How to be the best Substacker ever.

(And other lies.)

How many times a day do you scroll through your Substack notes and see somebody giving away the FREE answer to growing your subscriber list, astronomically?

They all say the same thing:

- Post five NOTES each day.

- Share other people’s articles.

- Like other posts.

- Engage with people.

They say things like, ‘It doesn’t even matter what you post.’

Photo by Mel Poole on Unsplash

It does. It fucking does. Look, I get it. If you are on Substack and you want to write things that express how you are feeling or you want to write things that make other people think or you want to experiment with language or you just need an outlet so you don’t end up running your boss off the road on the way home, you probably weren’t the most popular kid in school.

‘Urgh, Will, why are you reading a book at lunchtime?’

‘Because I’ve just discovered Edgar Allan Poe and I’m really digging it. Just let me finish this shirt story and we can talk about your latest read, if you want. Oh, Ben and Lad Went to the Park. Sounds great.’

I get it. You want lots of people to like you. You think you are writing interesting stuff. You want people to know you exist, to read what you have created.

So you post your five notes each day. Doesn’t matter what it says, just whack up a quote that someone else came up with. Restack something that was funny. Only three to go. It doesn’t matter what it is. Just beat the algorithm.

IT DOES MATTER.

It also doesn’t. These people are full of shit. Preying on our insecurities, which we have by default as writers and creators. There’s some statistic that anything you post has a six-second shelf life. So, posting five times a day gives you a 30-second window of opportunity.

I think I’ve made about 25 posts since I started on here. Then this happened:

Look at the grey line. That’s how well my posts have done in the past. Then this one went mad.

BECAUSE IT’S ALL ABOUT LUCK.

6 seconds of serendipity. Enough people saw it in that moment, chuckled, and clicked like or share, and it just took off. I gained a bunch of followers and subscribers, which is great.

The note doesn’t say a lot but it says something that a lot of Substackers are thinking, ‘Who is reading me?’ and ‘Why am I writing stuff?’

I haven’t written a lot on Notes in the past but it did matter what I said this time…

Now, like many writers - and I am traditionally published - I have to supplement my income. I’m not quite poor enough to start up an Only Fans account, yet, but I do run a fitness business with my partner.

Every day, I get posts on Instagram where some fitness guru is saying how I can grow my business to tens of thousands of pounds per month and not even have to see real people. It’s the same thing. Why would you give that information away for free? There’s no way Steve Jobs called Bill Gates and said, ‘I’ve got this idea for an operating system that is user friendly and intuitive, do you want to use it for nothing?’

I’m so bored of it.

Yes, we want to be read or seen or understood but there’s not a way to beat the system.

Sure, my first book did commercially better than any of my others because my publisher paid for it to be in all the store charts. You can beat the system with money. And you can beat it by having a massive following already. The rest is luck.

I don’t really like to give writing advice, and I certainly can’t give marketing advice because my only style of marketing myself is through self-deprecation, but I will say that Substack is great. I have found some interesting writers that I would not have known about, otherwise.

Here are my tips:

- Don’t post five notes a day unless those notes are a) funny or b) have purpose

- It matters what you say. Words are important. So don’t just say something for the sake of it. Focus on your craft rather than your subscriber list. Become a better writer. Find out what kind of writer you are.

- Pray, if you have a God.

- Otherwise, hope for luck.

- Luck doesn’t always come. Learn how to deal with this. Being a writer kinda sucks.

- Write more.

If you are here to gain paid subscribers and earn some money, ignore my advice, it’s useless.

I am here because publishing is in a weird state of flux. Publishers and agents say they want the next big thing or a unique voice but they don’t. That statement is as true as the ‘Grow your Substack subscribers’ posts. I am probably going to have to reposition myself slightly to get my next book deal. I can’t keep trying to make people think, I’m going to have to make them escape. There’s no place for social commentary in novels because it’s everywhere on social media. So both my podcast and Substack are an outlet for me, for the things I want to say in my novels but may not be able to if things keep dying in the publishing industry.

It’s lovely that I got a bit of luck and a few more people read a couple of articles I’d written. And I connected with other writers. I fully expect things to die back down and that’s okay. I know why I am here. I know the kind of writer I am. I like truth. I like writing.

You can see the people who care about writing and you can see the ones who are not true. And neither matters, really. All you can do is write, try to improve, hope you get a bit of luck, and realise that you probably won’t. And, if you do, that, too, only has a six-second shelf life.