How to Fight Vampires and Depression

7. There's more than one marketing plan

Welcome to The Literary Salon.

How to Handle Vampires and Depression

In the midst of my research, I checked out Sparkloop (which doesn’t work with Substack but is a referral program between newsletters) and one of the first questions they ask is what best describes your newsletter stage?

Early: less than 1k total subscribers or growing a <100 subs a month

Growing: less than 50k total subs, or growing at < 1k subs per month

Scaling: more than 50k total subs, or growing at 1k+ subs per month

That’s a sobering question, and we’re all “early” here with eyes on something more, but it can be frustrating in the early stage. It’s a downside of this marketing plan, starting over with one or more new newsletters and having to build ourselves up all over again. It’s better than when we started our first Substack in some ways because we have followers, but it’s still a shock when a new article gets a third of the views you’d get at the older site.

Which reminds me, and I really wasn’t building up to this, but we’re here—in the chat we support one another. This will change as participation grows, but right now you can share one post a day. In return, you’re asked to support the other posts shared that day. Look for the most recent thread marked Posts!

To put the Sparkloop question in perspective, one fact worldmetrics.org shares is that the largest Substack in the Health & Wellness category has over 50k subscribers.

That’s as close as I came to getting an answer when I asked Google how many Substacks have over 50k subscribers. In the H&W category, it may only be one. We don’t have to hold ourselves to that standard.

1000 subscribers is achievable, however. We can move out of the early stage and into the growing stage. How long that will take is going to vary, but it will come quicker using our non-fiction strategy.

With Our Deeper Stories, I’m in the philosophy arena now.

Tommy Blanchard

writes Cognitive Wonderland. As I write this, he’s celebrating two months on Substack. The first month he gained over 100 subscribers. After two, he’s over 700. He himself says he can’t tell you what gained him the traction, and some of it will be things we can’t replicate, like his credentials in the field, but it is encouraging. (Also, subscribe if you’re interested in philosophy. He was very kind and encouraging about my first philosophy article.)

We should know that a non-fiction approach isn't a promise of a quick start. I'm not a fan of advice sites sharing their growth in Notes because it's not relevant. However, I'll make an exception for

Veronica Llorca-Smith

because she's making the point that she struggled for a year before gaining traction and growing.

We inherit the problems non-fiction sites have with growth by implementing this system, but fiction struggles even more, and this system has the promise of delivering us the kinds of readers we need. It's a fair trade.

It's also important to remember that my marketing plan is not the only way. I was reminded to make that point when I met

Fiona Tate

in the comments of an earlier article. She explained what she was doing (and I’ll get into that soon) and asked questions about implementing my plan.

My first suggestion was to change nothing. She has a marketing plan, and there’s no advantage to switching without cause.

Most of us are desperate for an idea and can’t find a solution that fits. My solution won’t fit everyone either. Hopefully the bank of possibilities I can suggest will grow overtime to encompass more authors. Today, for example, we’ll take a look at Fiona’s strategy and contrast it to my suggestions for

Jamie Just Writes

.

One hurdle with our plan is the need for an overarching theme or themes that you can articulate and which attract readers in the non-fiction realm. Both writers produce fiction with a health and wellness theme. Jamie writes about the deeper truths of our daily experiences, seeing beyond the surface. Fiona writes about depression. Either theme is perfect for my plan.

Jamie’s fiction is contemporary. Fiona writes exclusively about vampires, depressed vampires.

I’ll bet many of us have considered serial sites like Wattpad, and that’s Fiona’s plan. Her fiction seems a perfect fit. She’ll hook readers with these sites and sell subscriptions on Substack for an advanced read. It’s a good plan.

She has articles and fiction on her Substack, and in many ways, her plan works as the opposite of mine. After hooking people with fiction about depressed vampires, she’ll have them as an audience for her articles on depression as well.

Meanwhile, my advice for Jamie is to spend a few months focusing on conveying his message through articles. Don’t talk about fiction at all. Build up your 700 subscribers, and then hit them with a short story that captures exactly what you’ve been talking about.

If Fiona were to use my plan, she would still want to take advantage of the double consistency in her fiction. She wouldn’t build just any site about depression. It would still be vampire themed, first, because it’s a good hook for getting people in to read about mental health, but second, because this is how she’d secure the right reader for her work. They’d come for the vampiric wellness and be thunderstruck by the fiction in the same vein.

