Episode 335 - Substack for Fiction and Nonfiction Writers with Elle Griffin
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Elle Griffin discusses SUBSTACK FOR FICTION AND NONFICTION WRITERS, including why she chose Substack over social media, and how she built her audience through direct email outreach instead; how she serialized a gothic novel and earned $120,000 from roughly 150 paid subscribers; a Substack app issue that may be hiding your posts from thousands of your subscribers; and why she believes serialization is the future of publishing.
Elle Griffin writes The Elysian, a newsletter exploring utopian futures, and is the founder of the Elysian Collective, which publishes collaborative essay collections and print pamphlets on the important ideas of our time. She is the author of a forthcoming book titled "We Should Own the Economy" and also gave a talk at TEDxSaltLakeCity on “What if we release books episodically?”
Episode Links
Elle’s TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdqQyw49SIk&t=1s
https://elysian.metalabel.com/
https://wefunder.com/elysianpress
Summary & Transcript
Elle Griffin writes The Elysian, a newsletter exploring utopian futures, and is the founder of the Elysian Collective, where she publishes collaborative essay collections and print pamphlets. She is the author of a forthcoming book titled WE SHOULD OWN THE ECONOMY and gave a talk at TEDx Salt Lake City on serializing books online. In this conversation, Elle laid out how she uses Substack as both a newsletter platform and a publishing platform—and why she chose it over social media, Kickstarter, and traditional publishing.
WHY SUBSTACK WON
Elle’s path to Substack started at a publishing event where an editor at Hachette said the number one thing they were looking for in new authors was either a hundred thousand Twitter followers or ten thousand newsletter subscribers. Elle had neither a social media presence nor a newsletter, so she made a strategic choice: if audience was what mattered, she would build one—but on her own terms. She ruled out social media immediately. A hundred thousand followers on Twitter was nearly worthless in practice because the algorithm decided which fraction of them ever saw your posts. A newsletter offered direct contact with readers, no algorithmic mediation, and a subscriber list she controlled.
She chose Substack in 2021 because it was the only newsletter platform that was also a publishing platform—built specifically for writers. She started sharing her research on utopian economics and grew her subscriber base to around three thousand before she began serializing her first novel.
NO SOCIAL MEDIA, EVER
Elle described trying social media twice and quickly abandoning it both times. Her reasoning went beyond personal preference: she considered short-form social media fundamentally corrosive to public discourse and did not want to participate. More practically, she questioned the value of reach without depth. A TikTok video might be seen by a hundred thousand people scrolling through dog videos, but she would rather have one influential economist read her article about the future of the economy.
Instead of social media, Elle built her audience through direct email outreach—reading five hundred blogs via the RSS reader Feedly, identifying writers whose work intersected with hers, emailing them personally, getting on the phone, incorporating their perspectives into her articles, and sending them the finished piece. That process regularly converted research contacts into collaborators, commenters, and—in one case—a patron who sponsored an entire eleven-part series called LET CITIES BUILD UTOPIA and wrote its foreword.
$120,000 FROM 150 READERS
Elle serialized her gothic novel on Substack, publishing a new chapter every week for forty-two weeks. The first four chapters were free; the rest required a paid subscription. Roughly a hundred and fifty readers followed along as paid subscribers, and because they were subscribing for the duration of the serial rather than buying a single ten-dollar book, she earned $120,000 from that small community.
The math worked because she understood the reality of book sales: ninety-six percent of books sell fewer than a thousand copies. Even bestsellers typically sell around a hundred thousand. For a niche gothic novel that comps with DRACULA and THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, a thousand readers was a realistic ceiling. The subscription model let her earn far more from a small, committed audience than a traditional one-time purchase ever would have.
SUBSTACK VERSUS KICKSTARTER
Matty asked why Elle chose Substack over Kickstarter. Elle explained that her audience at the time was not large enough to fund a book upfront, and the novel was not especially marketable in crowdfunding terms. Kickstarter also carries a binary risk: if you do not hit your goal, you get nothing. Substack’s model—and Metalabel’s, where she now sells print pamphlets—allows ongoing sales without a deadline. Her backlist lives on indefinitely.
For her nonfiction book, WE SHOULD OWN THE ECONOMY, Elle did use a crowdfunding approach—raising $75,000 through Wefunder from about two hundred subscribers. By then she was further along in her career, and the nonfiction topic was more marketable. The lesson: match the funding model to the project’s marketability and your audience’s size at that moment.
