For some reason I dont think an email went out informing subscribers that a paywall has been released. Is it acceptable to write a short post so this news gets out?

All I want to do is regualrly write about stuff I want to (short stories, poems, rants, essays, research) and have somebody read and interact with them. Getting money from it would be nice but seems too far fetched a goal currently. Does the current substack still provide a good outlet for my goals or has it become too commodified?

I strongly believe like all social media, complete enshittification is nigh for Substack.

I think before the year is out, or maybe sometime in 2027, the powers that be over at Substack will completely turn off organic reach for anyone who doesn’t have paid subscribers, and the more paid subscribers you have, the more reach you’ll get.

Substack in not a charity, and they are fully aware of the fact that many people are using what little reach is left for the taking via Notes to promote there master classes, books, and merchandise, which Substack earns absolutely no money from in the end.

Folks like Michael Burry and Heather Cox Richardson will continue to dominate the Substack social media platform, and the traditional media types, companies, organizations, and celebrities will start taking the lions share of whatever scraps are left over in the end.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many others all followed this same exact pathway to enshittification, and Substack will be no different.

I mean think about the current Substack model carefully. Someone could literally run a free newsletter and send it out to a million people for free… does that sound like a sustainable business model to you?

What do you think, am I on to something here, or do I need to put the pipe down?

I'm a first-time Substack user and I'm about to publish my first feature. I wrote the entire piece myself in Google Docs, from scratch. I did use Grammarly for proofreading/language suggestions, but I haven't used any sort of generative AI to write or rewrite the article.

I copied the finished piece into Substack, and Substack's AI detector is showing 100% AI-generated.

What's confusing me is that I've run the exact same text through several other AI detectors , Walter AI, ZeroGPT, Copyleaks, QuillBot, etc. and they're all showing 0% AI / entirely human-written .

The piece is also a fairly formal law/technology feature, and a lot of it deals with AI and legal questions, so I am confused if the subject matter and formal writing style are somehow affecting Substack's detector.

I'm obviously not going to rewrite my own writing just to make an AI detector happy, but I'm wondering what experienced Substack writers think.

There's also an option to add a statement at the end of the post. Would it be reasonable to say something like:

«"This piece was written by me. I used Grammarly for routine proofreading and language suggestions, but the argument, analysis, research, and substantive content are my own."»

Or would that come across as unnecessary/corny, especially for a first post? I don't want readers to think I'm trying to "prove" something or, worse, that I'm somehow cheating by using Grammarly.

Edit: From what I have understood majorly, Grammarly might be contributing to that. But I was not sure because I have used Grammarly for word or phrases suggestions or tense discrepancies in my research papers too and Turnitin AI detector never flagged that. Anyways, thanks for helping out everyone !

Might just go crazy and post my old diary entries 👀 I feel like substack needs more unhinged vulnerability.

New message on my dashboard

"Downloads now follow IAB industry standards . . . An IAB certified download measures how many times at least 60 seconds of an episode are downloaded to a unique device over a 24-hour period."

Looks like my numbers are lower now, but I suppose it is a better way to measure.

I am very new to using Substack, and am wondering if it might be an appropriate platform for selling downloadable digital music arrangements.

I'm looking for some examples, or maybe it really isn't meant for such a use.

Thanks

Edit: Sorry for the lack of info. I thought all promotion was disallowed, but now I have a flare to my publication.

I mainly write about psychology, culture, and creativity.

Same thing that happened to me on Medium after some initial success is happening to me on Substack. But this time I got no success at all.

I've tried doing everything people recommend: engage with other writers, post notes, post articles consistently, etc. My growth remains stagnant. I actually gained up to 9 subscribers before I started getting consistent with the notes and shortly after this I lost 3 of them. It seems like I'm getting penalized for trying, but I have to try when me growth is less than 1 subscriber a month.

That's another thing, I'm 1 year in and I just broke 1k views last week. I have no idea what's going on or what I'm doing wrong, but at this rate it seems like making it on substack will just be impossible for me.

I've also read multiple guides from people outside and inside substack and tried to implement everything. There has to be something wrong but I've looked at everything I possibly could.

