102 | Publish Your First Post
Read Time: 11 min 30 sec | 2,300 words
Quick Recap: What we’ve learned so far
So, you’ve got yourself a Substack. How does it feel? You are joining the ranks of so many other Substack owners in the world. Many of them are just like you, getting their sea legs and learning the ropes. But don’t you worry, I’ll have you spitting out so many posts you won’t know what to do with yourself. But before we get started on the top of Fiction vs NonFiction I think a great place to start would be to take a look at some of ‘Stacks I’ve become acquainted with that fall under either category. Who knows, you may have some inspiration after looking these over. And if you’re so inclined, subscribe, leave a comment, click the heart. A little of that goes a long way and doesn’t cost you a thing: (And before you say it, yes, I am well aware that some of these have a paid subscription option. They do still offer free posts worth the read.)
NonFiction ‘Stacks
Bookmarked - Reviewing books from every country in the world!
Buzzing - Insects as a food source. Yum! But fascinating.
Walk it Off - He walks and talks and gets to know fascinating people. Like that getting coffee show with Seinfeld.
Fiction ‘Stacks
Absurdus - Some really amazingly written short storytelling.
The Weirdy Wordy - Only way to explain this one is to say, it’s a local paper about the strangest town you’ve ever had the pleasure of getting to read about.
Fiction in 50 - The art of really short storytelling is not dead.
Both NonFiction and Fiction in one ‘Stack
The Novelleist - Amazing journalist turning serialized fiction novelist. Walk with her on this journey.
Mark Starlin Writes! - A mix of opinion, story, and serialized fiction all in one place. When Mark writes, we all listen...er...read!
Now that you’ve gotten just a small taste of what is out there in terms of both nonfiction and fiction ‘Stacks, let’s go into the PROs for having one, the other, or both.
PROs for a nonfiction ‘stack
Platforms like Medium and Substack are “known” for having mostly non-fiction content. And very quickly, when I say “non-fiction” I don’t just mean the kind of journalism you’d find in the New York Times. This also includes personal stories, history, science, music. Basically, anything you write that isn’t fiction would fall under the non-fiction umbrella and there are loads of ‘Stacks as far as the eye can see.
Using Substack as a journal, sharing moments in your life, can be a great way to connect with your community/audience. Everyone always talks about not knowing what to say in an email or how to engage with their readers. There is no better way than to share a bit of your truth with them. Relate to their level. But always remember that your readers will eventually turn into strangers and within every large group of strangers there will be trolls. Be careful not to share too much or too deeply, especially if you are not thick-skinned to handle the hatred that will come your way the larger you become.
PROs for a fiction ‘stack
Serialized fiction is booming. If you want proof of that, just check out Kindle Vella that Amazon unveiled this Summer. Even they are trying to get their hands on a business that is growing into multi-million dollars. And even you, yes you, can get your small slice of that proverbial pie. But be wary, entering the arena of serialized fiction means you are making a few promises to your readers that you must keep: 1. Consistency. Whatever your scheduled releases are, as a newbie entering the ring, do not think you can skip a week and get away with it. For the first few years you better be ready every single week, on that day, at that time, with the next episode or suffer the consequences. 2. Quality is important. Your story better hold the reader’s interest, have the occasional cliff-hanger, and have an actual arc (character and plot), otherwise, boredom will settle in and your readership numbers will dwindle as a result.
Freedom to do it your way! Test the waters with that really far-out idea for a story you have with an audience. Get live reactions and commentary, if you ask the right questions. There is nothing like that feeling you’ll eventually get when the right reader finds you, loves your work, and encourages you to keep on keepin’ on.
PROs for doing both nonfiction and fiction ‘Stacks
Did I mention freedom before? Well, it bears repeating. The ability to not only share my personal thoughts and opinions alongside my fiction work is great. Plus, I get to have it all in one place. No more sharing my personal thoughts over here on WordPress and then putting up my fiction work on Wattpad, etc. Now I can have all of my writing in one place and give my community the choice of which they want to receive from me.
Reach. When you can appeal to multiple types of audiences in a positive and meaningful way, that will always be a good thing. The people who read my fiction may not be the same who want to read about my journey as a creator and writer. That doubles my readership!
I’m not going into any CONs for these as I think this is an area you should explore on your own. What I consider a con might be what you consider a positive in whatever your line of work happens to be. But if you should come across any CONs, please do share them in the comments below. I’m sure I would love to know what they are, as would the creators of Substack, should they come across this post in the future…
Now, I promised that you’d be writing stuff by the end of reading this post and I meant it. I hope by now you have decided on your publication name and you know “somewhat” what you’d like it all to be about? It’s okay if you don’t. The great thing about Substack is it can be a work-in-progress sort of thing where you take your readers along with you as you dabble in a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But now it’s time to get down to the content. The meat and potatoes. Let’s look at the “New post” area. You get it by clicking the button you’ll find on the right-hand side when you are in your “dashboard.”
Don’t pay any mind to the green color of my buttons. They take on whatever color you choose when in the “theme” section in the Settings area.
