've now reached out to three different kinds of readers. It's really cool
Once I wrap up Triverse in serial form I'm going to start looking into the various options in much more detail. Should be fun, and I'll definitely be sharing how I get on.
Isn't it cool how writers have so many options these days?
I think that fiction only works with immersion, and most online platforms don't give the audience that and/or they've been trained to skim.
Sitting down with a book (or event to watch TV) is a physical vote of "I'm going to get into a story."
Picking up your phone to read email or run through Substack posts? The exact opposite.
I think this is why, on any video platform (IG, YT, etc.), you don't see fiction stories (at least I don't).
P.S. Suggest checking out Elle Griffin's Elysian.press as an example. She sends out physical books to her premium tiers. I like how she does it - feels like extra value for me and I'm sure she makes more on me than if I bought her books individually.
I actually think the Substack app does a fairly decent job of this when you're reading an article: it strips away the entire interface, there are no interruptions, just you and the text. Obviously that can still be intruded upon by other phone apps and notifications, though.
YouTube has a ton of fiction stuff and has for years, though it tends to be short-form. Some serials there as well, though. But again, once you're watching a YouTube video and have set it to fullscreen, it's fairly immersive (or, it was until they started ramping up the length and frequency of ads).
IG though, for sure - that place is 90% UI, always wanting you to like, comment, etc etc. It's all about engagement and interaction and scrolling, with the image itself being a sideshow.
Ahh AIDA… and Plan. Do. Check. Act. Top stuff. I’ve only read the article once so this might not be right.
My overall feeling is one of you talking a lot about what your options are and less about why you’re doing it in the first place. That is how it came across to me, rightly or wrongly. So my basic food for thought question is how does changing what you’ve been doing improve things re your purpose, your why? How do you think doing any of the options you’re considering change things for the better.
IF (If) it’s about money, in whole or in part, then what i’d also observe is that in an ideal world most “businesses” be that one man and his dog or multinationals essentially want repeat business. Because it costs less to acquire and values the business higher. Perhaps the complication for authors of any type with that (I.e. all of us on here) is that it’s pretty unlikely for a reader to buy the same book twice , so one has to keep churning out new books (content of whatever sort) for one’s existing readers to essentially make a repeat purchase.
Perhaps in addition to the AIDA funnel, the examples of which are great and interesting, maybe consider - what I’ve always called the product / customer / marketing quadrant. No idea if that’s the correct term tbh. I won’t draw it here (I’m pretty sure you’ll know it anyway but just in case for others) but essentially …
Draw a rectangle split down and across the middle, ending up with 4 boxes (the quadrant part… ish). The x axis is customers the y axis products. Arrows on the end of each.
Bottom left is existing customer and existing product, top left, existing customer and new product. Bottom right new customer and existing product, top right, new customer and new product.
And then consider, in line with your why of course, how easy it is to promote / sell to any of the 3 boxes except the one you’ve already got (I.e. existing customer and exist in product). Clearly it’s way harder to find new customers to buy new products.
Which brings me to the observation that, whilst doing new things is exciting and fun etc. you have a massive work which presumably could be subdivided easily enough (feels that way from what I’ve read to date, which is 99% of what you’ve published here) and reformed to help you reach new customers and kind of is a new product too. Maybe your “new new” ideas are spin off’s from characters, themes or the worlds you already have? So your existing content dovetails either before, after or potentially even during the timelines.
So… what I’m really saying is that can you use your existing products (content) and your existing customers to help you find new customers and new products and so would that influence how (and thus what) you go about doing?
In the world of music… artists have back catalogues of stuff. E.g. things they’ve recorded in the 70 / 80 / 90’s etc. and many of them use that library to find new customers and / repeat customers. By re-packaging them, adding new content, merging content, producing new versions etc etc.
Could / should that be, in part, part of your mix?
Great observations, Mark. In terms of the 'why', in this case it's very much about the reader and providing them with the best possible experience. Making money I see as a cool side effect of doing good work, rather than as a primary goal.
