Last week Twitter started banning links to Substack. This seems to have been partially reversed, at least in my case, but it’s a changing, unpredictable situation - and that’s the problem. We’ve relied on social media to promote our work (and ourselves) for over a decade, and we’ve all become painfully aware that we’ve built our houses on quicksand.
With that in mind, how are you getting the word out about your writing in 2023? How do you find readers? How do you promote your latest posts?
I’ll share some of my own thoughts in the discussion.
For my part, BookFunnel has been the most consistent way of finding new readers. I've done this via a range of book promos, mostly a small sample of Tales from the Triverse. Over the last two years, these promos have brought in 68% of my total free subscriber base. BookFunnel magnets are far more effective than any other form of paid advertising, I've found.
Where it gets interesting is that outside of BookFunnel, only 2% of my subscribers are new to Substack. A whopping 30% of the rest of my subscribers have come via Substack features of some sort, or have already had Substack accounts.
I strongly suspect that the BookFunnel audience is here for the fiction (primarily), while the Substack audience is here for the non-fiction/tips stuff (primarily).
I cross-post fiction chapters to Wattpad and Royal Road, but haven't seen much traction in either of those. Wattpad in particular seems like a dead end these days, at least for this book. It's also exceedingly difficult to actually drag readers from those platforms and convert them to newsletter subscribers (understandably, as they provide walled reading gardens).
Sharing to social media used to be far more important but feels increasingly like shouting into the void. Looking at the last couple of months, Instagram has become by far the most useful platform in terms of getting people to click through - but it's still peanuts. Interestingly, Twitter used to be much more useful but has dropped off significantly this year - hard to tell whether this is a direct result of Muskification, or my own growing disinterest.
Google itself ranks quite highly in my traffic report, which is interesting. That definitely didn't used to be the case, but it suggests that Substack content it starting to rank more usefully.. Perhaps my tips/advice posts are starting to register. There's a definite increase to search traffic at the start of 2023 - nothing massive, but notable.
Anyway, that's me. I hope we can all pick up some useful tips in the discussion. Looking forward to reading what you all do!
Since I don’t use social media at all anymore, it’s an old school challenge: write as well as I can, engage with other writers (for example, by commenting when appropriate), pray, and wait.
I was in a band in the 70s, and we would say, “The world will hear us, even if it has to be one at a time.”
Okay, I was walking the dog and then I have to run but I do have more to day. There are multiple different author ecosystems, and so here's a couple of ways to build depending on what works best for you:
1 - Prelaunch on Kickstarter - I gain a HUGE number of my readers by having launch events outside of retailers which allows me to collect my best fans and get their email addresses. You can do this on your own website, or with direct sales, but I find Kickstarter works best b/c there is some organic reach there too.
2 - If you're more passive in your marketing, then I would suggest you join some group promos on a place like Booksweeps, b/c then they are going to go out and find you subscribers passively. This is obviously less effective at conversion than somebody buying your books, but if you have a great automation sequence, then you can absolutely make this work for you.
3 - If you are somebody that doesn't like doing marketing at all, a very effective way to get subscribers is through organizing an anthology, either free or paid, and using the combined power of network effects to have all of you pushing a little bit. You would have to use something like Kickstarter or Bookfunnel where you get the emails to make this work, but it can be very effective to have everybody bringing their little audiences to create a big audience. I made my career that way through anthologies like Cthulhu is Hard to Spell and Monsters and Other Scary Shit.
4 - You mentioned Bookfunnel, which is good, but becomes less effective over time. I still run a few every year, and get some subscribers from it.
5 - Form a book club. My friend Andy and I started the Action Fantasy Book Club with 10 other authors. You can see it at www.actionfantasybookclub.com. We offer one of the member's books every month for free, but we're mostly promoting the book club. We all chipped in some money and use that to get new subscribers.
6 - Round Robins - I don't do this right now, but I plan to in the future. Elana Johnson talks about this concept. You find 11 other authors and every month you each promote a different author's work. Everyone cycles through the list so over the course of a year you promote everyone else's.
7 - Conventions - I still make a lot of sales and get a lot of subscribers at conventions. If I really push, I can get 400-500 at a big convention.