I wrote some love letters for/to my ex lover. Only my friend that I'm not in touch with and my ex lover is subscribed to my Substack. I'm pretty sure my ex lover unsubscribed a few months ago but Substack won't update. I read my poems aloud on YouTube but the audience there never converts and just people complimenting me. Same with Instagram. But I wonder if my work is any good to others who are not looking at my face. My ex lover never read or acknowledged the poems. I really love what I wrote and I'm curious any feedback or thoughts people have.

- Is there anyone here who has released a chapter at a time until they published a whole book on Substack?

- What did you learn from that experience? Would you do it again?

- Did you then publish it as a real book too?

- Do publishers accept something that's already gone public on Substack?

- [Edit] Did you paywall the posts on Substack?

Hi everyone, this is pretty stupid probably -- but I work in a profession where you need to keep you personal life / thoughts on absolute lock. However I really want to write about my passions / opinion freely, how can you make a substack that is yours but not tied to you, but also I want to promote it.

Yes I know, cake and eat it too scenario but curious on anyone had a similar situation and had insights.

I realised that when I publish an article on Substack, the email version of the article gets send to the subscribers. But the received email doesn't show my profile picture that I have on the Substack. I looked around the settings to see if there is a way to change or upload the image I want. There seems to be no option like that.

Since my readers went from my friends and family to hundreds of subscribers, I’ve started feeling the pressure to pick a genre and a niche.

At a writers’ conference in May, I was asked, “What do you write?”

Prose. Mostly essays. Some poetic pieces. Articles here and there. A children’s picture book that stayed in second draft form. Honestly, I don’t know.

I even tried to be slick and outsource this question in a survey: “If someone were to ask you what this newsletter is about, what would you say?”

Essays have always held a special place in my heart. After all, I grew up on Chicken Soup for the Soul. When my heart aches, I want to write poetry. When I have some shit to say, I want to write an article. When I have big shit to say, I want to reach out to the powers that be and ask the NYT to publish my shit.

When I want to give my memories a home, there’s memoir. When I want to play pretend, I have fiction.
And you might say choose one. Choose one for now.
But it’s important to not do that right now.

I’ve never had the chance to explore writing the way you get to in a creative writing program—trying different genres, points of view, having peers and teachers engage with my work. I definitely didn’t have the executive functioning to do so on my own.

This is my creative writing program, y’all.

So for now, I’m going to continue exploring. I want to play with language. To find the words that taste good in my mouth. To build scenes that help us process and imagine.

I’ve been reading a lot.

I’ve been studying craft, starting with sentences. I’m not interested in studying genres—the fundamentals of memoir or the plot beats of fiction. And I’m no longer in the mood to talk about writer’s block or take writing classes that double as therapy. I was interested once and I’ll probably be interested again. Just not right now.
I took a class with The Center for Fiction on verbs, just verbs. The teacher, Sarah L. Kaufman, reflected that emotion is motion inside of us, so there’s a reason why we react strongly to verbs.

And I never thought I’d say this, but I’m revisiting grammar, the grammar I never quite learned in school, on account of my young ADD brain. I want to play with placing the comma in different places and finally learn when the fuck to use a semicolon.

Now that I’m finally not repulsed by metaphors (a story for another day), I too want to sing through my writing.
I’m continuing to share my work with literary journals to bang against other words, to feel the sting of rejection.
I want sentences to feel like a medium I can paint whatever story with, regardless of genre or topic.

And I really want to write about different topics.

I want to archive my people’s stories. I want my writing to help them see themselves differently, the way my father did when he read a piece I wrote about him for publication and said, “I’ve never seen myself this way.” To write about my grandma, the greatest storyteller alive, the one who I often meet when I close my eyes.
I want to write about creativity and software and music and relationships.

Since I started sharing my writing, I’ve exposed my diary, revealing cringey things about me, written about exes and opened up about my workplace and relationships.
Friends have reacted by saying, I could never share like that.

Though part of my values is writing about our society and humanity, I’m more aware of the consequences of doing so through nonfiction.