For me personally, it's all about telling a good story and getting it out into the world. Which I'm already doing! What I was exploring in this post was how to make that process more efficient, and to remove some of the friction for readers. That's less about increasing income and more about increasing the potential readership.
Of course, increasing the readership may well lead to increased income as well, which would be nice. But if I do increase my fiction writing income, I want to do it through a sustainable process that respects the reader.
And you're right about the repeat customer dilemma: you can only sell a book to somebody once (well, other than fancy collector editions, maybe?). One response to that is to churn out more and more books, like the Amazon model required for years. That approach also happens to be the one most at risk of exploitation from AI. I prefer leaning into the patronage model, whereby readers are supporting me in a general sense, rather than purchasing individual products. But that's not to say that I shouldn't also make the stories available as distinct products, for people who prefer it that way.
Thanks again for the reply Simon. One more “observation” for what it’s worth. Whilst I’ve only published one (business) book currently, over the years I’ve amassed lots of content, articles and the odd guide or two. I’m very much still learning about what and how I want to do things here on Substack. I don’t feel I’m quite there yet with the how and what. One of my processes to working out that what (and maybe some how) is to make a list of all the stuff I’ve got. And what I’ve found is that that in itself has given me more ideas of what I could produce. Spin off’s if you like. Which yes contain some of the previous stuff but mostly the idea is a new angle / thought or domain. If you were to re-work / package e.g. Triverse maybe that would give you more ideas too. Having read some of your story notes about what you wanted to write about, it seems to me that at that point in time you decided to e.g. not pursue a certain line of thinking re a plot / character etc… but maybe in the future that becomes the right direction of travel. Timing is everything. All that said, I’m not sure I need more ideas, just need to start a first one 😂
Really great deep dive, Simon. What you're getting at reminds me a lot of what the author Stephanie Bond does with her serialized fiction -- she publishes a chapter a day to her website, teases out links to it on social media, and then bundles both groups of chapters and then the whole book later, for purchase on all the online retailers.
What's interesting to me about this is she was a successful traditionally published novelist for many years, mainly in romance (I think). But she's shifted to romantic mysteries for her serialized fiction, which she says she believes is the future of fiction.
Sounds interesting. Publishing has definitely shifted, and that hard divide between traditionally published authors and self-published authors has largely dissolved. A lot of writers these days pick whichever approach best fits each particular project. I would imagine for a lot of traditionally published authors, as long as they've built up a way of contacting their readers, they can get much better results going the DIY route in a lot of cases.
Makes total sense. I actually just finished creating an ebook for “Season 1” of my fiction newsletter, which I run separately from my Substack newsletter, to offer as a paid item in support of the free newsletter. I just happened to think of the idea in a whim and used Designrr to format and create an ebook from it. I’ll give Affinity Studio a try with my next ebook formatting ventures.
On Ingram spark… what are the alternatives and could this in effect be an alternative to gumroad etc?
So you’d publish a link on your substack website (eg I’ve atm got a resources link which currently links to Amazon for my book). Folk would buy from there. Keeps content central.
I’m guessing it could print on demand any content eg templates / checklists etc. or just permit a download of the, say, pdf?
Or it looks like also somehow make the content available on one’s kindle?
I’ve only just skimmed their website for now.
Not looked at affinity studio yet though I gather it’s a canva product so that’s a go to now and suspect it’ll be great.
Assume you can design the covers and templates etc and then combine with words and sell through Ingram?
So in effect ones has a “store” for paid content through substack hosting the individual product url’s. So no need for Gumroad etc.
No rush for reply. Interested if that’s the line of thinking for you too.
Someone else has mentioned Draft 2 Digital as an IngramSpark alternative. You could also just use Amazon KDP, but then it's limited to only selling on Amazon. I haven't fully looked into the platforms available these days - that's a priority once I wrap up Triverse.
And yes, I'd make sure it was visible from the Substack. Maybe do some extra discount for subscribers, etc. But also I'd hope to get customers who have no idea about the newsletter, and would discover the newsletter via the book.