THE APP PROBLEM AND THE FUTURE OF SERIALIZATION
Elle flagged an emerging issue with Substack’s app. When subscribers use the app and turn off email notifications, they may never see a post—a problem she discovered when testing revealed that three to four thousand of her subscribers were not receiving her posts. Her workaround: for important announcements like a new pamphlet launch, she sends a direct email to all subscribers rather than relying on a Substack post. For regular content, posts go out as usual. The distinction matters: email still reaches everyone, while app-based delivery does not.
She also described the limitations of Substack for serialized fiction—no native navigation between chapters, no way for a new subscriber who lands on chapter twenty to easily catch up. She has been building her own app to address these problems, combining what she sees as the best of Substack (direct audience relationship, email delivery) with the best of Kindle (sequential reading experience). She views serialization as the future of publishing—China already publishes most books as serials that become films and television series—but acknowledged that Western platforms have not yet cracked the format.
COLLABORATIVE PAMPHLETS AND METALABEL
Elle closed by describing her collaborative essay collections. She assembles a group of writers around a shared prompt—the current project, INTERNET SOVEREIGNTY, features nine writers on the future of the internet—publishes each essay as a Substack post, then collects them as a digital and print pamphlet on Metalabel. Metalabel handles profit-sharing among all contributors, and every participating writer cross-posts their piece to their own subscribers, multiplying the reach. She prints physical copies through Lulu for nine dollars. The model creates a mutual-promotion engine that benefits every writer involved—and she noted that readers routinely pay ten to fifteen dollars for a four-dollar PDF simply to support the project.
This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Elle Griffin. Hey, Elle, how are you doing? And just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Elle Griffin writes The Elysian a newsletter Exploring Utopian Futures and is the founder of The Elysian Collective, where she publishes collaborative essay, collections and print pamphlets on the important ideas of our
She’s the author of a forthcoming book titled WE SHOULD OWN THE ECONOMY, and she also gave a talk at TEDx Salt Lake City on what If We Release Books Episodically. And so, That on its own sounds like a fascinating topic. I think we’ll probably be hitting on that today. But, I found out because, I had started my podcast in support of my new from Expertise to Authority platform, and I was looking for people, the listeners know that they can tell what I’m wrestling with in my own life by the, guests that I invite on the podcast.
And I was kind of. Trying to get my brain around Substack as a platform, as a way to communicate with people and so on. And so I did a little bit of research and Elle, your name popped up and you were kind enough to agree to chat with me about, Substack for writers. And so I thought it would be good just to start out, to give us some context.
[00:01:13] Matty: what were you doing when you were looking for a platform that ended up and you choosing Substack is somewhere where you
[00:01:20] Elle: Yeah, well, I was actually working as a journalist at the time, but I was interested in finding a place to publish my novel. I had written a. A gothic novel on the side. And, I was doing the traditional thing and pitching it to literary agents. And at the time I attended a, some kind of publishing event and I believe it was, an editor at Hachette who got up to speak and said.
That the number one thing that they were looking for in new authors, when they’re deciding what to publish at Hachette was an author that either had a hundred thousand Twitter followers or an author with 10,000 newsletter subscribers. And I thought, okay, well I am not on social
I have no newsletter. if, if it doesn’t matter what my book is about or what my book topic is and the most important thing is that I already have an audience, then I might as well create an audience. I started doing the research and, you know, social media platforms are like not a
Like building a hundred thousand followers on, on Twitter especially now is almost worthless. A very small portion of those followers will actually see or. So your work. So, I decided to start a newsletter instead. And, but the, I figured I would have, you know, direct content contact with my readers as opposed to like allowing the algorithm to
So I started a newsletter in 2021 and, I just started sharing these findings with people, as a way to kind of. Start growing a following in the six months leading up to my first, my, when I decided to publish my book online. and so that’s how I got on Substack at the time, it was of all the newsletter platforms, it was the only one that was also a publishing platform, so it was specifically for writers.
and so it just made sense as the best place for me at the time.
[00:03:10] Matty: I specifically have a question about newsletters because I actually started on Substack because I had an interview with another past podcast guest, Angelique Fons, and she was saying she had chosen Substack very much for the reasons that, that you were saying,
Email subscription service. And then she also pointed out to me, you could do podcasts from Substack. And I was like, well, that sounds like a willing wi, a winning combination.
[00:03:36] Elle: Yeah.
[00:03:36] Matty: But I started thinking that although certainly you are reaching your followers, via a substack, newsletter or by posting and then sending it out as an email, and you do get, correct me if I’m wrong, you get that information yourself.
