Advice to Writers: How to Help Your Readers
Some tips and tricks to make your Substack more user-friendly and maintain readership
Introduction & Disclaimer
This post is inspired by my own sense of overwhelm from all the content/writing available on Substack. I think it’s awesome so many people are able to share their insights and creativity… it’s just a LOT. What follows here are some tips that I think all Substackers should leverage to make life easier for their readers/subscribers.
Disclaimer: This is one of those things that shouldn’t need to be said but does, because the internet: I am not telling you how or what to write. I am not telling you that you need to do anything. What follows is my advice and my reasoning behind that advice.
Why should you listen to me? I see a lot of complaints on Substack from writers about having trouble attracting readers. Hi 👋 I’m a reader1. And the main reason you’re not getting my attention is because your shit is disorganized. I also have my own newsletter means that I have some familiarity with the tools available to Substackers that can help you better organize your newsletter(s). Am I the paragon of organization? No. When you get an email from my newsletter or visit my Substack do you know what’s inside and where to find stuff? If you’re reasonably competent, yes.
I’m not going to talk about graphic design, or which layouts are the best, or publishing strategies, or when to pivot to paid. This is ‘Be Nice to Your Readers 101.’ There may be a part two at some point, but these are the basics.
Enough preamble. Let’s get into this…
The About Page
Your Introduction(s)
Substack gives you a default “About” page. Please make this the first damn thing you update, holy crap. Here’s mine. What you’ll notice is that it is divided into easy-to-understand sections. I introduce myself (your mileage may vary on how much personal information you may want to provide) and my newsletter’s purpose/intent (please don’t make this a mystery).
Your Newsletter’s Purpose
You do not need to know everything you are ever going to write ahead of time. No one is asking you to see into the future2, but if you don’t at least know the broad strokes of what you intend to write you should not have a newsletter in the first place.
Which is not to say that you can’t be a rambler, or a journaler, or someone who has to type out their thoughts to fully process them. All of that is cool and good, but you need to make people aware that’s your intention from the jump. I (personally) might read a researched and well thought out essay on an author I’ve never head of — say, William Vollmann — but I’m (personally) not going to read your disjointed thoughts on Europe Central. I’m one reader, but if you’re asking a reader to invest their time in your writing, you should at least let them know if you’re shooting from the hip or aiming down the sights.
Which again is NOT to say you SHOULDN’T write whatever you want! Write what you want to write, but don’t make readers have to search through all your production to find your product(s).
Your Sales Pitch(es)
If you are a multi-hyphenate? Do you write and are an editor, or graphic designer, or journalist, or ghost-writer, or spiritual medium? Make sure to mention this in your About page. Better: in addition to mentioning it in your about page, have a separate page/tab for each of your hyphens3. For example, as a reader/reviewer, I have a section that says you can request that I review your work. I tell you what to expect and then link you to my Review Requests page.
This is a huge thing I’ve learned from decades of being a corporate drone: slap people across the face with the “so what?” There should be no mystery for people coming to your page/newsletter wanting X as to whether:
They’ll be able to find it all there
Where exactly they will be able to find it
Substack also provides a few canned versions of these (e.g. “Why subscribe?”). You can modify these, add to them, or delete them entirely. They serve as a good foundation for the kind of information you’ll want to include, especially if you’re doing paid tiers.
If you have external websites or social media, include the links and clearly label what each is and why someone would want to click.
Categorization
Remember how I said you should have an idea of what sort of writing you’ll be doing? This is why. Substack allows you to create “Sections4.” Think of these as mini-newsletters within your newsletter. For example, inside of Vinny Reads I have Substack Summer for my Substack novel reading/reviewing project, and Tallboys which is my serialized fiction series. The so what: once you’ve created these categories, your readers can opt in and out of them to their heart’s content.
Let’s say someone is only interested in my fiction (ha! hahaha!), they can go to Manage Subscription and deselect all the other aspects of my newsletter except Tallboys and then they’d only get updates categorized as such. This is a great tool. Holy shit, use this tool. Even if your Sections are as simple as “Fiction” and “Essays,” or “Works in Progress” and “Finished Stories” the amount of inbox clutter this could reduce for folks is enormous.
But I want people to read ALL my stuff! Hey, me too, buddy. I also want them to like, comment, provide feedback, get a paid subscription, and worship the ground I walk on. And as a reader, I actually do try to read as much of your work as possible and provide a like and thoughtful comments (if I have them). But I also subscribe to 150+ newsletters. Be realistic about what you’re asking for from readers.
Some potential categories:
Fiction
Essays
News
Personal, professional, a scathing critique of Proposition 305.
Serialized Fiction Series (by name)
These can be grouped together or separated by series. The former makes your Substack look cleaner; the latter makes managing subscriptions easier for your readers.
Work(s) in Progress
Prompt/Practice Work
Another bit on this; you can also publish to Substack without sending an email. I highly recommend this if you have a writers’ group using Substack and you’re targeting their input versus spamming all your readers with your practice work.