IngramSpark and the others work in a similar way: you upload the interior file and the cover, and then they print on demand based on orders coming in. Ingram is able to supply traditional bookshops and libraries as well as the big online places. It can distribute to Amazon as well, for Kindle users. I think Bookshop.org just started selling ebooks as well as print, which is great news for all of us (and bookshops).
Affinity has been an Adobe alternative for decades, but more under the radar. It used to be independent and had three separate products: Publisher, Photo and Designer. A couple of years ago they were bought by Canva, and this year they released a new version called Affinity Studio that combines all three products. It's very good, and is now free.
There's some nervousness about Canva's involvement, and an assumption of inevitably enshittification, but we'll see what happens. For now, it's a very, very capable product that makes Adobe's absurd subscription setup for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign largely obsolete.
One very useful change is that Affinity can now output ebooks, which the previous version couldn't do. So that simplifies the overall process, hopefully. I've previously used Reedsy Studio for interior layout, for speed and ease, but I'll hopefully be going all-Affinity next time.
As a newbie to the world of serials who's trying to figure it all out, this makes sense. I want to make the world of the story available to as many readers as possible, so as you say, giving them different ways to experience it is the key. And serial authors really can learn a lot from the worlds of comics and TV, since these formats are serialized by nature. You've always got good advice about serial fiction, and that's helped me so much in getting mine off the ground.
Thanks, Jean. Glad to help! While the stories can be whatever we want, and as novelistic as we wish, I think the far more natural comparison when it comes to the actual distribution model and reader experience is TV and comics.
Actually, TV and comics -- especially comics -- were my earliest inspirations for this. Someone commented to me that the serialized format gives readers a chance to "live inside the story" in a way that novels and other "standalone' works don't. And you can really see that with popular TV shows and comics.
Do notice that it takes some time to set up a book version. It was several months between the point at which I decided the book was full and when I brought out my first volume of collected Writing and Reflections essays.
This absolutely makes sense to me. As I’m gearing up to start a long-running serial next year (and my current estimation is that it will take around 3-4 years to run), I’ve been thinking ahead to how I would handle publishing the books, and providing people easier access and in-points.
Up to this point I’ve been primarily a book publishing indie experimenting with shorter serializations, so this serial so far is shaping up to have easy end points for book publishing purposes, etc…less a traditional serial and more like a hybrid serialization of a novel, I guess.
But I still value long-term serial authors like you sharing these insights, because it gives my more book-shaped-product-focused brain things to think about.
At least you're planning for 3/4 years up front! I did not expect Triverse to last as long as it has. :P
If you've already had a focus on book publishing it sounds like you know exactly what you're p to here. :)
Have you seen this multimedia 'jigsaw' approach to serialisation (by an ex-BSFA chair)? : https://open.substack.com/pub/flametreebooks/p/allen-strouds-fractal-universe-is
The one big difference between you and the other online serialists is that you allowed your serial to become a massive, complex, interconnected thing, whereas others stick to the tight format of a novel and take up less of the reader's time...
Yup, and I'm not intending to do something on this scale again for a while. Short stories seem VERY appealing to me right now. :P
Time is an interesting thing to consider. Although the overall time for readers is large, both in terms of the total size of the project and the publishing schedule being long, the individual week-to-week commitment is very low. Perhaps 10 minutes, give or take?
The general idea is intriguing, and I'm sure some people could make it work.
My fear with having paperbacks to send out is that international shipping is expensive, and a lot of my folks are in other countries. (Well, the paid subs aren't, but they are a miniscule part of the total so far (6 out of 524).
In case this helps anyone, I'll share my funnel experience. I tried to create a system geared to the way I react as a reader. I don't mind reading on screens at all, but I do have a hard time trying to keep up with many serials at once. I make the effort because I want to support other authors, but I don't enjoy the experience as much as reading through a book. (In the same way, I'd rather binge TV shows than string them out over a long period.)