You’re, it’s not being mediated. You could. Email them outside Substack if you wanted to and if that was allowed by the terms and conditions. But I also wonder if it’s limiting in that a person has to have some exposure to substack or be willing to, to at least go there
Was that, a consideration when you started out? Have you found that to
[00:04:16] Elle: So that’s not actually the case. most people like you, if you go to my website, www dot ElysianPress.com, you’ll get a landing page that says like, subscribe to my news. And you’ll put in your email address. If you do nothing else, you will only receive my newsletter via your email, like a traditional newsletter.
app users are actually a very small portion of the population, even the, even today now that the app is like a bigger deal, only about 5% of my readers are reading in the app. Most are still reading in their email. So the newsletter is still the primary function, even though. There’s now an app and you can like go in the app and read there instead, but you don’t have to first be a Substack subscriber to subscribe to my
[00:04:58] Matty: That’s great to know. I know I’m going to leave this conversation with all sorts of to-dos for myself, for my own substack, and improving my use of it.
[00:05:05] Matty: so you said that you weren’t on social media. Have you ever used social media to reach a, an audience of followers or,
[00:05:16] Elle: When I first got on social or when I first got on Substack, and then again a couple years in. there was like two times where I looked at joining social media as a way to try to market my work because, you know, signing up for a newsletter doesn’t automatically give you readers. You still need to have a way to get your writing in
and so there were two times where I considered, joining social media and both times, quickly got off of it because I just, I hate it so much. and so I, I ultimately decided that, I mean, I, this is a personal stance, but I just think that a lot of short form social media is kind of
And so I didn’t want to be part of that, and I also didn’t care if, say I, for example, I could prioritize video instead of writing, and I could create a video that might reach a hundred thousand people on TikTok, but what is the result of that? Somebody just kind of is watching people dancing videos or like dog videos and then sees you for like three seconds and then that video has a hundred thousand people see
Like that didn’t seem a good outcome to me. I would rather have one person like. The top economist for the US government to read my article about what I think the future of the economy should look like than to try to reach a hundred thousand people, you know, that have no influence
And so I purposely chose. To kind of focus on, a more influential audience and a small niche audience rather than this kind of like large mass media audience. and that has served me really well over time. But kind of what that means is instead of, you know, publishing 10 social
What I’m doing is like writing a draft of an email and then like emailing it to 10 people. I admire being like, I’m going to publish this on Thursday. I would love your input. I would love to, you know, get to know you and like, think, see what you think about this. get on the phone with them. see. You know, get their perspective, add some quotes from them, publish it, send it to them again and say, here’s my
Like, what do you think? and this leads to them coming and commenting on the post or writing their own post and follow up to it. or else like doing a podcast with them where we’re talking about both of our views. and so I intentionally am like. Constantly doing outreach just via email, like emailing people I admire to be like, your work on this is so
Can I talk to you about it for an upcoming article? and so I’ve made my connections that way instead of in a social media way, which is kind of unusual, I guess.
[00:07:47] Matty: Well, I think that there are probably a lot of people who are. Are experiencing exactly the frustration you were. I know that, at the end of last year, I pulled way back on my social media. I still, have a presence on Facebook for my, fiction platform, my nonfiction platform. , because sometimes I just want to like, share a cute picture, my dog.
But it, it is very. Superficial and relying on that exclusively, I think as you’re saying is a real hazard. And I’m also seeing an evolving difference here that I think we want to talk about between fiction authors and nonfiction authors. And I know for my, nonfiction platform, I love
Uh, so I’m using Substack primarily because I wanted to write a book on a topic. I knew that if I was posting chapters periodically, it wouldn’t incentivize me to get it done. That’s what I’m doing on Substack, and I’m feeding that by interviewing people on the topic. And then oftentimes in the podcast that is part of, my substack.
There will be the interview with the person, and then I’ll follow it up with whatever. Article, that interview inspired me to write. but I had not thought about doing what you’re doing, which is working that community, you know, building that community in advance with those. how did you find the people that you wanted to be part of that in essence,
[00:09:10] Elle: I mean, I think it really stems from the fact that I’m actually like a reader first and a writer second. and so I read like 500 blogs, or like follow 500 blogs or so. I read all of them via Feedly, which is an RSS reader. I even read all of my substack on,
and so there’s a lot of writers that I follow and admire and whose work influences mine, and I’ll be researching a subject, for example, and then I’ll see in my feed. A writer who literally wrote about the topic that I’m researching right now. And so then I’ll instantly write to them and be like, I just saw your article on this.
