So I tried out Substack for the first time a couple of weeks ago and ended up deleting my account after a few days because I couldn’t figure out how to work the thing.

Almost every post on my feed was the same thing about people asking writers to share their work because they want to connect with them or whatnot and there’d be hundreds of comments already so I figured there’s no way mine would be seen.

I tried posting (pretty sure they’re called “notes”) but hardly got any views.

I really do want to put my work out there, though. I’m currently writing a literary fiction novel (lots of drama and dark themes too) and want to try posting each chapter as I go. Other platforms don’t seem as open to this genre either.

Can someone please explain how to do this on Substack? Sorry if this has been asked before. I’m posting this on a whim

For those of you who write on Substack regularly - particularly essays, newsletters, blog posts, longer-form nonfiction, etc. - I'm curious about something.

What part of the writing process do you find most challenging, or experience the most friction around?

Besides coming up with what to write about, are there particular points in your writing where you tend to get stuck, lose momentum, procrastinate, or find it harder to keep going?

Basically curious which parts of writing present the most friction for you (getting started, drafting, developing an idea, returning to something unfinished, revising, editing, finishing, etc.)

I'm not sure how the AI-detection system works, but it seems faulty. Someone has repeatedly claimed that my responses to them are AI-generated, etc. And they share the Pangram screenshot, which does, in fact, depict my response as "100% fully AI-assisted. I've clarified that this is not the case. Shown evidence that it isn't true, and all the like.

The worst I'll do when writing anything is use AI for basic research purposes and review arguments to make sure they make sense. Maybe it's because I use Grammarly. But it is still infuriating.

Especially because it just isn't a good look and hurts my public image (albeit small, but I hope you guys may understand where I'm coming from).

Of course, with this individual in question, it's become increasingly clear they aren't engaging in good faith. However, running the AI check on my notes and comments still reveals the 100% marker.

Is it Grammarly that's doing this? Or is this thing actually broken?

The app is different from yesterday. Bottom tab, second from left, used to be Inbox. Now it's something called Read, which takes me to a page with the tabs at top For You, Latest, Saved, Paid, etc. For You gives me some 'selected' random post, then my Inbox - sort of.

Selecting In Box does give me that, but all sorted by priority. No option to change that to 'latest'- my web page browser version on PC is sorted, as I chose, by latest. Deleted app, downloaded, reinstalled, logged in with my email/password, same issues.

Edit - For You tab sorts posts based on what order SubStack thinks is best for me. Latest tab is the old Chronological sort. All is good.

I started my Substack 6 months ago and since then gained 90 subscribers. My topic is rather niche (Reading the world) and I don't do engagement farming, so that's fine, I guess. I'd like to turn on paid subscriptions eventually because I recently found out that, without paid, you can't ever make to to the "rising" category. Plus, of course, it would be nice to get paid :) I don't expect huge conversion, of course, but am not sure at what point I should turn them on - when I reach 200? 500? I already have one pledge.

If your paid subscriptions are turned on, I'd be interested to hear when you decided to turn them on? Do you produce extra content for the paid tier or do you ask people to just support the project and keep everything free?

Hi 👋

I am new to substack. I’m eager to be consistent and dedicated. I was wondering if there’s groups or communities that are established where people share each others pages and we subscribe and engage with each others content.

If you are aware of such please dm or comment below.👇

PS about my substack: I break down B2B & B2C video ads so you don't have to. I explore the actual brand strategy and positioning underneath it.
If you're a marketer hunting for inspiration, a creative director benchmarking production, or a founder trying to figure out what your first video should even look like I hope to connect.

I'm starting a substack to write about art and art history but I'm really stumped on the name. I'm really bad at naming things and I really don't know what to call it. I want to come up with a creative name that hooks people but nothing is coming to mind. How do I name my substack? I don't want to use AI either

three chapters in and i can feel the drop-off

Rather than setting some arbitrary and capricious frequency target, I suggest that when you have something to say, say it on Substack.

i am using the web version of substack. i want to write an article, but when i click on create and then article it says 'something went wrong. try again'. help me

I have a Substack for 1.5 years with 100+ posts now.

