or hurl my computer to the heavens
or both at the same time…
Be forewarned, there be vitriol below1
A couple years back, a friend of mine suggested that I start writing on Substack to increase my following and maybe even get paid for writing someday. Cool, I thought, I can do that. Sounds easy. Now I have done that. I post once a month both on my blog and here on my Substack, and my following here has actually gone up. It has worked.
“Worked” in my mind and “worked” in the Substack world do not have the same meaning. My following has “ballooned” to just over 100 people. Substack was good enough to send humble, little me a celebratory email stating the fact– thanks Substack for that heart-felt computer generated email. I actually was really happy to know.
It “worked!” It’s “working!” I thought.
But the good feels didn’t last long because in reality 104 people following me equals nothing in the Substack world, or the world outside my mind in general. I’m officially a nobody. And nobodies don’t get their books published. These days, even somebodies don’t always get their books published. The people who get their books published are the people who jump into the frenzy that things like Substack creates. Or, if they were lucky blessed smart, they already had a book or two published before, I don’t know, 2012? Ah, and for a little irony: if you get a book published your following on Substack goes up. If you have already published a book, you probably feel just fine asking people to pay you via Substack.
Since I started writing on Substack about 2 years ago, the platform has added so many new ways for a person to get their message out there. You can write notes or threads, you can record podcasts. There is this thing called a “shout out” or something where writers can schmooze each other. And now they have added this video to chat thing so that you can put videos out to your followers and get their feedback about how cool you are immediately. Great, thanks. So I guess the goal is to wrap everything all up together in one platform. It’s turning into a conglomeration of Instagram (oh, I’m sorry, Meta), Twitter (oh, I’m sorry, X), TikTok, all in this one writing platform, and every time I hear about the next new thing that Substack is offering to me so I can reach the masses of people who want to follow me–millions of people just waiting for me to ask the right way– I start to feel super anxious. I’m anxious, all clenched up in my chest because these are just more things I don’t want to have to do that I know I have to do if I want my following to grow. When will I have time to write if I’m doing all these other things? Other people do it, and they have a real full-time job too. Why can’t I?
And should I also ask for you, my tried and true followers (although I think some of you don’t often open your emails– yeah, Substack tells me that too), to pay me for my posts? Substack has developed a Pledge (a warning?) I can tack on at the end of my posts to ask. What’s my time worth? What am I worth– $5 a month, $50 a year, or maybe you’d like to be a founding member for even more? I haven’t asked you to sign the pledge yet because I feel like my writing is worthless– I haven’t published a book, after all, so maybe I’m not really legit. For real. I had an agent tell me last week that though my book proposal is strong, that rock climbing is a really interesting way to explore motherhood, that the writing is great, I will never get published because I don’t have the following and everyone else and their mother is writing about motherhood and they do. (She isn’t the first person I have heard this from.) And, couldn’t I just change the book to be a “how-to” for new moms? (She is the first person to suggest this.) Change the whole book, you know, the beautiful, lyrical, reflective one I have been working on for 20 years into a manual. No thank you. A professional climber can write that bleep2. Some already do on their IG accounts. Plus, I hate reading how-tos (I have a feeling more people do than don’t) and certainly don’t want to write one. That is what magazine articles are for. Gosh3, no wonder I’m a failure. Another writer confirmed, Yeah, it’s just about the numbers anymore. It doesn’t even matter if I grow my publication list. And then the message about the next hot “perk” that Substack has come up with… It’s hitting me, all the things I’m not doing and could or should. Maybe I would if it felt like a natural progression of things instead of a capitulation to the hamster-wheel-like mania that is self-promotion these days.
I hate that I’m questioning whether all my past vocational choices were wrong.
Therefore, I think that the absolute correct feeling at this point is wanting to jump out a window (don’t worry, I’m not actually going to) or hurl my computer up to the heavens (still considering this one).
Some of you are probably thinking, just get off Substack then and stick to your blog. Geez. Stop your whining, missy!
Or, why don’t you just shut up and self-publish?
Lots of people have self-published. I could do that too. Sure. Maybe I should start a Go Fund Me for that bill which will be in the tens of thousands. Or more. And then I’ll realize I can’t actually promote myself very well– those publishers were right about me after all– and I’ll only sell 104 copies, if I’m lucky blessed, to my tried and true followers (you’ll all buy one, right??), and have boxes of the 2,896 remaining copies sitting in my not super-dry basement that will never sell that I’ll start giving away as Christmas and birthday gifts.
Look what I made you!
And then some third party seller will probably make an illegal copy and start selling it themselves on Amazon and completely rip me off before I’ve even made a dime, and Amazon won’t take any action against it or claim any responsibility. (This happens4. It actually happened to another friend of mine.)
Seems like a lose-lose-lose-lose-lose situation. Maybe I should give up. I want to.
But I can’t. Not yet anyway. Thinking about giving up makes my chest hurt even more than what Substack is doing to me. Or what it’s doing for me? I can’t even decide which it is. Both probably. I’ve had at least two friends tell me never to give up. There are other options, even if giving in to all the soul-sucking options Substack is offering me isn’t the way I want to go. (Like prayer, won’t praying help? or hurling my computer?) First I need to finish it (it’s 90% done), really finish it, polish it up real nice with a tidy little bow and nary a typo. Then there are other publishers I can send it who will probably also reject me because of my lack of platform (read: negligible existence).
When I fail at that, I can always just publish the whole damn5 thing, essay by essay on Substack. You know, essays that have taken me five plus years to write turned into blog posts. You’d pay for that, wouldn’t you? Would you sign the pledge then, please? Pretty please?? Not that I’m asking.
Ugh.
- The only reason there is not a bunch of effing profanity in this is because my good mother reads it. And by the way, she’ll buy my book even though she’s read a version of it like four times already. But not if I use the F-word. ↩︎
- Hey, I said “bleep.” ↩︎
- Not a swear. ↩︎
- https://www.kdpcommunity.com/s/question/0D5f400001RfMmtCAF/someone-just-copied-my-books-and-is-selling-them-on-amazon?language=en_US ↩︎
- Damn does not count as profanity. My mother said it once. ↩︎