This is so good. I Will you tell me more about like what you said here? and then we’ll get on the phone and we’ll talk about it. and like for example, my most recent series was an 11 part series called LET CITIES BUILD UTOPIA. It’s about the future of cities. and so this was like a
20,000 word, you know, a hundred page,article that I was writing. And as I was going, I was researching, for example, Georgism. And so this one newsletter, Progress and Poverty was writing a lot about Georgism at the time. So I like instantly, you know, wrote to them and was like, oh my gosh, will you tell me more about this?
Like, what. What did you mean by that? And he got on the phone with me and explained it to me, and that became a part of my article. And then when I was done with the article, I was like, here’s the finished product. thank you so much for your help, your research, like talking to
he ended up reading the whole article and loved it, and then became the patron of the project, which means that they sponsored it and funded the series and wrote the forward to the series. before it was. Even published. So then when it came out, it was debuted as an 11 part series
and we were able, I was able to fund the, this like deep research project as we went. And then he was also sharing the project as it was publishing live, with people in his circle. That would also be interested in it. So it created this little community around it as it was publishing. and this is just because I, like he was writing about
So that’s just kind of how I, I, I don’t really like the, um, I’m just a solo writer here researching by myself kind of vibe. I like need to talk to other people and brainstorm with them and kind of see what their thoughts are to learn from their experience. So just kind of how I
[00:11:33] Matty: Yeah, I think that’s a much more satisfying. way to exist anyway. and I’m realizing another thing, another action item I might take from this is that I’m starting to be more diligent with my consulting clients about making a note about their areas of interest, like book marketing or distribution or social media or
And then whenever I put out a episode of the podcast, I. Check it against the list of their interests. So if somebody’s really interested in social media and I do an episode on social media, then I get in touch with them and say, Hey, I just wanted to make sure that you were aware that, you know, I just talked with someone about a topic that might be
And I like that from a business point of view, because it’s keeping me top of mind with them. You know, they might say, oh yeah, that’s great. Like I’d love to talk to Matty about that and schedule a consulting session. but I think just in general, along with all the other information that people track about their contacts, keeping that particular list of interests, would be great.
And now I’m going to expand that to the people that I’ve interviewed for my, from Expertise to Authority podcast and also just the other experts in that area, like you’re saying, so that I can periodically loop back to them and say, Hey, here’s another angle on that thing that we talked
And encourage them to, reengage that way.
[00:12:51] Elle: Yeah, we kind of do that as well in a, we have like a private Slack channel for my newsletter that I’ll invite people to for that reason, so that when there’s updates and stuff, we can be like, oh, I just saw this link. You might like it. so I totally like
[00:13:05] Matty: I think anything that is networking or marketing or one of those other creepy terms where you’re actually bringing value to the person you’re contacting is always a more comfortable interaction than, Hey, do you want to meet with me again?
[00:13:17] Matty: the other thing you said that I thought was very
And I think that this is another, I think a lot of my interest in talking with you about Substack is that. In a sense, I think people lump it in with social media because it’s like a way to get in touch with people you don’t know yet. But I think an intrinsic part of that change that I’m seeing in my own behavior as a consumer of this content is that, you know, I could like a thousand people, I could scroll through their posts on Facebook, but if I’m engaging with them in a more
Now in the same amount of time I can maybe only really follow, I don’t know, 10 blogs or something like that, and I very quickly reach my capacity for the amount of content I’m willing to read like that. I’d rather read a couple of things very deeply, which I think is going back to this idea of this is a platform that enables you to make perhaps a smaller number, maybe just as many, but perhaps a smaller number, but
So. So the idea that you’re following 500 blogs fascinates me. Can you talk a little bit about your behavior as a consumer of this content?
[00:14:29] Elle: Yeah, so, and this is why I read via RSS reader because. It allows you to organize content in a way that you can’t on Substack. So for example,The way that I have my Feedly organized is that I save blogs that I’m following into categories. So it’s like my favorites, my second favorites, my third favorites, news, uh, all news and then, overflow.