8 - A prominent book giveaway on the homepage and footer of your website. If you go to my website, I get 20-100 new subscribers every month at russellnohelty.com just from having a big header with a giveaway, and a footer that offers a free book to everyone.
9 - Royal Road and other serialized fiction apps. They are good for bringing people in and act as content marketing, but you need to have a strong call to action at the bottom to get them over to your website/newsletter.
10 - interacting on other posts and being helpful.
These work the best when you have a really strong automation sequence and a killer offer, but most of these rely on your network of other authors, so the key is to have a very, very strong group of authors to promote with who you trust and who write books you believe in.
Twitter has never been a good way of promoting anything for me. I still have an account but haven't been logged in for maybe 6 months. I find it to be a waste of time.
I do promotion via The Sample and Inbox Reads. Both seem to work fairly well. I like to get on Office Hours, that's usually fun, but lately it's gotten too popular and rather unwieldy to navigate. And more spammy.
I think the best way for me at least is to just keep writing and putting my work out there. My intention when starting my stack was simply to have a collection of my work in one place. The readers have followed, which is great, but I do try and stay focused on what I can do: writing, posting on my schedule, some promo here and there, etc.
It's a mixed bag for engagement. I post to a closed Facebook group of people in my religious faith, in part because they don't have restrictions on posts and because other writers of that group also post. I've gathered a couple new subscribers every month, so I'm now at 70. Interacting on Substack with other writers during office hours (when I remember), and posting consistently on FB and Linked In have been positive. I get about 160 views including the 70 subscribers. Since I publish my work for free -- related to mental health, I refuse to charge since I want to help people with good information -- I consider the views as more important. Whether people finish the article is another matter however.
I’m new on substack so I’m just learning how to find readers. So far the best way for me to find readers has been facebook and asking friends and family but I am sure that will change. Sorry I can’t be more helpful. 😆
I get a lot new subs from recommendations (Substack network), engaging with various writing communities, and asking readers to forward Situation Normal to their friends. I’ve also made it a practice to talk to people I meet offline. Often times the conversation comes around to the “what do you do” question. I could bore them with tales of corporate comms, but instead I tell them about my creative writing. If they ask how they can find me, I ask them to take out their phone and walk them through a Substack sign up. I know that’s scary to a lot of writers, but honestly you get used to it, and for me it became fun.
As for Wattpad, I get the same result as you. It’s very hard to pull readers from that walled garden.
I have had this post bookmarked as unread in my inbox so that I could come back to it to read the discussion and find out how people get readers. Conclusion from reading the discussion: Sadly, people don't really know! Lots of intra-substack growth, which is fine. Takehome point for me, though: BookFunnel. Got to get onta that BookFunnel...
I'm on Ghost, so it's a little more difficult, since I don't have that internal Substack network. Most of my readers come from Google, Reddit, and Pinterest. Good SEO is obvious, so I'll put that aside.
Reddit is a matter of finding the communities most relevant to your niche, meaningfully engaging with those communities, and understanding their self-promotion rules and norms so you're not taking advantage of them. At that point, you will probably be getting a few thousand clicks per post, possibly tens of thousands depending on the community and how they react. You can also share posts from other publications you think should be getting more attention, and engage with readers... who sometimes suck, but sometimes provide cool insights.
Pinterest is obviously most effective for a photo-driven publication. I have a menswear blog, so a lot of my posts have a few dozen photos I can just pin directly. It's a relatively passive way to get a few hundred clicks per month, and it's growing pretty quickly in the background while I work on my blog.
I don't have any good promotion methods yet unfortunately. Twitter never worked for me anyway, gave up due to lack of results. Been going for cross promotion mainly, and praying for word of mouth. And interacting with other writers I guess, but I don't think of it as promotion.
I do swaps and group promos with SO and group promos with Book funnel. I try to engage the signups to warm them to my content. I also have exclusive short stories available only for my Substack and the link to sign up in the back of my books.
I've been using regular social media, and venturing little by little into being part of the Substack community. It's been kind of slow for me when it comes to getting new readers and subscribers. I run a bilingual Substack and sometimes I feel that maybe that is kind of confusing for some people. But I do like publishing content in both languages that I speak.
to my newsletter. Freebies or popular subjects help drive the most traffic. I am going to try guest writing in other people’s blogs, or do a feature swap or something with more writers. Notes seems useful too.
