Why Substack?

Or how I learned to stopped worrying and love the serial

Thanks to everyone who has joined the ARC Worlds Guild so far! Today I will dive a little deeper into why I decided to serialize my books on Substack. In addition to releasing chapters of my books, I’ll be writing periodic behind-the-scenes posts like this one about the various aspects of being an indie author.

Illustration: Tom Parker

Literary luminaries from Charles Dickens and Alexander Dumas to Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert have published their magnum opuses as serials before being collected into the novels we know and love today. ¹ The format has fallen in and out of style over the years, but in the past decade, we have seen numerous authors serialize their work on their way to mainstream success.² Still others publish chapters daily and/or weekly on platforms such as Wattpad and Royal Road, crafting massive stories over time that draw in thousands of readers.

However, because the Kindle e-reader and the Kindle Store don’t have great native support for telling stories in a serialized fashion (until recently), most indie authors choose to publish their stories as full-length ebooks. But launching a book you’ve spent hundreds of hours writing to crickets on Amazon isn’t exactly a great motivator to continue writing. And so, way back when, I decided to release my first book, the then-entitled Epic Quest Society, as a newsletter serial.

It was a very well-thought-out plan: release a chapter a month to family, friends, and the 5 people who had signed up for my newsletter via a link in the back of my space opera short story I had published, and voila! Instant riches!

Well, not really.

I wrote half a year’s worth of installments and then planned to release a novella collecting them all and the exclusive final chapter. Except that my plotting chops back then were less than great, and all I ended up with was an underdeveloped mess. Several fits and spurts and the project had ground to a halt. However, I challenged myself to complete NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) not by meeting the 50,000 word count goal, but by merely putting words down every day.

I succeeded, reinvigorating my excitement for the story and propelling me to release the first installment of what would become Guild of Tokens the following spring.

That was the start of my next grand plan: write a series of escalating novellas, publish them, and swim in the profits like Uncle Scrooge in his money bin.

Except that, I had misjudged the market for such things, learning the hard way that it’s very hard to sell a 30,000-word novella for $2.99 when the next installment is not going to be released for several months. And that it’s even harder to get all those readers back a second time when the new novella is finally released. In the end, I scrapped the release of the third novella, rewrote the whole thing as a full-length novel, and entered it into SPFBO.

Several years and a global pandemic later, I again found myself running into the writing wall that I had scaled in the past and wondered whether it was worth continuing at all. But, after successfully crowdfunding a special edition of Guild of Tokens on Kickstarter, I knew there was still interest in this story. I just needed a way to reinvigorate my writing and keep the momentum from the Kickstarter going through the release of book 2.

Enter my old friend, serialization.

Although my original serial experiments had failed, I had improved as a writer and marketer in the intervening years. And, with the rise in popularity of new platforms like Wattpad, Patreon, and Substack, it’s much easier to both deliver serialized stories and also make money from them.³

Many indie authors are currently using Patreon as a way to deliver stories and extra content to patrons,⁴ and there are many positives to the platform, such as customizable patron tiers and a more favorable revenue split than Amazon.

However, after doing more research, I found Substack better suited to my needs for several reasons.

First, Substack is designed to deliver written content that is easy to read, both in an email newsletter and on the corresponding Substack page. I can separate chapters from Guild of Tokens and Guild of Magic into different sections such that only new readers will get the former and only existing readers will get the latter. And I can add other sections, like a behind-the-scenes section and a comics section without everything turning into a jumbled mess.

Second, having only one paid tier (which I first considered a negative) is actually beneficial, in that I can focus on delivering consistent value to paid subscribers, without worrying if I’m not giving enough content/rewards to each particular tier.⁵ And the annual and founding tiers still allow me to offer extras for certain subscribers without making regular monthly subscribers feels like they are being slighted. Substack also makes it much easier for people to subscribe to free posts, so that potential paid subscribers can read my posts before deciding if they would like to subscribe.

Finally, Substack is more focused on organic discoverability and growing a community of readers, whereas Patreon is more geared toward bringing your existing audience to the site.⁶

Now, I’m under no illusion that there is going to be a deluge of sign-ups so large that I will be able to quit my job and just write full-time from the Swiss Family Robinson-style treehouse I will buy from Elon Musk.

Rather, I’m taking a long-term approach, and will use this newsletter to release my stories to as many people as possible while at the same time offering early access and exclusive content to readers who want to support me along the way.

I’m excited to start this new phase of my author career and I hope you’ll join me! Hit the Subscribe button below to start getting Guild of Tokens in your inbox.

Better yet, join the Guild by becoming a paid member. Read more below on what you get by joining the ARC Worlds Guild.

Announcing paid subscriptions

If you’re a fellow author, have you considered serializing your work? If you’ve already jumped into the serial pool, post your serial below. If not, what’s holding you back?

1. Little known fact: Johannes Guttenberg invented the printing press not, as everyone thinks, to cheaply and quickly produce a copy of the Bible. No, his reason was more selfish: he wanted to publish his serialized autobiographical epic entitled Johan and the Quest for the Tree of Life. Over a period of three years, the serial became the most widely read piece of literature in all of Western Europe and Guttenberg eventually became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire OK, I made everything in this footnote up after the words printing press, but I had you going there long enough to read down to the bottom of this footnote, right?

2. See Andy Weir’s The Martian, originally published on his blog for free and Hugh Howey’s Wool, originally a short story that Howey expanded into a novel over several months on Amazon.

3. For more reading on this subject, I highly recommend Elle Griffin’s piece on serials and the creator economy.

The one where writing books is not really a good idea

4. See, e.g., Lindsay Buroker, Quenby Olson, Ben Galley, and Lydia Sherrer.

5. For example, I’m sitting on a LOT of artwork for the book 2 Kickstarter. I’m talking the cover, postcards, posters, and maybe an alternate cover? I could just wait and reveal it all during the Kickstarter campaign. Or I could give paid subscribers a sneak peek each month without releasing it to the world writ large. Stay tuned.

6. Substack is also making a big comics push, recruiting big-time creators like Jonathan Hickman, Scott Synder, James Tynion IV, and Kelly Thompson to create comics and related content.