Weekly (or Bi-Weekly, or Monthly…) Reviews or Digests
Digests are a great way to share all of your work at the end of the week, while allowing folks to opt out of getting emails for every single thing you write. I love these, they make my life so much easier.
Separate Sections for each of your hyphens (e.g. one for editor, or graphic design, etc.)
You can come up with cool names or branding for these things as well (look at
’s “Autopsy” and “Autoclave” for examples), but make sure that your About page explains what each of these are.
Posts
Again, I am not telling you what to write and you can feel free to ignore this advice if it messes with your aesthetics or style or whatever. I’m going to use
as one example here, because I literally just got an email from his newsletter and it does a good job of illustrating my points.
Title
The title can actually be the most ambiguous part of your newsletter. The only caveat to this would be that if it is part of a series, please include some kind of label. Otherwise, go wild. I’ll add
here as an example, too:
This is pretty good, but I would move the subtitle up into the title itself and use the subtitle to explain the work. Which segues us into…
Subtitle
I’m going to stop reading all posts without subtitles5. Tell me what the hell I’m about to read! This doesn’t need to be rote or boring, either. Let’s look at Alex’s subtitle: “Observations in gig work, a disturbing internet video, and the Simpsons.” “Observations” tells me what type of post I’m about to read, and everything else tells me what topics will be covered. This is excellent.
MA’s gives me enough to make an educated guess: “I:” tells me this is likely serialized fiction. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough. My preference would be for the title to be Schwess the (un)Chaste. Part I: The Prayer Cavern and the subtitle to be An irreverent, episodic fantasy tale… BUT that is just my preference. All the necessary information is there. You can have a minimalist approach and still convey all the necessary information.
Post Introduction
Both of these are great examples of why and what to include in an introductory section. Alex’s covers a “thank you;” some recent news and humble-bragging6; and a call-to-action for readers disguised as another thanks: engage, comment, subscribe, repost; and a joke. I always love a good self-deprecating joke. AND he includes a subscribe button. 🧑🍳
MA’s is just as good. It tells me what I’m about to read (fantasy), what style to expect (irreverent), that it is part of a larger piece (episodic), but it is unfinished (“not sure how far this will go”). It also includes a call-to-action for the reader in “Feed me?” (a request for feedback).
The difference between these two shows how you can vary this introduction to fit your personal style without losing the key messages of what, why, and so what.
Body
Go bananas🍌. This is your newsletter. I am not the Content God; I don’t even care if you spellcheck. I would ask that you take into account readability, though. Check how things look on desktop and mobile, if the post is too long for an email, include that at the top. If you’re writing something like poetry that might have a particular formatting - let the reader know the preferred way to read your work (tablet, mobile, desktop, printed and read while hanging upside down like a bat, etc.).
Closing
This is optional, but it’s also an opportunity. Here’s one from
:
Upgrade/Subscribe button at the end — if someone liked what they just read, this is probably where you’re going to “sell” your newsletter to them.
Author’s note — this includes some backstory on the piece and shout-out to two other writers. Always great to give folks something else to check out.
As an alternative, you can also pimp your own stuff with a “If you liked this, please consider reading…”
If your piece is part of a series, you might consider editing it to add a link to the NEXT installment after it’s been published. This reduces the friction for the reader of needing to double-back and find the next part. Keep them reading with one click.
You can also include or reiterate your call to action here. For example, “I’m looking for feedback on X,” or “what do you think of Y?” or “Don’t forget to smash that Subscribe button!”
Invite/Leaderboard — I’m hot and cold on this feature, but I know some people love it. This is a good place to put it if you like it.
Closing
This is already 2000 words, and I try not to be too long-winded, so we’ll wrap up part one here. I am not a UI/UX designer so I can’t tell you how to make your Substack look pretty or function better, but these are also things you should consider.
Some final thoughts, though, in case anyone is turned off or intimidated by the above:
Do not let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Get started writing, put your work out there into the world and worry about organization as a secondary concern. No use making the perfectly designed newsletter if it has no content.
Ask your readers for feedback. This is an additional request of their time and attention so be specific. Use that feedback to help you organize. Even if all your current readers say your essays suck, that doesn’t mean you have to stop writing essays. Allow those folks to opt out and hopefully your essays will find a separate audience.
The purpose of this post is to help you help your readers. If any of it (or all of it) doesn’t help you or them, then feel free to ignore it, alter it, or use it as Exhibit A for why I should be burned at the stake. In the end of just one (very opinionated!) dude-guy reading too many newsletters...
Please feel free to comment with your own tips and tricks as well!
I do some writing, too, but the amount of writing I consume on Substack vastly outweighs my production. Hence, Vinny Reads and not Vinny Writes.
If you can though, HMU with them Powerball numbers.
More about which in a minute.
Dashboard → Settings → Sections
This is probably an empty threat, but you never know. I am a pedant.
Always pimp your stuff.
Another good rule of thumb: if you're going to number things sequentially don't skip or repeat numbers... like I just realized I did for the Weekly Digests (they've now been updated). 😅