Hello, I am looking for a place to post my novels. They are dark fantasy/historical and I was looking at substack, because it has fewer content restrictions. Does anyone have any experience with this platform? If you like it, how do you advise I go about setting up and advertising?
Hello Gravy, It is my understanding, since I read a few substack subscriptions, that publishing novels (in the common use of the word "novels") is not the purpose of that platform, but newsletters. What I've seen is that platforms like "Wattpad" are more suitable to have finished writing works like novels. Just out of curiosity, how many words are your novels long?
Ah, I see. The novels I have are 50k to 100k. I have heard of wattpad, but I am trying to find a way to make money ad the content restrictions on wattpad I heard are not good. I write a lot of dark historical novels with a lot of historical incest, rape and the like in them.
I remember reading a while back about Salman Rushdie deciding to publish his next novel on Substack. Was easy enough to locate the article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/01/i-guess-im-having-a-go-at-killing-it-salman-rushdie-to-bypass-print-and-publish-next-book-on-substack It'll probably be easy for him since he's world-famous. For an unknown to make money at it, I suppose one approach would be to offer some free chapters, maybe one per week or every few days, something like that, and then require a subscription for the next releases. Or maybe release one novel like that entirely for free, and hope that people who enjoyed it will be willing to subscribe for the next novel(s). I imagine the most difficult part will be persuading people to read the first few paragraphs of your story at all. I just wanted to say that yeah, it's for sure a viable option. But I'm afraid I don't have advice on how to get people to read your stuff there once you've posted it, outside of linking and posting on forums and on social media.
Oh wow! It's very interesting, thanks for sharing the article. Now that you mention publishing free chapters, one of the subscriptions I read delivers larger stories in several entries, I wouldn't call them novels, but they are definitely as good as one! (If you anyone is interested, her name is Laurie Stone and hew newsletter is named "Everything is Personal"). Now, for getting paid in Substack, I understand you need to have a paid version of your newsletter and have many people in your list. I don't have the information handy, but I will update once I get it.
Yeah, I've never heard of substack working for someone that doesn't already have an established fanbase, or connections that otherwise bring them organic traffic...