I have little to add here since I'm not currently publishing, thus not trying to build an audience, thus having no experiences to share...
I can merely blame lower Twitter engagement on Musk. A good quarter of the accounts I used to follow left the platform and I've used the "block" button more in the last six months than the prior six years put together.
Since you brought up Instagram I'll ask if that platform has ever added a way to upload from PC/Mac? As a photographer I wasn't doing phone snaps and uploading with a filter and the required extra steps of having to dump everything to my phone and tediously upload one at a time going through a whole bunch of different screens to NOT crop, color correct, and filter my already carefully curated images just turned me off the platform.
I’d used Twitter a lot but found the amount of click through was ridiculously small and those that did rarely subscribed. I gain followers but almost none of them have subscribed on Substack.
Since the Notes vs Twitter debacle I am putting most of my social media energy into Notes and seeing great results. Twitter does not offer what Substack does and I’m at the end of my patience with the platform. It seems all the platforms are becoming more walled in, we’ll see if this is a benefit to those inside the garden or not.
Beyond commenting in as many places as possible and having conversations with writers of all genres I’m unsure of my ‘next step’ for promotion. To be honest becoming rooted in the community here is likely the best method for the short to medium term.
I’d considered Wattpad, though I hadn’t heard of it until late last year, but it seemed overly insular and not suited to the fiction I write.
It's tough. I've been thinking it's because I am incarcerated or because my books are about life in prison after 45 years of incarceration and take a critical view of incarceration. Perhaps I am wrong and it's more about getting readership in general. I seek readers for my books. Convicted, So You are Going to Prison, is a version of my life story as an incarcerated man in the dangerous Georgia prison system. My story should provide valuable insight into how to make it in the warehousing for profit violence of serving a ridiculously long prison sentence. Loved ones of the incarcerated will feel they are right in the cell with the person they love.
For my part, BookFunnel has been the most consistent way of finding new readers. I've done this via a range of book promos, mostly a small sample of Tales from the Triverse. Over the last two years, these promos have brought in 68% of my total free subscriber base. BookFunnel magnets are far more effective than any other form of paid advertising, I've found.
Where it gets interesting is that outside of BookFunnel, only 2% of my subscribers are new to Substack. A whopping 30% of the rest of my subscribers have come via Substack features of some sort, or have already had Substack accounts.
I strongly suspect that the BookFunnel audience is here for the fiction (primarily), while the Substack audience is here for the non-fiction/tips stuff (primarily).
I cross-post fiction chapters to Wattpad and Royal Road, but haven't seen much traction in either of those. Wattpad in particular seems like a dead end these days, at least for this book. It's also exceedingly difficult to actually drag readers from those platforms and convert them to newsletter subscribers (understandably, as they provide walled reading gardens).
Sharing to social media used to be far more important but feels increasingly like shouting into the void. Looking at the last couple of months, Instagram has become by far the most useful platform in terms of getting people to click through - but it's still peanuts. Interestingly, Twitter used to be much more useful but has dropped off significantly this year - hard to tell whether this is a direct result of Muskification, or my own growing disinterest.
Google itself ranks quite highly in my traffic report, which is interesting. That definitely didn't used to be the case, but it suggests that Substack content it starting to rank more usefully.. Perhaps my tips/advice posts are starting to register. There's a definite increase to search traffic at the start of 2023 - nothing massive, but notable.
Anyway, that's me. I hope we can all pick up some useful tips in the discussion. Looking forward to reading what you all do!
Since I don’t use social media at all anymore, it’s an old school challenge: write as well as I can, engage with other writers (for example, by commenting when appropriate), pray, and wait.
I was in a band in the 70s, and we would say, “The world will hear us, even if it has to be one at a time.”
I've also found adding a link to my substack in the bottom of my emails helpful
Okay, I was walking the dog and then I have to run but I do have more to day. There are multiple different author ecosystems, and so here's a couple of ways to build depending on what works best for you:
1 - Prelaunch on Kickstarter - I gain a HUGE number of my readers by having launch events outside of retailers which allows me to collect my best fans and get their email addresses. You can do this on your own website, or with direct sales, but I find Kickstarter works best b/c there is some organic reach there too.
