Subassembly Required
Lesson 3 of How to Become a Fiction Writer on Substack
If you missed the beginning: Read Lesson One
If you missed lesson Two: Read Lesson Two
Subassembly (n): a unit assembled separately but designed to be incorporated with other units into a larger manufactured product.
Let’s be honest; I chose the word subassembly because of the pun, but it works in the context of Substack. All these part come together to form a greater whole.
In episode one, we left you with a publication of your own, but it was generic. Today, we learn how to make it your own, and this is as good a time as any to remind us all of how we introduce ourselves to the world. a) What is the promise our publication is making? b) What’s my personal story as it relates to that promise?
In the top right hand corner, just a bit down from the top, you’ll see a button marked dashboard. That takes us where we need to go. If you have multiple publications, it will come with a drop-down list so you can choose which publication you want to work on.
When you enter the dashboard, you’ll be on the home tab. Click on the Settings tab as seen here. Immediately, you see a few options: Change the Publication’s Name. Create your short description. (What is your publication’s promise?) There’s a very important button to customize your site design, which will come back to later, and you can change the language of your Substack.
If you scroll down, you’ll find where you can upload a logo, import emails from a previous list, and set your categories. Choosing you categories is an important part of the right-reader system, but for now, choose however you see fit.
You can connect with Stripe, for which you’ll need some banking information, but it’s not complicated. You don’t have to do this now, but it is required before you can allow people to pay for their subscriptions. Until you do, however, you can allow them to pledge to pay once paid subscriptions are available.
If you allow for pledges or paid subscriptions, you choose your amounts for monthly, annual, and (if you allow it) Founding-level subscriptions. With the Founding level, you’ll be given the option of allowing subscribers to set their price, the only rule being it has to be at least $1 above the Paid level.
Below that, we move out of the Basics level and into Branding. You have the language choice again, and you’re able to customize your welcome emails. Once you have other sites recommending you, you can choose up to three of those blurbs to appear on your welcome page.
You have another area where you can upload your logo, but this time you can also upload a wordmark and a cover photo. The cover photo is optional and appears on your welcome page. It becomes the cover of your publication. The wordmark replaces the written name at the top of the publication. You can see the one I use for thaddeusthomas.com below.
This next one is deceitfully important if you’re going to do a podcast.
For the receive email replies option, change it from “all subscribers” to “everyone.” Certain podcast apps you’ll want to send your feed to will ask you to prove you control the email you’ve been given. You’ll never see their confirmation if you don’t change reply option.
The email they will send their confirmation to is in the next box. Substack says they will forward emails sent to that address to your email. I’ve always just replaced it with my own.
We’ll to return to that customize button in a tutorial video, next time, in Lesson 4 of How to Become a Fiction Writer on Substack. It’s available now.
I’ll see you there,
I’m Thaddeus Thomas