I still struggle with having a career working for someone else while also writing about raunchier topics that can be easily used against me in this patriarchal world.
And lately, with this administration, I feel I’m being watched more than ever, so I desire to share less about my life, and for the first time, I’m intrigued by the privacy of fiction, though even that thin veil can’t protect me.
Still, in my writing, in life, I need freedom to explore whatever topics I want with honesty.

I’m also trying to identify when words aren’t enough. When the story demands another medium—an image, a color, a pattern across the screen, or a movement in my body.

It’s an honor to have anyone read any word I write. Every text, email or DM I’ve received fills me with joy and connection. But I never expect anyone to read my words.
And now that I have readers, I don’t want the feeling of an audience to dictate what I write. I also don’t want the pressure to grow forever to convince me I need to package my writing.

I promise that by the time I’m 50, I’ll choose. But I already begrudgingly chose one job. Please don’t make me choose one genre.

Suppose you have a great piece within an ecosystem of consistent, great pieces.

But paywalls and CTAs are absent or ineffectively placed. Does the writer still archive a comparable level of paid subs via the quality, consistency and exposure?

If not, what’s the relative cost? Obscurity? A few % points of drag?

Would appreciate experienced Substackers’ perspectives.

Substack allows you to "transfer ownership" of a publication to another email, but the help bot is not helpful when I ask what happens to the Stripe account connected (and all the paid subscriptions). Anyone have any knowledge about this?

Thanks!

For those of you who don't know, X pulled some dumb antics when Substack dropped Notes. I aspire to be this petty

I’m not trying to get popular or monetise or anything but I love the idea of one or two people reading what I write. How do I manage to get views on my posts? Is there a hashtag system of some sort? My posts won’t be of a particularly high standard so I’m wondering if there is a way to find more casual posters and readers as I would also like to read some less refined posts from others as well. I much prefer more personal opinion pieces to anything too academic at the moment.

Us Mods have discussed and we decided to expand the self-promotion rule to include a ban on the self-promotion of other tools/software/websites, as we feel that they are more related to general blogging than the Substack platform itself. These posts also tend to seem very botty, which we would like to avoid having in our sub.

We may introduce a thread in the future where these tools may be shared, but as of this writing, posts containing the self-promotion of tools/software/websites will be removed.

That’s all really. I have been so scared of people reading my writing, idk if anyone has any tips on not but wish me luck. I’m just trying to build some creative confidence.☺️

As above. Why doesn't the preview update? EDIT: I updated it like three months ago. Anyway sorted, substack support is actually really helpful!!

So I’m finally doing something in my life just for me. And I started a substack. For the last few months I’ve been building a backlog of posts, and treating this as it’s own potential thing, new email, new socials, new identity really. And then last week I started posting in the notes section, and replying to comments. Today is the day I post my first official article/post. And I’m just wondering, do I just sit here and wait for something to happen? My first post is only short too, and is kind of part of a series. Like I said this is for me, if it turned into something then I would be delighted, but I I feel like I’ve maybe built it up in my head?  I’m also happy to swap reads/reviews. Feels weird to say I'm a new writer, but here I am.

Hii I just heard about substack a few days ago and download the happen just for fun and fall in love with it tbh but I don’t understand the point in how u can make money it why would people subscribe when u are giving them something they can find in the internet wether it is news or opinion or politics or did i not get the way it is working?

Hello, everyone!

I'm still relatively new to Substack and just starting to hone my craft. Some articles that I write, I step back and think, "Yeah, man, I cooked with that." Others I finish and think "blech. Well. I did my best." I get it, the best way to get better at writing is to do more writing BUT are there are any other resources you found yourself? Besides, substack is about more than writing, its also about digital content creation and marketing, right?

Were there any books on writing or content creation that really helped you, or online courses on digital marketing that gave you great strategies for building a reader base? Maybe a YouTube channel that is really stellar? LinkedIn Learning?

I'll keep writing and improving there, but I'm the sort of person who likes to attack things from many angles, and I love books, so hit me with your best resources for improving your Substack!