Now, as I’ve said, Substack is very minimalist and when you need to focus on your writing, having less to deal with can be a great thing. Below is a look at what you’ll be faced with when starting your post. We’ll take a look at the back-end stuff you might be used to seeing next.
For now, let’s just take a look at each row from top to bottom. If, for some reason, you want to update your email template, you can do this from that first button. You can also update your email template (meaning the information that will be in the header and footer of every single email you send) from the Setting area.
Next up is the “CHOOSE A SECTION” dropdown. There will be a more in-depth post 201 Multiple Sections that will go into detail on how to set up multiple sections and how having them can work in your favor. For now, you may only have a main newsletter that you created when you set up your first ‘Stack. Just select that one and let’s move on to your very first post!
The rest is pretty self-explanatory from here. You don’t have much to play around with but you can do all the customary things you’d expect like changing the font style. You also have lists views, hyperlinks, images, and you can add a line separator if you want. Two things I will point out that are here and can be helpful to any of us really:
Buttons | Use this if you want to add a custom button for someone to click to take them outside of Substack for whatever reason. But they also include default buttons if you want to make it easy for a reader to share your specific post, share your entire ‘Stack, or even subscribe right from the post. Handy.
Footnotes | This can be especially helpful for all you non-fiction writers! You can go ahead and footnote to your heart's content. And don’t worry, whatever you footnote will not be included in every email just because it will be in the “footer” of that particular post you are writing. It will just be a footnote in that post. But there’s no reason why fiction writers couldn’t use this feature as well to add clever anecdotes to their writing that might not fit perfectly.
There are two areas when you are finally finished with your post that can seem a bit confusing as to which you should click on and when. I know it was confusing to me when I first encountered these two options.
NOTE: Do not fear if you click the PUBLISH button. You won’t accidentally publish your post. There is another equally helpful set of settings located there that will always pop up before you actually publish anything.
SETTINGS
Now, you likely won’t have paid subscription activated yet so you don’t have to worry about who this post is for. It’s defaulted to “for everyone.” There will be other options made available to you once you do activate paid subscriptions that I’ll go into in a future post.
Should you have forgotten to set your “section” (provided you have multiple sections) you can set it again here.
You can set if you want to allow comments or not allow them as well as the order in which those comments appear for this particular post.
The “Social preview” area is very important as this is how your post will appear when shared on places like Twitter. Here is where you’ll want to either upload a new “Featured Image” (larger than 420 x 300 pixels) or if you hover your mouse over the default image you’ll see a selection of images from your post or your logo and avatar you added prior to choose from. But you can also change the words found just under the title of your post. You might want to do this as it will read and look better when you share it in other places like Discord servers. The changes you make here, as it states in their NOTE, will not affect the post itself.
You’ll also be presented with the post URL that you can edit if you want to shorten it or make it more unique.
I recommend sending yourself a test email at least for your first post. Just so you can see what it looks like. Make sure your header and footer look and say what you intended. Things like that.
Then scrolling down to the very bottom of this page:
The secret draft link is handy if you want to share a post with someone you have not yet published, perhaps to get their thoughts on it?
Just make sure you don’t go near the Danger zone unless you really want to delete your post!
PUBLISH
Basically, the PUBLISH area has everything the SETTINGS has, plus ONE EXTRA that you’ll want to be mindful of, especially if you’re like me and like to schedule posts ahead of time!
You may not notice it at first glance but just under the “Send email” area you’ll see a clickable link that says “Schedule for later.” If and only if you want to schedule your post then this is the only place you can do that, tucked away behind the PUBLISH button. When you click it you’ll see the following:
You can select a date as far as 90 days in the future. Kinda nice to force you to not go too far with your posts. Unless you’re someone like me, again, who knows about some posts I want to have come out beyond 90 days. A workaround to this is to create the post and leave it as a “draft.”
NOTE ON DRAFTS: There is no button to push when you want to set something to “draft” I learned early on. As you write within the post area you’ll notice on the bottom left that autosave is happening with every change you make. All you have to do is click the “<-- Dashboard” found at the top right to return to your dashboard and on the right hand side you’ll see a section for DRAFTS. You’ll find your post there. It can take some getting used to. I know it was for me. I like having the control of setting something to draft but I guess it makes sense that it automatically does it. I just worry about what could happen if one day it doesn’t autosave? And this is why I like to write my posts in another place (Google Docs) then copy/paste it into Substack (just in case).
Once you’ve either scheduled your post or you’re just ready to go ahead and post it now, click that button at the bottom and let her fly! If you select to schedule it, you’ll see what you have scheduled again on your dashboard page, right-hand side, near the top. Drafts will be just below that section.
Now go forth and write! And when you do, be sure and share a link to your ‘Stack or to your first post itself in the comments! Let us know what your ‘Stack is about. And to anyone stopping by and coming across this post, do everyone in the comments a favor and drop them a sub if what they got going on interests you.
Read 103 | Welcome Email Tips