About 35 minutes into my episode of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, Brendan O’Meara asked me the question I get more than any other.
If your Substack is stuck spinning its tires, how do you get it moving, and then how do you get it some altitude?
I gave him the most boring answer on the planet. Consistency. When I started my Substack 3 years ago, I published every single week, tried different niches, and paid attention to what readers responded to until I landed where I wanted to be. I didn’t want to hear that answer back then either. Brendan cut it into a clip and titled it “The Most Boring Substack Advice You’ll Hear.” (Accurate.)
Brendan has hosted The Creative Nonfiction Podcast since 2013, and episode 550 is our full conversation. We talked about my TV writing days, ghostwriting memoirs for Olympians, NBA players and Silicon Valley CEOs, and how the Substack side of my business actually works.
Listen to the full episode:
It’s also on Spotify, and Brendan’s show notes are on his site.
💡 What we talked about
Why I left TV writing in 2020 and started ghostwriting memoirs while traveling the world
Negotiating my own rates instead of handing that conversation to an agent, and the early client who sat me down and said, “Amy, you are undercharging.”
How Make Writing Your Job started out as more of a travel blog before readers told me what they wanted from it (the Substack part starts around 35:00)
What makes me nervous about Substack long-term, including the new AI detector
Why I plan my year in seasons instead of daily routines
Seth Godin, Jonathan Haidt and Andy Weir, three writers who tested their books in public before they were books
💡 Substack is the new book tour
I told Brendan that Substack has become the place to do a book tour. Lena Dunham leaned on Substacks big and small for interviews when her latest book came out, and I’ve watched the same thing happen on a smaller scale with my own books. A lot of my beta readers and ARC readers found me here first.
It helps my ghostwriting business too, in a way I didn’t plan for. Clients look me up before they hire me, and an audience tells them I’m not just some stranger on the internet.
Still, I don’t marry platforms. A few years ago every writer I knew was on Medium, Medium paid well, and then that era ended and those writers couldn’t take their subscribers with them. Whatever you build on, make sure you can export your email list and walk out the door with it.
💡 The cavalry is not coming
The TV show I was working on got canceled in the middle of the writers’ room, before we’d written many scripts. I asked the showrunner what I should do next, and he told me he didn’t know. The industry in front of me looked nothing like the one he came up in.
Mark Duplass gave a whole SXSW talk about this called “The Cavalry Is Not Coming.” At every stage of his career he waited for the call that meant he could stop doing everything himself. When the offers finally showed up, he realized he didn’t want them. He wanted to keep making films with his friends, his way.
So here’s what I told Brendan. You choose yourself first, and then your readers choose you. If you want a gatekeeper to anoint you someday, get readers first. They’re your leverage when you walk into that room.
Brendan sent over this quote card from the episode, coffee rings and all:
💡 Want help growing your own Substack?
I mentioned the 6 Week Substack Sprint on the show. It’s my workshop series on the formats I see working on the Substack bestseller lists, and how to adapt them to whatever you write. It comes with a Sutoscience Founding membership, along with our monthly Substack Lab calls, where you bring your Substack and get live feedback on growing it.
Thank you to Brendan for having me and for asking such good questions. If you write nonfiction, his Substack Welcome to Pitch Club is for writers who want to get better at selling their stories.
Now go publish something this week. Boring counts.
-Amy
P.S. We also talked about Let Me Be Your Ghost, my romantic thriller about a memoir ghostwriter who feeds her clients’ secrets to the FBI. It comes out November 18. Preorder a copy in any format and I’ll send you my unpublished guide, How to Write a Memoir, for free. Preorder here.