Earlier this year I looked around at potential platforms to use for a newsletter. Several authors that I’m acquainted with send these out sporadically and it seems like a good way to build and keep in contact with their readership. So after a bit of deliberation and looking at what other people were using I decided on Substack.
It’s been interesting. There’s a vibrant community on Substack but also a cohort of people who are vehemently against it, although I’ve yet to see any evidence to back up their claims. Personally I’m finding it very friendly and useful. There’s all sorts of publishing insights and interesting people there.
I started my newsletter back in February and slowly started to build traction. Substack has an interesting setup where you can write articles which will be sent out to your subscribers – the newsletter part – and also has notes which are pretty much like all the other social media platforms where you can follow people and they can follow you, separate from actually subscribing to receive your articles by email.
I started with a monthly newsletter but then I noticed that several of the people I was subscribing to were sharing their fiction, some short stories and some serialised novels which they then went on to self publish. In fact the more I looked the more I found.
And so I’ve decided to join in the fun. Let me introduce you to Flashes of Strangeness where I will be sharing a piece of flash fiction or a drabble every few weeks for the foreseeable future. I’ve built up quite a collection of short stories over the years so I can’t wait to share them with you all.
Here’s the link if you’d like to subscribe. Flashes of Strangeness
And then along came Ficstack. This is a brand new venture – a website that logs and lists Substack fiction. It’s searchable by genre and vibes so you should be able to find exactly what you like to read. Defiantly work taking a look. Here’s the link: Ficstack.
So far this is proving to be a good decision. Subscribers are increasing, which suggests to me that people are actively looking for fiction to read on there. I will keep going and see how it develops. Who knows, I might even serialise one of my own novels at some point in the future.