2 - If you're more passive in your marketing, then I would suggest you join some group promos on a place like Booksweeps, b/c then they are going to go out and find you subscribers passively. This is obviously less effective at conversion than somebody buying your books, but if you have a great automation sequence, then you can absolutely make this work for you.
3 - If you are somebody that doesn't like doing marketing at all, a very effective way to get subscribers is through organizing an anthology, either free or paid, and using the combined power of network effects to have all of you pushing a little bit. You would have to use something like Kickstarter or Bookfunnel where you get the emails to make this work, but it can be very effective to have everybody bringing their little audiences to create a big audience. I made my career that way through anthologies like Cthulhu is Hard to Spell and Monsters and Other Scary Shit.
4 - You mentioned Bookfunnel, which is good, but becomes less effective over time. I still run a few every year, and get some subscribers from it.
5 - Form a book club. My friend Andy and I started the Action Fantasy Book Club with 10 other authors. You can see it at www.actionfantasybookclub.com. We offer one of the member's books every month for free, but we're mostly promoting the book club. We all chipped in some money and use that to get new subscribers.
6 - Round Robins - I don't do this right now, but I plan to in the future. Elana Johnson talks about this concept. You find 11 other authors and every month you each promote a different author's work. Everyone cycles through the list so over the course of a year you promote everyone else's.
7 - Conventions - I still make a lot of sales and get a lot of subscribers at conventions. If I really push, I can get 400-500 at a big convention.
8 - A prominent book giveaway on the homepage and footer of your website. If you go to my website, I get 20-100 new subscribers every month at russellnohelty.com just from having a big header with a giveaway, and a footer that offers a free book to everyone.
9 - Royal Road and other serialized fiction apps. They are good for bringing people in and act as content marketing, but you need to have a strong call to action at the bottom to get them over to your website/newsletter.
10 - interacting on other posts and being helpful.
These work the best when you have a really strong automation sequence and a killer offer, but most of these rely on your network of other authors, so the key is to have a very, very strong group of authors to promote with who you trust and who write books you believe in.
Twitter has never been a good way of promoting anything for me. I still have an account but haven't been logged in for maybe 6 months. I find it to be a waste of time.
I do promotion via The Sample and Inbox Reads. Both seem to work fairly well. I like to get on Office Hours, that's usually fun, but lately it's gotten too popular and rather unwieldy to navigate. And more spammy.
I think the best way for me at least is to just keep writing and putting my work out there. My intention when starting my stack was simply to have a collection of my work in one place. The readers have followed, which is great, but I do try and stay focused on what I can do: writing, posting on my schedule, some promo here and there, etc.
It's a mixed bag for engagement. I post to a closed Facebook group of people in my religious faith, in part because they don't have restrictions on posts and because other writers of that group also post. I've gathered a couple new subscribers every month, so I'm now at 70. Interacting on Substack with other writers during office hours (when I remember), and posting consistently on FB and Linked In have been positive. I get about 160 views including the 70 subscribers. Since I publish my work for free -- related to mental health, I refuse to charge since I want to help people with good information -- I consider the views as more important. Whether people finish the article is another matter however.
I’m new on substack so I’m just learning how to find readers. So far the best way for me to find readers has been facebook and asking friends and family but I am sure that will change. Sorry I can’t be more helpful. 😆
I get a lot new subs from recommendations (Substack network), engaging with various writing communities, and asking readers to forward Situation Normal to their friends. I’ve also made it a practice to talk to people I meet offline. Often times the conversation comes around to the “what do you do” question. I could bore them with tales of corporate comms, but instead I tell them about my creative writing. If they ask how they can find me, I ask them to take out their phone and walk them through a Substack sign up. I know that’s scary to a lot of writers, but honestly you get used to it, and for me it became fun.
As for Wattpad, I get the same result as you. It’s very hard to pull readers from that walled garden.
Group promotions, viral mailing list giveaways, conventions
I have had this post bookmarked as unread in my inbox so that I could come back to it to read the discussion and find out how people get readers. Conclusion from reading the discussion: Sadly, people don't really know! Lots of intra-substack growth, which is fine. Takehome point for me, though: BookFunnel. Got to get onta that BookFunnel...
