I heard good things about Substack as a tool for authors. I wasn’t sure but I did give it a try. I followed the advice I got from veteran stackers, too. I’ve been posting sample chapters here on Sneak Peeks consistently, same day each week, for as long as I’ve been here..
I haven’t played the manipulative games other Stackers do either—trying to force mandatory subscriptions in order to like or comment, etc.
Anyway, I’ve been losing subscribers for Sneak Peeks every week. (Hey—that rhymes!) The open rate has also been steadily declining.
Meanwhile, on my other stack, the opposite has been happening. Almost. I’ve been gaining subscribers. The open rate started out decent, got better, then fell, and seems to have leveled off somewhat over the last couple weeks.
So what the data seems to be telling me is that readers on Substack like non-fiction anecdotes and articles, but are not all that interested in fiction.
So, I’m not sure what I’m gonna do with Sneak Peeks. Maybe I’ll just abandon ship altogether. Maybe I’ll post a free excerpts now and then just for giggles. What I’m pretty sure of is: I don’t intend to keep putting in the time and effort to consistently post free content here while I juggle all my other efforts.
No biggie. I’ve got plenty to do anyway and this was a sacrifice with no guarantee of positive results. There is another development in my creative efforts that could turn out pretty cool—we’ll see. I’ll shift my efforts to where the ROI is more favorable for me. It doesn’t look like Substack is the place to build a brand, collect a following, etc. At least not for fiction. Maybe not for comics, either.
At the least, Sneak Peeks may become a place where I just post whatever I want, whenever I want, regardless of engagement (or lack thereof).
So for those of you who read these chapters from Escaping Fate, I hope you enjoyed them. Want more? Go buy the book. Then buy the other books in the Paradox series. If there’s something in particular you’d like to see an this stack, that I’m not already doing at Iron Age Unfolding, feel free to make a suggestion.