Anyway, I decided to put out ebooks of completed serials, divided into two categories. Free subs get ebook copies of all the serials written specifically for Substack. Paid subs get in addition the WIPS that I serialize here so that I can actually get them done (fewer workflows equals more progress).
The idea with the Substack serials was to get people on the fence to free subscribe. The idea of giving paid subs copies of new releases I'd already worked out before that.
I thought the idea was sound, but so far, It's been an abysmal failure. I've gotten a grand total of one Substack serial ebook request. New release requests from paid subs are the same.
Two odd things: First, I've also tried using the ebook form of the serials as reader magnets on BookFunnel, and they get gobbled up. So they aren't inherently unattractive products. And some of the very same people who don't take advantage of the free benefits do sometimes buy my books. So it isn't that they're uninterested.
Many of the Substack serials relate to published series, so I plug the relevant series at the end of each post. To some extent, that is an effective funnel from Substack to book purchase. That at least worked.
The idea makes sense, but I wonder whether it's inherently a bit too complex. Even explaining it here took you a fairly chunky comment. It could be that the combination of subscribing, serials, ebooks for free subs, ebooks for paid subs...this sort of thing can quickly get confusing, at which point the reader checks out.
Using the same ebooks for BookFunnel promos, on the other hand, skips all of that. The book becomes an appealing ebook in a clear and simple group promo. Everyone knows how it works and the exchange is simple.
I always think back to Steve Krug's book about internet design, Don't Make Me Think. It's extremely old now but the central point is still valid. Too many choices, or pathways that are too long, can be off-putting - especially when there are always infinite alternatives in someone's peripheral.
BookFunnel Promos are great, though they don’t specifically reward subscribers, which is what I was looking for. Sigh!
Bill, are you getting your subscribers to email you for the book? I was thinking about doing something similar because I don’t have a paid tier (with no plans to). It would be nice to offer a “catch up” option in a way that would make it less easy for someone to pirate. I’m sure there is code that could probably strip all the extraneous stuff from each published instalment and fold it into a book too but leave me with my delusions a little while longer please..
Actually, I have them fill out a form on my non-Substack website. (Because there’s no easy way to do a fillable form here.) Perhaps that’s the problem, but I’m trying to find middle ground between convenience for the subscribers and avoidance of giving away each book to the entire universe.
I thought I had the solution. I discovered that Substack allows an author to freewall a post (make it viewable by free subscribers, though I don’t know if that means only free or free and up—I could always accommodate the paid some other way). The problem was that Substack won’t let you do that with a page, only with a post. I wrestled with that for a while and finally gave up on it. However, it just now occurred to me that I could give the post a unique tag and make the tag a menu item. But would give me roughly the same effect as a page. I’ll have to try that.
Substack enables embedding of book files, both PDF and EPUB. Or I could link to a download page on BookFunnel, though that wouldn’t be as secure. Either way, that would be easier than filling out a form and perhaps lead to more people doing it. I may just have solved my own problem, so thanks for that!
On the subject of automatically stripping out the extraneous stuff, I did that by hand, and it wasn’t too cumbersome. Of course, the alternative is to compose the material in word processing software and then paste it into Substack posts. I was doing that, but it was cumbersome in other ways. Every time I decided to make a correction, it had to be done twice.
All but the first book, I've put into Scrivener (and I did the double corrections, so my files are up to date and I can just uncheck "previously on").
You're thinking is to embed the PDF/EPUB into a Substack post and not send it to anyone's inbox. They would be directed to find it? I think that a post made this way is still basically a public website page though? ... hmm ...
Wonder if I should dust off Zapier (is it still around?) ... and make a zap from submitting a Google form to sending an email automagically with the files in it.
I know just not sending out the email leaves the page public. Take a look at settings on one of our draft or scheduled posts. Under “Audience”, click on “Other Options.” The bottom one is “free subscribers only.” That’s what I meant by freewalling. No one has to pay to see it, but one does need to be at least a free subscriber.