so there’s five categories and I, some days I only read my favorite. some days I get through my favorites and my second favorites. Sometimes I get through my favorites, second favorites, and third favorites. Sometimes I get to the news, but, but so there’s like, you know, a little bit of writers in the top tier, a little bit more writers in the
And then the overflow category is just like all the various people that I’m following that I don’t often read all of those, you know, every single one. The way that I kind of think about it is like if I read every single thing that they write, then they go in my favorites category. If I read like 50% of the things they write, then they’re in
if I just want to read them like 25% of the time or less, then I just put them in the overflow category so I can just like browse that on occasion. but yeah, it’s kind of a filter to wait to be able to like read as much as I, I want to read in that day. And so that’s why I
[00:15:48] Matty: It is a whole different mindset as a. As a consumer, and I always think that people do better at creating content for platform where they’re an enthusiastic consumer. And so I think that I’m still, like, sometimes I’ll be reading, I generally read on Substack and so I am looking through other people’s stuff and following them, sometimes subscribing and so on.
and I see that in the same way that I was a consumer of podcasts before I launched a podcast, and so I sort of already understood the conventions of the podcast platform. I sort of started posting on. Substack before I’d spent a lot of time there. And so as I go along I definitely see like, oh, I see where this piece of metadata is going to show up, so I have to use it in a different way than I thought I was
And so there is just that learning curve as the creator of content where you have to understand what you need to do in order to meet the
[00:16:45] Elle: Yeah, exactly. And I think this is why if you spend all of your time on Twitter, you’ll probably be really good at Twitter because you’re already there, so you’re already publishing there and you’re. Springing notifications there and you’re replying to people on there. If you’re not doing that on Twitter and you’re just publishing stuff there without ever looking at it, then you won’t grow on Twitter because you’re not interacting with the community.
Right. It’s the same thing on Substack or any other platform, like where you engage the most, you’ll be like most attentive to and thus be better at. I am definitely putting myself at a disadvantage by not reading on Substack anymore, but. it became a little bit more social
They have like this notes feature, which is kind of a short form Twitter alternative. And, whenever I post on that, I get kind of stressed. , because then I have to monitor people’s replies to it. And I don’t like that. I would rather write a long form piece and I will monitor the comments on that piece forever because I love long form posts and
but short form PO posts are so hard to respond to because you’re like. Well, if I wr, if I wrote this in long form, then it would all make sense. But instead we’re like debating in these tiny little snippets of one paragraph or less. and so you can never really fully get your point across. And so the interactions are just really time consuming and you just have to be constantly like, reply, reply, reply, reply, reply.
Whereas like on a comment, somebody might respond with their own whole full post in the comments, and then I can. Respond to that because we are both, we both shared the entirety, our view. so I just,I agree with you. You have to kind of interact the way that you naturally would
[00:18:22] Matty: Yeah, the, change of backing off some of the other platforms that I made last year, I was just, this was something I was only using for my nonfiction platform. I was using a social media posting tool and all I was using it for was putting up posts that would say when a new episode was up and what the topic was and a link to it
and so I wasn’t setting an expectation that I was going to interact at all. But on the other hand, I did feel like at some point I just felt like. You know, why bother if I’m never on Instagram? Who knows what’s going on over there with my posts? Um, but I also like that idea that the content you post is sort of setting an expectation for the response
And so naturally someone who reads a long well thought through post is going to be more likely to comment in a long and well thought through way. And so those interactions are less about just. You know, confirming that you see the person there online and actually having a conversation that
Especially, well, I was going to say, especially for nonfiction. I’m sure this spills over to fiction too, and we’ll probably talk about that as well. But,the benefit is more two way when you have those kinds of
[00:19:33] Elle: Yes, exactly, which I love. Really fun.
[00:19:37] Matty: I also like that idea because I had a weird interaction with, someone recently about someone who wanted to hold their information very close to the vest, and it was not really the. Mindset I was used to encountering in my own professional interactions, and I like that idea of it being a platform to encourage collegiality and cooperation, and that if you’re looking at those people who are posting about similar topics as colleagues and not competitors, I imagine that paves the way for those kinds of interactions as well.
[00:20:06] Elle: absolutely. Yeah. It’s, it, you know, there’s a, there’s a million of us that love to write. There’s no real competition , because you can’t really compete with everyone. you’re just, you might be similar to somebody else and somebody might like reading both of you, and that’s a good thing.