If Fiona were to combine the concepts, this is what I’d advise. Her current plan is to build up ten episodes before placing work on the serialized fiction sites. Build up a bigger backlog while you create your subscriber base with your depression site with the vampire vibes. You can do more than ten because the draw at these serialized sites is having a chunk of fiction to read. Episode by episode, release five for free, at every location, except start with Substack first, so that when you release that first episode on Wattpad you have more to offer on Substack: the next four episodes free. Everything after that, and you’ll have several available, is behind a paywall. Then, as you release on Wattpad, another chapter on Substack becomes free. Why? Because part of the draw to switch sites will be that they can read more chapters at no cost and be ahead of everyone else. Then they keep reading ahead, but now it’s going to cost them a few dollars a month. By now, they’ve discovered the articles and feel understood. The site supports and encourages them, and that, more than anything, is going to drive those paid memberships. They’ll pay because they appreciate you.

That’s a comprehensive strategy, and now is the time to look at both options and decide what has the greatest potential* in light of your goals.

*I use the word “potential” to make a point. There are no guarantees with what we’re doing. The promise of an idea is what it has the potential to offer. In this sense, when we talk about the promise of a plan, that what we mean. Its logical potential. If a plan has no mechanism to offer an outcome, it has no promise, no potential. At least, not when it comes to that particular outcome.

Before examining her situation, I said make no change. Take it slow. If you’re working a plan, you want to understand the repercussions of any change before you make it.

For example, our non-fiction sites only non-fiction, right up until the moment we release the kraken. Revealing the fiction underpinnings too soon is a change to the plan, and one that could undermine our ability to grow that initial subscriber base. Why? Because people come looking for non-fiction. Fiction pushes them away. Our hope is to build faster by focusing on a non-fiction model. Once we feel established with an acceptable subscriber base, we release the fiction, and we should assume that growth could slow as a result. However, the site will have secured itself within its community of sites and will have a reputation by then. That will help. You audience will respond well to your fiction, for the reasons laid out in article four, and that will encourage others to take the risk allowing a chance at being seen as an asset to those on the outside.

If you choose to make a change to the plan, like announcing that you intend to share fiction, you need to reason out how that will affect the plan’s potential, both positively and negatively.

One last thought to explain why mentioning our fiction too early can be detrimental. A potential reader judges a non-fiction article based on whether it's something they want to read about. If it's a non-fiction article that is promoted as connected to a work of fiction, then they base their decision on how likely it is they'll ever read the fictional work. The world overflows with stories we'll never get to, and so they move on.

Hook them before you reel them in. Don't tell the bass that you're fishing.

Other advice

The first thing I touched upon, and she had already made that decision herself, was to move away from AI. It shuts off too much of your audience. No one will penalize you for not using AI, but many readers will walk away because of it.

She had a free introduction but the paywall began at chapter one. I suggested she allow readers to get into the story a bit. I’ve expanded on the advice above.

Another issue was I didn’t know there was introduction. She’s bringing people in from the outside, and that means the site is important. Right now, its beautiful but confusing.

To understand what I’m about to say, check out the site for The Literary Salon.

I have two different categories represented (other than the welcome article which is pinned to the top,) these are the Right Reader and the Big Change Diary. I have another category planned but of this writing, these are the only two.

First, in the introduction page, I provide links to the first 5 articles in the Right Reader system. That will get them started.

Second, on that front page, you’ll notice that currently there is Right Reader 1 and Right Reader 2. They’re the same category, but that block of posts has room for four. I have four posts in Right Reader 1. I will have four in Right Reader 2. Then I will make Right Reader 3. Eventually, I will probably stop making new sections. Right Reader 3 might rotate posts off the front page so that a reader would have to find them in the archive, but those first 8 articles will be available and easy to find.

You don’t have to organize that way, but if you’re lucky enough to have means to draw people in from outside Substack, your website is going to be important. They need to find the important information. If serialized fiction is your draw, they need to be able to find where to start and where to take back over if they’ve come from Wattpad and have read the first several episodes. Clarity in organization is vital to not lose the readers.

If you’re drawing from Substack, your readers might not never see your website. I hate that, but it’s a personal thing. I always want to see people’s websites, and it can be so very hard to get there from app. I keep telling myself I need to remember to put a link to the website at the top of every article, but I always forget. I only now thought to do it here because of this paragraph.

(By the way, some of you will be surprised to see the entries for the diary. You may ask why you didn’t see them all show up in the email or the app. Most of them, I haven’t sent out by email or app, and in doing so, I know they will go largely unseen. Just know they’re there if you’re curious.)

This has gone fairly long, so I’ll stop for now. Let me know if you have questions.

Until next time,

I’m Thaddeus Thomas.