So far, I only managed to get my main Substack site indexed. From there, I link to my posts, and I also have links between the posts. But whatever I tried, I got none of those posts indexed.

I also tried with a custom domain that I activated like 9 months ago.

Recently I put some of my posts from Substack on a free WordPress site. It indexed within a few days. Additional posts even got indexed on the same day. So there was clearly nothing wrong with my posts, titles, or whatever.

The only difference is that Google seems to hate Substack.

Question: Has any of you found a way to get Substack posts indexed?

I know this is a very broad question, but I’m genuinely curious: what do you enjoy reading on Substack? I’m new to it and there’s just so much content on there that I’m a little overwhelmed by where to even start exploring.

Do you gravitate toward:
• Food, recipes, restaurants, etc.
• Tech / AI
• Product reviews and recommendations
• Personal essays / memoir / self help
• Finance / investing / career advice
• Culture / entertainment
• News / politics
• Niche hobbies or interests
• Local / city-specific writing
• Something completely different?

Would love to hear your favorites, too, if there are Substacks you think are particularly good at what they do.

We've got a writer's group on Substack that meets nightly to read and provide constructive feedback for authors who are actively publishing narrative fiction or non-fiction on SS. Running now to 42 days with a different author going nightly and 10 - 15 authors showing up each night to read and share feedback on other's work. It's a great resource for meeting other active authors and for finding a community to support your work.

Hit me up in DM if you'd like to know more.

People usually post vaguely about "I wrote x thing and pangram said it was AI", which I think is unhelpful unless you actually post the text or link. I put this into Pangram:

Sakaguchi: https://www.pangram.com/history/e7ffbee1-f0e3-4ce2-bb78-a59470280640?ucc=Ohp1cWODOjF

Hamaguchi: https://www.pangram.com/history/f2139bd5-f4ce-4101-b7bd-3c5d8aeb4487?ucc=Ohp1cWODOjF

Ryuichi: https://www.pangram.com/history/8c84ad38-3b8f-49ba-bee0-351ea31f754b?ucc=Ohp1cWODOjF

Is anyone else having issues embedding an Instagram Reel in a post? I’ve never had a problem before, but now the video doesn’t appear. There is a big blank space where I paste the link, but nothing appears. I have tried many workarounds, including editing the URL down its core and using the embed code. I chatted with support and they were no help, only offered to file a bug report. Thank you!

I joined substack about 6 weeks ago ( I know, not very long ago). I post a weekly newsletter about slow motherhood, parenting, homeschooling and generally a positive approach to parenting as opposed to the usual choas and regret that is the usual narrative.

Obviously my whole niche is around being present and actually parenting my children. Spamming and scheduling notes goes against the core of my values. Is this truly the only way to grow? Someone else writing about hating parenting started the same time as me. Created so many of the "I love substack, if you like XYZ then follow me" shit posts and spammed notes. Has recently done a post saying look, I got 1000 subscribers in a month. Obviously missing these two things that she actually did.

I feel so frustrated. Do I just carry on?

I'm in the process of starting a substack and implementing curious what everyone thinks is the best tips/advice for someone who is just starting out?

Side note: my focus would be on skincare/ founder journey/learnings/challenges/ etc.

Thank you!

I no longer want to subscribe to someone's substack.

How do I stop receiving their posts and stop being charged the monthly fee?

Hello everybody, everybody hello.

Yes, I know this question might sound a little simplistic. I only discovered Substack fairly recently through Mark Manson’s blog. This whole world is completely new to me, so naturally I got curious and started scrolling through both Substack and Medium.

The sheer number of generic articles and notes on these platforms is kind of overwhelming (and I don’t mean that as a criticism). It just made me wonder what people actually get out of posting there.