[00:20:20] Matty: Yeah, I think there are people in the nonfiction world who are writing like truly new, groundbreaking stuff and that’s great, but there are a lot of us who are writing. Things where the facts are not necessarily the breakthrough thing, it’s how we’re expressing them, or it’s the group we’re targeting, or it’s the metaphors we’re using to illustrate them or what, or the examples we’re using to illustrate them, you know, that we’re using to personalize what we’re
So, let’s talk now a little bit about fiction. we found out how you used, Substack as a platform for your nonfiction. Talk a little bit
[00:20:54] Elle: Yeah, I did. Um, I, my first novel was a gothic novel and I serialized it on Substack. So I shared a new chapter every week for like 42 weeks. and that, And a after that, that I think ended in 2022. since then I’ve published a few short fiction things, but, I’ll eventually, when I finish my second novel, I’ll serialize that as
but my first novel, the way that I did it was, the first four chapters were open to free subscribers, and then it was paid the rest of the time. I think it was, you’ll probably have to verify from my TEDx talk, but I think it was like a hundred and. 50 some people that were
[00:21:35] Elle: So they were paid subscribers, because, and because they were paid subscribers rather than buying the whole book as one, \$10 piece, they were subscribing for, you know, 42 weeks. I earned \$120,000 from that small community for that book and was able to like print the book out for some of my premium subscribers at the end, which
And so it was a fun experiment in like publishing for a niche audience because I knew at the time that 96% of books sell less than a thousand copies. And so in even the bestselling books sell like a hundred thousand copies. So, unless you’re like the Obamas, nobody is getting millions of. Book sales, or like, oh, the places you can go, you know,
So, so I knew that I was looking at a thousand readers tops. and especially for a niche ic novel that comps with like Dracula and, the count of Monte Cristo. So, so I was excited to publish it for a small niche audience in a way that worked a lot better than like, here, buy
and so that was the way I did it and it was fun and I’ll do something similar when I published my second novel, but that’s a little ways out.
[00:22:46] Matty: So unlike some of our previous conversation where what I was thinking of is substack versus something like Facebook or Twitter, what have you. Now I’m thinking of Substack versus Kickstarter. So how, why did you choose Substack rather than a more
[00:23:03] Elle: so by the time I started publishing my book, I had like 6,000 subscribers. no, actually that’s not right. I think I had 6,000 by the time my book was done. So I must have had like 3000 or something when I started publishing my novel. and so I don’t think I
Fund the book upfront and the book was like not super marketable. I did do that with my first non-fiction book. So, only I didn’t use Kickstarter, I used Wefunder. but with my non-fiction book, I think that’s super marketable. And so, for my book, WE SHOULD OWN THE ECONOMY. I put it up on Wefunder, and raised \$75,000, book advance from
Subscribers. and that like funded the research process as well as all my book printing, editing, and publishing costs. and so I think it was a good, a good model for my nonfiction book when I was a little bit later in my career, but it was, it would’ve been difficult for me to pull off that early in my career and with a niche kind of gothic novel.
[00:24:04] Matty: It also strikes me as someone who’s never run either, either kind of, campaign, that there’s a time element associated with Kickstarter that wouldn’t, that probably could be associated with Substack, but isn’t necessary to, to have on Substack.
[00:24:21] Elle: yeah. And that part is kind of stressful because the thing about Kickstarter is you’re like, I have to raise this amount of money and if I don’t make it, I’m not doing it. which is kind of a bummer because you, it’s like you have one month to sort of. Raise the money, and if you don’t get any of it.
Whereas, you know, on, on Substack or even on Metalabel where I now pun publish my print pamphlets, people can just keep buying it forever. It’s like my own back list, so to speak, without me needing to like make it or break it and have the, run the risk of breaking it.
[00:24:52] Matty: Well, one thing that I looked at in Substack, and maybe I couldn’t find it just , because I was looking at in the wrong place, but what I had thought I would be able to do is to put up the first, let’s say six articles, IE the first six chapters of my eventual book. And then that would all be free. And then after some number it would be paid, but what the option I was seeing was that I could only.
Do that. I could only limit what free people could see based on time ago. So you could see the last two months, or three months, or four months or something like that of stuff free. But what I really wanted to do is show them the first things free and the later things for paid.
[00:25:32] Elle: So that’s what I did as well. So you just, you publish the first few posts as a free post and they’ll remain free forever. and then from there on out, you add a paywall to the rest and those remain paid for the forever. So you could choose on a per post
[00:25:46] Matty: I may have just have to go back and set those, like you’re saying, manually rather than trying to do it automatically.
[00:25:51] Elle: Yes, exactly.
