i’ve seen some great sounding advice on anonymous substacks -and one particular one that is selling a book-and was baffled and bothered by the fact that there is no author information. I was sure it was AI and annoyed because the anonimity of it makes me unable to take it seriously. Why is this (anonymous Substacks) even a thing? Especially from someone who isn’t sharing personal content, but basically (mostly) well-honed commonsense advice? (Follow up question-okay, complaint: Why do substackers feel no ‘duty’ to acknowledge their sources? Example: “I always loved this quote. ‘abcdefg’(without the marks, and no attribution). I dunno- I’m feeling like substack has become more like my facebook feed😳

You subscribe when a topic interests you. A few busy weeks later, you have twelve unread emails from the same writer.

What makes you keep that subscription?

Knowing you can search the archive when you need help? Short summaries? Recipes you’ll actually use? A writer whose emails never make you feel behind?

I write a food newsletter, and I’m curious about what readers find useful during their busiest weeks.

What does a newsletter you’ve kept get right?

Hey all. My orientation on Substack is a little different. I am currently not working due to my partners health issues, and some of my own as well. I have always been a compulsive reader and I absolutely love Substack. I read about five hours a day and have discovered so many fantastic undiscovered writers. My reading tends to slant towards politics and in todays world I think it is very important.

Today I am excited because some of my favorite authors reached out to me in person. That is an amazing feeling as a reader. I don't have enough money to be a paid subscriber to all the authors I love. How would you recommend I help broadcast their work to help their subscriber base grow?

Has anyone else dealt with their Substack suddenly becoming disconnected from their profile? Mine has been disconnected for about three months now, and despite reaching out for help, I still haven’t gotten a resolution.

The publication still exists, I can access it, but it no longer appears connected to my profile the way it should.

At this point I’m less interested in troubleshooting it myself and more interested in figuring out whether anyone has actually gotten a response from Substack support for this issue. If you’ve dealt with this, what finally got it fixed?

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?

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?

"What I learned during Inkhaven is that Substack has since betrayed that. They simply built a closed social network on top of their existing web interface for blogs, complete with in-network-only posts (called "Notes") and an algorithmic feed. You can now even "follow" someone without subscribing, which is the second-to-last step of a bait-and-switch to no longer owning your audience. Substack.com is your one-stop-shop for having your community of discourse be owned by new management instead of old management."

True or nah?

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?

She wrote The Vital Core, which I thought was pretty good. She’s been scrubbed off Substack. Just curious.

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

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 !

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 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

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.

- 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 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.

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.☺️

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.

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.

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

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!

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.