I’m looking for a way to provide free subs with an option to download the books as easily as possible. Creating a post as described with a unique tag I can make into a menu item seems likely to do that. I just haven’t had time to try it yet.
Is that definitely what that option does? My understanding was that it sends out an email to everyone EXCEPT for paid subscribers. According to Substack docs, it then is not available in the publication's web archive (I'm unclear on whether it can be linked to directly?).
The lack of 'freewalling' is a weird oversight on Substack's part.
Yeah, it’s true it isn’t immediately visible in anyone, me included. I thought the post in question hadn’t gone out at all (which might indicate that it didn’t go out to any paid subscribers). “Free subscribers only” might indicate that, but “Paid subscribers only” posts also go to founding members—I think. Maybe they’re exclusive, too. It would make more sense if the tiering were “free and higher,” “paid and higher,” etc.
It is possible to force a kind of visibility by giving it a unique tag and then making the tag into a menu item. But that’s a little cumbersome, and it doesn’t seem to do what I wanted—making a page/post visible to any kind of subscriber, but no one else.
Perhaps my problem is that I’m trying to do something that Substack developers clearly didn’t anticipate—provide downloadable rewards for subscribers, while trying to limit their distribution only to subscribers. The additional paid and founding rewards I handle through gifting, so that works. But the rewards that include the free tier (an effort to get followers and passersby to take the next step) aren’t published in a way that allows me to do that.
I could just include the necessary links in emails, then immediately remove them from the posted version. But the people who don’t open that particular email wouldn’t get them, so I’d have to keep doing that periodically, for that reason and to pick up the newbs. That could be annoying to some subscribers who’ve already claimed the rewards.
What I wanted was an easy, “Go to this page and click on the books you want,” scenario. What I may have to settle for (again) is “Go to my (non-Substack) website, fill out a form for each download, and then wait for another email. At that point, I could email them directly or send them a BookFunnel link or code. Either way, that requires more work on their part and intervention on my part every single time. I’ve had minimal claims, which was why I was looking for an easier way to do it.
I guess I’ll have to keep looking.
Oh! I did not know about this option! Sounds promising!!!
Well, I just basically did this. I took the first "Season" of my episodic novel (18 episodes) and turned them into a paperback that I sent to my annual paid subscribers. Cost about $5 each (for about 100 + shipping.)
Anecdotally my regular readers appreciated it either to catch up or have as a reference. Practically speaking I only maybe got one paid subscriber and lost 3 (probably having more to do with renewals). For reference I have about 800 subscribers 80 paid. And about a 40% open rate. And, btw, for the most part a reader can dive in anywhere and enjoy it. Although I have minimal engagement which also flummoxes me. And clearly the paperback was not about money.
I haven't used any of the regular distribution channels (Ingram etc.) and would be surprised if they helped much. I could offer it to regular subscribers (not paid) but I'd have to ask for $15 or so. Since I have nothing behind a paywall and most readers are supporting me not the project itself, why should they subscribe for $60? And frankly, my instincts are that not many unpaid readers would buy it.
Since after many years of writing for other people [marketing documentaries] I'm doing this so I can put some of my own writing into finished form, the lack of paid subscribers doesn't bother me too much except that it'd be another form of engagement.
Still, I'll probably do Season Two the same way and maybe combine with Season Three.
Sorry for the long answer but clearly I'm dealing with the same issues so hope it's interesting to some.
Definitely interesting! And I agree with your general sense of paid subs: every time I've experimented with creating incentives for people to go paid, it hasn't really worked. The most effective tactic has been to keep everything free, at which point lovely people (yourself included, thanks!) come along to offer support in more of a patronage model. As you say, in the book newsletter (especially fiction, I think) world, subscribers are supporting the writer rather than any specific project.
How did you logistically handle the sending of those paperbacks? Did you do all the shipping etc yourself?
Simon: PS. You do Notes? (I think I've seen some from you). You think they're any help?
