Forgive me the Shakespeare-ness of my title, but my Family Book Club* read Hamlet over the month of January and so it was top of mind.
In all truth (forsooth!) I have been wrestling with this question!
For those of you who don’t know, Substack is the platform where all the cool kids are.
Just kidding! But not entirely…. there are some pretty cool people producing content over there. Substack describes itself as “the home for great culture”. As an aspirational statement, that’s a pretty good one.
But does it deliver? In a word, yes. I started hearing about Substack a couple of years ago from other writers who are on the platform. I signed up for a free account to see whether it would be a good place for me as an author to hang my hat. And to make sure I had a place before someone stole my spot (the joys of having “Smith” as a last name).**
It has quickly become my favourite online platform. The content there is thoughtful and well-crafted, and while the “Notes” feature allows individuals to post their more off-the-cuff ideas, hot takes if you will, and those notes allow for comments, I have never seen comments that are hateful, rude, stupid, or ridiculous. The place exudes a sense of thoughtful commentary and response.
Let’s face it, we have seen better days in the online world. But when I read the content on Substack, I don’t close the app feeling like I have been wasting my time rummaging through garbage and coming out stinky and in need of a shower. Mainly, I regret not having time to read the great article referred to in the current great article I was reading.
That’s the reader’s side of it. If you are not on Substack, and want a place where you can read wonderful content, sign up! I highly recommend it as an antidote to the Meta Universe!**
For authors, the bonus is that they can make some money there. Authors can set up subscriptions to their feeds, and they can decide whether all content is behind a paywall or only some of it. Of course, this is optional, and many authors offer most, if not all, of their content for free. But there have been a substantial number of authors who actually make money on this platform. Which is a rarity for most authors on any platform or publishing in any way, to be honest.
Like many “new” platforms, the early adapters tend to come out on top, and that is the case with Substack. Possibly there’s too much of a good thing there now. I think the opportunity to gain lots of subscribers and make any kind of real money there is pretty much passed, but of course I could be wrong. Substack itself certainly touts itself as a place where authors can make money. Of course, they make money, too. They take a cut of any subscription fees an author makes. Hey, it’s a business!
The really important difference between Substack and other blogging platforms, and one that is very attractive to creators, is that on Substack, the content creator “owns” their subscriber list. As they explain,
Publishers own their content and relationship with their subscribers. If you ever want to leave the platform you can easily export your posts and subscriber emails and take them with you.
That is very different from the Meta Verse, where the followers you accumulate can be taken from you at the whim of Meta, and your account closed at the same whim. And don’t get me started on the algorithms that control who sees your stuff in the first place. However, you’d have to be a blinking idiot to believe that Substack does NOT use algorithms to funnel content to subscribers of their platform. There are concerns that it is becoming too “social media”-like. As a result, there have been some top writers who have moved to Patreon, who is dipping its proverbial toe into creating a platform where writers who produce newsletters (as opposed to books or other content who have already found a place on Patreon) can flourish.
… for us fiction writers, that is. Substack started as a place for journalists and quickly morphed into a place for non-fiction writers of all stripes. You will still mainly find non-fiction writers there: political commentators, journalists, bloggers who have moved their blogs over to this new place, cultural commentators, etc. The conventional wisdom is that fiction writers don’t do well on Substack. That being said, you can find a growing number of fiction writers there, too. But it’s harder for them to gain traction. Truthfully, though, it’s hard for anyone to do that, fiction or non-fiction. Part of the problem is the audience – because of its roots, those who have created accounts on Substack are mainly creators and readers of non-fiction. They are not necessarily there to read short stories, or serialized stories, or poetry.
But, even so, there are a lot more eyes looking at the Substack platform than there are over here looking at my little blog or website. So, I feel like if I want to keep up the blog at all (do I? That’s a consideration, to be sure!) I should have it in a place where it can be discovered. I have a lot of articles I could move over there (supposedly this is easy, but who knows) and that would give me a bunch of content to start with. The nice thing about Substack is that all my subscribers would get an email notice that I have published a new post. This is something that could increase eyes on my work here, which would be nice. Every blog post takes some time to craft, especially the history ones, and that’s time I could use to work on my books. But if the posts could function as initially intended, as a place where people could get interested in my fictional worlds through the real-life history they are set in, that would be worth it.
In theory, it is possible to “subscribe” to my blog here on WordPress, and have the same result: those subscribers are emailed when I post something new. To date, I have a whopping three subscribers, and one of them is me.*** Heh. So obviously that’s not working out too well for me.
I’m leaning towards being more active on my Substack profile and moving my blog over there. I’m hesitant because I really don’t want to be too active on social media. I see nothing but downsides to that. It’s all such a wild-goose chase of exhausting proportions, not to mention soul-sucking. However, given Substack’s content and ethos, I find it much less objectionable than the others. I’m not expecting to make a lot of money there. Not directly. I’m hoping that it could be a place to discover new readers of my books and connect with other writers and creatives.
I certainly wouldn’t be climbing on the algorithim train and posting multiple times a week or month or whatever. I don’t have that much to say! And people surely aren’t that interested, hah!
At any rate, I’ll keep you posted.
*my two adult sons wanted to read The Iliad, followed by The Odyssey, to prepare for Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of The Odyssey coming out this summer, and I joined in. We enjoyed the experience so much that we are continuing, keeping up with our aim to explore the classics. We are taking a break from Greek poetry and started out 2026 with Hamlet.
**If you check out my profile (and follow me! Please?) you will see that I only have two posts up there. That’s because I haven’t quite figured out how I will use this platform yet. Hence this blog post! Going forward, I will post a little more regularly. Probably.
*** Just to clarify, you do not have to be a content creator to be on Substack. You can just join for free as a reader and start finding interesting people to follow. You download the app to access the site on your phone, or log in through your browser on your laptop or desktop computer.
****the other two are: one of my sisters (I have two sisters and one brother, so… ha ha) and someone I don’t know in real life. God bless you, john.davies, I see you!
Shakespeare gave us many, many sayings that are still in common use today. I’ve used just a few in this blog post! Can you identify them? Give it a try, but if you need the answers, they are listed below….
Enjoy this wonderful interpretation of Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, performed by the talented Andrew Scott Young, which I discovered on Substack. Highly recommend you take a look!
https://youtu.be/q6CLdCl9TB0?si=cAdMX70lFOFKMgyP
Click on the image to learn more!