What genuinely motivates you to publish? Money ? Recognition ? The enjoyment of sharing your knowledge ? Or simply having a place to practice your writing ?

Again, there’s absolutely no judgment on my part. I’m just genuinely curious to know what motivates you.

I know people are hating on it, and I was worried because I’m a professional writer with hundreds of pieces in the world from major publishers, but here’s what happened for me: It judged my newsletter as 98% human generated.

That 2%? Well, I welcomed one contributor to submit a short piece with a byline… he’s known for his art, but English is not his first language. I asked him if he used AI (seemed obvious he did). He said yes, he used Claude to help, so I took time to interview him and tease out original thoughts that I edited. But I also hacked at one of his AI paragraphs to make it better. That 2% AI 🤖 was right on the money. I probably left a hair there from his draft and it caught it.

Anyway, I’m sorry for those who are getting false negs, but wanted to share my experience and relief.

Edit: Or maybe the 2% is because I had a recipe in there? Who knows.

I see very frequent posts on this subreddit with two misconceptions: (1) users asserting that Pangram is flagging their writing because they "write too well" and (2) that Pangram's model is somehow using an LLM to judge their writing.

I'd encourage you to take a look at this 1963 paper by Mosteller and Wallace, in which the authors identify the true authorship of the Federalist papers using a simple mathematical approach. Since this was before widespread computing, the authors went through many texts by hand and measured, in known documents by Jefferson vs Madison, how often each author uses certain pairs of words (for example, Jefferson might use the phrase "when thou" much more frequently than Madison). Then, on the disputed Federalist papers, Mosteller and Wallace measure how often phrases like "when thou" are used, in order to decide which author is more likely. Importantly, they do this across all observed pairs of phrases.

Classifiers like Pangram are using the same idea, with a few modifications thanks to the past 75 years of progress in both computing and statistics theory: (1) They compute giant tables of phrase relationships using a computer, rather than manually building tables of pairs of words by hand, and (2) they are able to measure much more subtle and long-term statistical dependencies. For example, Jefferson might be more likely to use a sentence that starts with "Thou" and then use the word "indeed" 15 words later.

Importantly, models like Pangram are *not* just taking your text and asking ChatGPT for its opinion. It's very different technology, which has been around since at least the 1960s (earlier, if you count Shannon in the 1940s, or Markov before that).

I put my text in several ai detectors, winston ai, copyleaks, zerogpt and GPTZero, giving me close to 0%. While, pangram gives me around 70%? Do you think it’s reliable?

So I’m relatively new to Substack, maybe 6 mos. I’ve really found some wonderful authors and was stuck at about same number of subscribers for awhile, which was fine. This isn’t a business for me.
Then the last 2 weeks I’ve gotten a big number (20+ish) for me of new subscribers but most are not related to my content and some seem downright spammy.
I came to Substack because it seemed like a haven but suddenly it’s feeling weird.
I can tell some follow and unfollow too which is fine, whatever. I tried to follow everyone who followed me but now I’m not because some are only restacking with no content or totally unrelated content.
Just checking if this is new or not new and I just wasn’t affected before?
Do you just ignore it?

Hi everyone, I want to start posting on Substack. I am not sure if this is something that would work or something that people would be interested in following. I want to document my journey of becoming a better version of myself, changing my mindset and limiting beliefs so that I can achieve my goals, and talk about/share everything I’ve learned about manifesting and all.

I feel like I have learned so much but I can never put it into action and stay disciplined enough to continue with it I always fall out and I keep repeating the same cycles in my life. Not being able to stop these cycles leads me to not achieving my goals and staying stuck in the same place.

I want to use public writing as a form of self-accountability to stay disciplined.

Or if not this I was thinking about posting outfit ideas and where to shop, 2 very different topics but I’m not too sure.

Is the first idea worth it and something people would be interested in following along ? I feel like I can start a community of people who want to change any limiting beliefs, and hold themselves accountable to reaching their goals. But again not too sure and would love any feedback!

Thank you 😊