I do indeed do Notes! Though, only because I enjoy it. I think it probably does help a bit, in keeping me on people's radar. I try to keep my Notes at least tangentially related to the newsletter, so that if someone finds a Note interesting, there's a good chance they'll find my newsletter interesting as well.
I rarely stray too far from the newsletter's general themes. e.g. I don't tend to post about politics and current affairs - not because it isn't on my mind, but because it's not relevant. In that regard I see Notes as an extension of the newsletter, rather than a social media channel like I used to use Twitter etc.
But! The important thing is that I try to do it on my own terms. I don't scroll, I don't spend much time there each day. I will only continue to use it as long as it functions as a way to keep in touch with cool writers. So far, so good - I rarely feel like Notes is wasting my time, or trying to whisk me down unwanted rabbitholes.
This is how I have always worked, maybe because I came from comics.
Makes sense! Your general breadth of output tends to leave me feeling slightly dazed, Russell. :D
I'm planning on starting my first serial early next year, and I've been thinking about it along exactly these lines. So much of it has to do with meeting each of your potential readers where they're at. The serial isn't the product; the story is the product, and the serial is just one possible format for it, and there's no reason not to offer as many different formats as you can reasonably manage.
Exactly! Delivery method needs to fit the readers, and not everyone is going to like the same approach.
Practically there's only so much we can do, of course. But a bit of forward planning (and some decent templates) goes a long way.
Also check out Draft 2 Digital. They do ebook and print all on one platform. I have found the flexibility of the print forms not a good as ingram though.
I'm planning something similar with my serial work as well, but going at a much slower pace. It's the idea that there are different types of readers that's important. You can serialize online AND create a print version AND an ebook version. You've now reached out to three different kinds of readers. It's really cool
Once I wrap up Triverse in serial form I'm going to start looking into the various options in much more detail. Should be fun, and I'll definitely be sharing how I get on.
Isn't it cool how writers have so many options these days?
It's amazing! Your path gets to be a just right fit for you
I think that fiction only works with immersion, and most online platforms don't give the audience that and/or they've been trained to skim.
Sitting down with a book (or event to watch TV) is a physical vote of "I'm going to get into a story."
Picking up your phone to read email or run through Substack posts? The exact opposite.
I think this is why, on any video platform (IG, YT, etc.), you don't see fiction stories (at least I don't).
P.S. Suggest checking out Elle Griffin's Elysian.press as an example. She sends out physical books to her premium tiers. I like how she does it - feels like extra value for me and I'm sure she makes more on me than if I bought her books individually.
I actually think the Substack app does a fairly decent job of this when you're reading an article: it strips away the entire interface, there are no interruptions, just you and the text. Obviously that can still be intruded upon by other phone apps and notifications, though.
YouTube has a ton of fiction stuff and has for years, though it tends to be short-form. Some serials there as well, though. But again, once you're watching a YouTube video and have set it to fullscreen, it's fairly immersive (or, it was until they started ramping up the length and frequency of ads).
IG though, for sure - that place is 90% UI, always wanting you to like, comment, etc etc. It's all about engagement and interaction and scrolling, with the image itself being a sideshow.
Ahh AIDA… and Plan. Do. Check. Act. Top stuff. I’ve only read the article once so this might not be right.
My overall feeling is one of you talking a lot about what your options are and less about why you’re doing it in the first place. That is how it came across to me, rightly or wrongly. So my basic food for thought question is how does changing what you’ve been doing improve things re your purpose, your why? How do you think doing any of the options you’re considering change things for the better.
IF (If) it’s about money, in whole or in part, then what i’d also observe is that in an ideal world most “businesses” be that one man and his dog or multinationals essentially want repeat business. Because it costs less to acquire and values the business higher. Perhaps the complication for authors of any type with that (I.e. all of us on here) is that it’s pretty unlikely for a reader to buy the same book twice , so one has to keep churning out new books (content of whatever sort) for one’s existing readers to essentially make a repeat purchase.