[00:25:53] Matty: And I can also imagine, I’m trying to think of how I could use this for by fiction. So the two things that have occurred to me are, putting out a novel chapter by chapter. Just it sounds like you may have done or for a collection, perhaps putting out
Already collected in a collection and say, if you just want to read a couple, you can subscribe or you can buy the book. Or the next time I start putting collection together, started on Substack so that there isn’t a book for them to go to, and then have the book be the ultimate
[00:26:30] Elle: Yeah, that’s what I did. The second option. Yeah, but you could do either. I suppose it just depends on what your
Yeah, I guess it depends on how willing people are to follow you along through a journey that might span, I mean, months it sounds like in your case. I do. Yeah, I do think it could be easier to publish series online. Like I don’t, Substack is not made for series and it’s very hard to make it work for series because you know, with my novel, I had to put links at the top every time. Like, if you’re just joining us now, start at the prologue here, or you know, and then at the end of
Every, chapter, I’d have to put like, continue on to the next chapter here. Here’s a link. You know, so you have to like, add these things so people can navigate it. And if somebody subscribes in the middle and they see like chapter 20 hit their inbox, like it’ll be really hard for
And then meanwhile they’re getting chapter 21 next week and chapter 22, and they’re like, how do I catch up? So it’s definitely not ideal for reading and they’re. There are, you know, like Wattpad and things like that, that try to make it more ideal, but then there they come with, you
So, I did try to, as a, as an experiment for a project I’m publishing now, I actually created my own app that allows you to publish series. so I’ll send you a link after this and you can try it out and see what you think. but I wanted to fix these problems of like, how do you publish a
kind of mixing the best of Substack with the best of Kindle. and so I, I think there’s room for. Disruption here. Like we, we need that. Like Kindle is not the best way to publish a book, but neither is Substack.
[00:28:08] Matty: Yeah, the serialization platforms, I do have a, an episode. From a little while ago with J.P. Reinfleisch the Ninth about, his, publication of serialization and even I think between the time he and I scheduled that and then we had the interview, another
And so it does seem that these platforms are, you know, keep taking runs at doing the serialization thing. And, Not a lot of them
[00:28:35] Elle: I.
[00:28:36] Matty: last for the, you know, last for as long as you would hope they would. And so this option where one can take, more of the control into one’s own’s hand, own hands would be very nice.
[00:28:45] Elle: I know. Yeah, I agree. And it’s such a bummer too because China does it. So almost every book published in China is a serial and they’ve got apps that do it. and that’s what everybody follows. And they all become films and tv, television series. And I watch all the television series , because I can’t read the books, but I
There’s. Good. so the, it can be done and it can be done really profitably. and I do think it’s the future of publishing, but we just haven’t really caught on in the US and like Western markets yet.
[00:29:14] Matty: I wonder if that’s because other people have the same approach I do about series that if there’s a series I think I’m really going to like on TV IJ or you know, on a streaming service or something. I just wait until it’s all done because I hate, you know, watching three of them and then having to wait a week for number four.
I wonder if that stands in the way of people. Engaging in serials the way you would hope they would like. What it makes me think of is podcasts where they say like, here’s episode one. Over the next 12 weeks we’ll be doing such and such. But if you are like a special subscriber, then you can get them all at once.
[00:29:45] Elle: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you should be able to do things like that. That’d be cool. And I’d be curious, I’m curious how many people, , because I’m the same way with book series, like I will not read as. A book series until all the books are out. , because I hate having a cliffhanger and then waiting two years or
but a lot of people don’t read that way. A lot of people read it instantly and then like reread it when the second book comes out and then reread both. So like there, there’s clearly a lot of people who, who don’t, who read them, you know, as they come out. So it’s just, we
[00:30:18] Matty: Um, so I’m wondering if, looking across both fiction and nonfiction, but, and specifically on substack, are there things that you’ve seen evolve as best practices either that apply to both or apply to either one or pitfalls that you see other, contributors falling into that you would want to warn people who want to experiment
[00:30:42] Elle: Um, I would just say, um. The for, for audience growth recommendations are still the best thing. So like, recommend people and find like-minded individuals that can recommend you in return. that’s just, I, that’s honestly where most of my subscribers come from now. so. That’s like a big deal. And then that’s really nice because if they suddenly have a viral moment and go viral, then you might just get a ton of subscribers one day and be like, whoa, their newsletter must have gone viral, because I’m getting some subset of the
so I think that’s a really important tool. I think be aware of one thing I’ve noticed, , because the first two years when I was on Substack, it was just a newsletter and there wasn’t an app or any social media ation. and the one thing that I’ve noticed in the change is that now if you, you can, you can get the Substack app, find my newsletter that way,
and then only get it in the app. You can turn off email notifications. and so what that’s done is I recently did some testing and realized that if I send something as a post on substack, like three to 4,000 people that are my subscribers don’t get it. And I was like, why is that happening? Like, why are.