I'm on Ghost, so it's a little more difficult, since I don't have that internal Substack network. Most of my readers come from Google, Reddit, and Pinterest. Good SEO is obvious, so I'll put that aside.
Reddit is a matter of finding the communities most relevant to your niche, meaningfully engaging with those communities, and understanding their self-promotion rules and norms so you're not taking advantage of them. At that point, you will probably be getting a few thousand clicks per post, possibly tens of thousands depending on the community and how they react. You can also share posts from other publications you think should be getting more attention, and engage with readers... who sometimes suck, but sometimes provide cool insights.
Pinterest is obviously most effective for a photo-driven publication. I have a menswear blog, so a lot of my posts have a few dozen photos I can just pin directly. It's a relatively passive way to get a few hundred clicks per month, and it's growing pretty quickly in the background while I work on my blog.
I don't have any good promotion methods yet unfortunately. Twitter never worked for me anyway, gave up due to lack of results. Been going for cross promotion mainly, and praying for word of mouth. And interacting with other writers I guess, but I don't think of it as promotion.
I do swaps and group promos with SO and group promos with Book funnel. I try to engage the signups to warm them to my content. I also have exclusive short stories available only for my Substack and the link to sign up in the back of my books.
I've been using regular social media, and venturing little by little into being part of the Substack community. It's been kind of slow for me when it comes to getting new readers and subscribers. I run a bilingual Substack and sometimes I feel that maybe that is kind of confusing for some people. But I do like publishing content in both languages that I speak.
I’ve read through this whole thread. I love how it’s full of relevant advice, some of which I definitely plan to try. Thanks, everyone! :)
I use my Instagram and YouTube to direct traffic
to my newsletter. Freebies or popular subjects help drive the most traffic. I am going to try guest writing in other people’s blogs, or do a feature swap or something with more writers. Notes seems useful too.
I have little to add here since I'm not currently publishing, thus not trying to build an audience, thus having no experiences to share...
I can merely blame lower Twitter engagement on Musk. A good quarter of the accounts I used to follow left the platform and I've used the "block" button more in the last six months than the prior six years put together.
Since you brought up Instagram I'll ask if that platform has ever added a way to upload from PC/Mac? As a photographer I wasn't doing phone snaps and uploading with a filter and the required extra steps of having to dump everything to my phone and tediously upload one at a time going through a whole bunch of different screens to NOT crop, color correct, and filter my already carefully curated images just turned me off the platform.
I’d used Twitter a lot but found the amount of click through was ridiculously small and those that did rarely subscribed. I gain followers but almost none of them have subscribed on Substack.
Since the Notes vs Twitter debacle I am putting most of my social media energy into Notes and seeing great results. Twitter does not offer what Substack does and I’m at the end of my patience with the platform. It seems all the platforms are becoming more walled in, we’ll see if this is a benefit to those inside the garden or not.
Beyond commenting in as many places as possible and having conversations with writers of all genres I’m unsure of my ‘next step’ for promotion. To be honest becoming rooted in the community here is likely the best method for the short to medium term.
I’d considered Wattpad, though I hadn’t heard of it until late last year, but it seemed overly insular and not suited to the fiction I write.
Intrigued to see everyone else’s strategies.
It's tough. I've been thinking it's because I am incarcerated or because my books are about life in prison after 45 years of incarceration and take a critical view of incarceration. Perhaps I am wrong and it's more about getting readership in general. I seek readers for my books. Convicted, So You are Going to Prison, is a version of my life story as an incarcerated man in the dangerous Georgia prison system. My story should provide valuable insight into how to make it in the warehousing for profit violence of serving a ridiculously long prison sentence. Loved ones of the incarcerated will feel they are right in the cell with the person they love.
THAT'S why my links stopped showing previews! Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for letting me know this. What the heck? WHY?
As an indie, I rely on social media. It's all I have, ESPECIALLY considering I live outside the US. *sigh*
I took the advice I gave last week and made a 4,000+ word article where I expanded it out with links and other resources. https://www.authorecosystem.com/p/how-to-find-more-readers-for-your?sd=pf