Perhaps in addition to the AIDA funnel, the examples of which are great and interesting, maybe consider - what I’ve always called the product / customer / marketing quadrant. No idea if that’s the correct term tbh. I won’t draw it here (I’m pretty sure you’ll know it anyway but just in case for others) but essentially …
Draw a rectangle split down and across the middle, ending up with 4 boxes (the quadrant part… ish). The x axis is customers the y axis products. Arrows on the end of each.
Bottom left is existing customer and existing product, top left, existing customer and new product. Bottom right new customer and existing product, top right, new customer and new product.
And then consider, in line with your why of course, how easy it is to promote / sell to any of the 3 boxes except the one you’ve already got (I.e. existing customer and exist in product). Clearly it’s way harder to find new customers to buy new products.
Which brings me to the observation that, whilst doing new things is exciting and fun etc. you have a massive work which presumably could be subdivided easily enough (feels that way from what I’ve read to date, which is 99% of what you’ve published here) and reformed to help you reach new customers and kind of is a new product too. Maybe your “new new” ideas are spin off’s from characters, themes or the worlds you already have? So your existing content dovetails either before, after or potentially even during the timelines.
So… what I’m really saying is that can you use your existing products (content) and your existing customers to help you find new customers and new products and so would that influence how (and thus what) you go about doing?
In the world of music… artists have back catalogues of stuff. E.g. things they’ve recorded in the 70 / 80 / 90’s etc. and many of them use that library to find new customers and / repeat customers. By re-packaging them, adding new content, merging content, producing new versions etc etc.
Could / should that be, in part, part of your mix?
Great observations, Mark. In terms of the 'why', in this case it's very much about the reader and providing them with the best possible experience. Making money I see as a cool side effect of doing good work, rather than as a primary goal.
For me personally, it's all about telling a good story and getting it out into the world. Which I'm already doing! What I was exploring in this post was how to make that process more efficient, and to remove some of the friction for readers. That's less about increasing income and more about increasing the potential readership.
Of course, increasing the readership may well lead to increased income as well, which would be nice. But if I do increase my fiction writing income, I want to do it through a sustainable process that respects the reader.
And you're right about the repeat customer dilemma: you can only sell a book to somebody once (well, other than fancy collector editions, maybe?). One response to that is to churn out more and more books, like the Amazon model required for years. That approach also happens to be the one most at risk of exploitation from AI. I prefer leaning into the patronage model, whereby readers are supporting me in a general sense, rather than purchasing individual products. But that's not to say that I shouldn't also make the stories available as distinct products, for people who prefer it that way.
Thanks again for the reply Simon. One more “observation” for what it’s worth. Whilst I’ve only published one (business) book currently, over the years I’ve amassed lots of content, articles and the odd guide or two. I’m very much still learning about what and how I want to do things here on Substack. I don’t feel I’m quite there yet with the how and what. One of my processes to working out that what (and maybe some how) is to make a list of all the stuff I’ve got. And what I’ve found is that that in itself has given me more ideas of what I could produce. Spin off’s if you like. Which yes contain some of the previous stuff but mostly the idea is a new angle / thought or domain. If you were to re-work / package e.g. Triverse maybe that would give you more ideas too. Having read some of your story notes about what you wanted to write about, it seems to me that at that point in time you decided to e.g. not pursue a certain line of thinking re a plot / character etc… but maybe in the future that becomes the right direction of travel. Timing is everything. All that said, I’m not sure I need more ideas, just need to start a first one 😂
Really great deep dive, Simon. What you're getting at reminds me a lot of what the author Stephanie Bond does with her serialized fiction -- she publishes a chapter a day to her website, teases out links to it on social media, and then bundles both groups of chapters and then the whole book later, for purchase on all the online retailers.
What's interesting to me about this is she was a successful traditionally published novelist for many years, mainly in romance (I think). But she's shifted to romantic mysteries for her serialized fiction, which she says she believes is the future of fiction.