Why is so much of my list not actually getting this post? and so I sent an email instead, which you can do in Substack. You just go to your subscribers and you click all of them and then you send them an email and that would go to everyone. and so I kind of devised from this that it, when you send a post on Substack, you do risk.
you know, some people just like having the app turning off email notifications and then not checking the app, or not looking at the app anymore. and so they don’t ever see your post. Whereas when you send an email, they’ll all see it , because it goes to their email. so I think there is some, you know, there’s some.
There’s some downside to there being the Substack app because you kind of had a captive audience with email. and so that’s a kind of risk and worth like, so now when I have a print pamphlet come out, I email about it, at the beginning of the series and at the end of the series while
but I think that’s really probably. My best and worst case, I think.
[00:32:59] Matty: Well, the, what you were saying about the pros and cons of, it being more. Amplified is that one of my goals is to, as I’m working on this from expertise to authority platform, to be able to e eventually send people to Substack into my YouTube and like that. And so, especially if I’m pitching myself for a speaking engagement or a consulting engagement, to be able to say, go and read through these
You know, so it could be more of a resume builder, I guess, if you’re tapping into the app side and then more of a connection. and a one-on-one connection tool if you’re tapping more into the email side.
[00:33:36] Elle: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I could see that. it’s
[00:33:41] Matty: Yeah.
[00:33:54] Matty: So you did mention the other thing that I don’t think is associated with Substack, but I’m intrigued anyway and maybe it’s more associated than I’m thinking. And that is collaborative essay collections and print pamphlets. So I read that as part of your bio. Just talk a little bit about, what that is.
[00:33:56] Elle: Yeah. So I do, I collect either my work, so in the case of my LET CITIES BUILD UTOPIA series, that was 11 parts that I wrote all of them. And then I collect them together as a pi, as a digital and print pamphlet. And I sell those on Metalabel for like \$4
I print them through Lulu, which is just awesome. And then, and that’s kind of, so that’s how I’ll do it for like a long form. Article that I research, but then I’ll also do collaborative print pamphlets where I’ll say, here’s a subject. the one we’re publishing right now is called INTERNET SOVEREIGNTY, and it’s like nine different writers.
And we’re each writing an essay for the collection about the future of the internet. so everybody’s writing on a different topic, but just according to the prompt. And then I publish them all. On my Substack, on The Elysian, in order. So like, here’s the 10 or 11 posts, with, with a patron that sponsors the issue and writes the forward to the pamphlet.
and then I sell the whole collection as a print pamphlet, a digital and print pamphlet on Metalabel. and Metalabel allows you to profit share. So we’ll do, you know, split all the profits earned from the pamphlet. with all the writers who participated. so what’s cool about that is, is, one you get.
You, you collect a bunch of writers in one place. Two, every writer promotes and cross posts their part of the pamphlet. So when their article comes out, they cross post it to their subscribers as well. all participating writers are collectively sharing the print pamphlet and
and so we kind of get this like, you know, nine writers all. All promoting the same thing. but it’s all being published on The Elysian so everyone can kind of like come to one place to comment and all of that. But, we’re kind of all benefiting from being part of it. So that’s kind of a fun, that’s one fun thing I’ve been experimenting
[00:35:52] Matty: That sounds very cool and something that I can imagine people who are pulling together, let’s say. Short story anthologies would want to, examine, because I’m thinking of like a writer’s group, like a mystery writer’s group or something who wants to write a bunch of mysteries and then wants to put out exactly the kind
that provides all sorts of really cool ways to cross, promote, promote,
[00:36:14] Elle: Yeah, exactly. And I was, I’ve been shocked at how many, like when Metalabel first came out, I was like, who would buy a PDF? That seems ridiculous, but you’d be surprised A lot of people, and they, and they. You know, they have a starting rate. Like I’ll put \$4 for the PDF and people will put 10 or \$15 just because they want to support the project, for the PDF.
[00:36:39] Matty: Is That is very cool. Maybe I’ll have to talk with someone from. Um, uh, that organization too for the podcast. , because that would be fun to find out. All the other ways writers can use that kind of service,
[00:36:49] Elle: Yeah, it’s really fun. I love it.
[00:36:51] Matty: so, cool. Well, Elle, thank you so much for agreeing to talk with me about Substack for fiction and nonfiction writers, and please let everyone know where they can go to find out more
[00:37:01] Elle: Yeah, my main newsletter is at www dot ElysianPress.com. and you can also find, The Elysian Collective on Metalabel. and yeah, that’s probably the best two places.
[00:37:12] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:37:13] Elle: Yeah. Thank you.