Here's her website, ,with lots of posts where she explains it all: https://stephaniebond.com/
Sounds interesting. Publishing has definitely shifted, and that hard divide between traditionally published authors and self-published authors has largely dissolved. A lot of writers these days pick whichever approach best fits each particular project. I would imagine for a lot of traditionally published authors, as long as they've built up a way of contacting their readers, they can get much better results going the DIY route in a lot of cases.
Well-said! Yeah, this sounds like a great opportunity!
I love the visuals. This makes a lot of sense.
Makes total sense. I actually just finished creating an ebook for “Season 1” of my fiction newsletter, which I run separately from my Substack newsletter, to offer as a paid item in support of the free newsletter. I just happened to think of the idea in a whim and used Designrr to format and create an ebook from it. I’ll give Affinity Studio a try with my next ebook formatting ventures.
Can I ask you… the 2 products you mention.
On Ingram spark… what are the alternatives and could this in effect be an alternative to gumroad etc?
So you’d publish a link on your substack website (eg I’ve atm got a resources link which currently links to Amazon for my book). Folk would buy from there. Keeps content central.
I’m guessing it could print on demand any content eg templates / checklists etc. or just permit a download of the, say, pdf?
Or it looks like also somehow make the content available on one’s kindle?
I’ve only just skimmed their website for now.
Not looked at affinity studio yet though I gather it’s a canva product so that’s a go to now and suspect it’ll be great.
Assume you can design the covers and templates etc and then combine with words and sell through Ingram?
So in effect ones has a “store” for paid content through substack hosting the individual product url’s. So no need for Gumroad etc.
No rush for reply. Interested if that’s the line of thinking for you too.
Someone else has mentioned Draft 2 Digital as an IngramSpark alternative. You could also just use Amazon KDP, but then it's limited to only selling on Amazon. I haven't fully looked into the platforms available these days - that's a priority once I wrap up Triverse.
And yes, I'd make sure it was visible from the Substack. Maybe do some extra discount for subscribers, etc. But also I'd hope to get customers who have no idea about the newsletter, and would discover the newsletter via the book.
IngramSpark and the others work in a similar way: you upload the interior file and the cover, and then they print on demand based on orders coming in. Ingram is able to supply traditional bookshops and libraries as well as the big online places. It can distribute to Amazon as well, for Kindle users. I think Bookshop.org just started selling ebooks as well as print, which is great news for all of us (and bookshops).
Affinity has been an Adobe alternative for decades, but more under the radar. It used to be independent and had three separate products: Publisher, Photo and Designer. A couple of years ago they were bought by Canva, and this year they released a new version called Affinity Studio that combines all three products. It's very good, and is now free.
There's some nervousness about Canva's involvement, and an assumption of inevitably enshittification, but we'll see what happens. For now, it's a very, very capable product that makes Adobe's absurd subscription setup for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign largely obsolete.
One very useful change is that Affinity can now output ebooks, which the previous version couldn't do. So that simplifies the overall process, hopefully. I've previously used Reedsy Studio for interior layout, for speed and ease, but I'll hopefully be going all-Affinity next time.
Thanks a lot Simon. I need to note all this down for investigation at some point. Cheers.
As a newbie to the world of serials who's trying to figure it all out, this makes sense. I want to make the world of the story available to as many readers as possible, so as you say, giving them different ways to experience it is the key. And serial authors really can learn a lot from the worlds of comics and TV, since these formats are serialized by nature. You've always got good advice about serial fiction, and that's helped me so much in getting mine off the ground.
Thanks, Jean. Glad to help! While the stories can be whatever we want, and as novelistic as we wish, I think the far more natural comparison when it comes to the actual distribution model and reader experience is TV and comics.
Actually, TV and comics -- especially comics -- were my earliest inspirations for this. Someone commented to me that the serialized format gives readers a chance to "live inside the story" in a way that novels and other "standalone' works don't. And you can really see that with popular TV shows and comics.
Do notice that it takes some time to set up a book version. It was several months between the point at which I decided the book was full and when I brought out my first volume of collected Writing and Reflections essays.
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of work to be done on process here. I'm not saying any of this will be easy. :D