The State of the Empire 2: Decimation!
I fired just under 12% of my subscriber list. Here’s what happened.
Dear Readers,
It’s that time again when we look at the progress I’ve made this month.
Here’s what I learned this month, in seven simple lessons.
The last one is about firing readers.
Don’t worry — if you’re reading this you’re safe. 😉
7 Lessons in June
1. Learn from better writers
The big picture: I’m a decidedly amateur — but I’m working on it.
Why it matters: the only real shortcut in life is learning from someone else’s hard-won experience.
So follow:
- for her Notes, Talebones, and Talestack News → a round-up of all things fiction on Substack. Here’s Issue 2.
- and his free book on Serialising Fiction → See comment on shortcuts.
2. Or just make friends
The big picture: A few internet friends have hopped over to Substack from Medium.
Why it matters: To protect your feed and current way of thinking, you should probably skip these two rapscallions:
- he’s VP of Imagination and a general oddball. Cool hat though.
- is generally a bad influence but with good fiction.
Although both are good for a few laughs and different perspectives and I’m glad they joined us to add more “colorful personality” to the place.
They remind me to be more authentically and unapologetically me.
3. Ask The Writing Community
The big picture: Writers tend to struggle in silence, unnecessarily.
Why it matters:
shared his frustration on Notes and asked for help, and was bowled over by the responses he received.Writers respond — nearly 30 detailed, thoughtful replies at last count.
Some highlights — keep going it takes time, reviewers can help grow your audience, give before you ask, and make sure your message is clear.
So don’t suffer — reach out, make your case and the community might just help.
Don’t know anyone? — Tag me if you want to get the conversation started.
Bottom line: Reach out and help out — it’s a virtuous circle
4. Collaboration for growth and fun
The big idea: Many people advise collaboration as a way to grow your audience.
Why it matters: Collaboration allows us to deepen our community connections and relationships, try out new things and get our work in front of different groups of people.
Win-win — It goes without saying that every collab should be a win-win, it’s generally a requirement for it to happen.
Teaser —
writer of is working on a post sharing just how he managed to develop such a consistent and identifiable art style for his serial fiction.
5. Substack is Driving My Subscriber Growth
The big picture: Substack is adding new subscribers faster than any other channel.
Why it matters: with myriad ways to slice our marketing time, anxiety about using it best mounts fast. Notes are the way to go.
No more Twitter — after chatting to
I’ve ditched Twitter (and their nerfed Substack links).Notes Works — every time I’ve dived into Notes and spent time helping and hanging out I’ve seen an uptick in subs.
Aligned Incentives — I know there are problems on the platform, but for me, it’s very well aligned with my needs. They make money if I grow. Every new feature seems to make this easier.
Try The Sample — the only other competitor is The Sample. It’s a free service that shares your work with their community to encourage one-click sign-ups.
I’ve had new subscribers join while doing no actual work myself.
Scroll down to the Submit a Newsletter button.
Spend time refining your blurb because you can’t edit it later.
6. Always Iterating My Focus
The big picture: focus matters for me more than any other factor.
Why it matters: Working on or making the right thing is far more effective than making the wrong thing well.
More play, with purpose — my sweet spot lies on the overlap of what brings me joy and what my readers request in comments or polls. Keep it that simple.
Tortoise Not Hare — I do slow and steady, calm creative work that I want to do forever. Taking on The Infinite Writing Mindset.
Readers and Results — I’ll post only on what I’ve done, not grand concepts to apply, but results from applying those ideas to my own writing business.
One thing at a time — once my novel is finished I’ll worry about a non-fic book. I’ll try Substack for fiction (again) before Wattpad or Royal Road. Less to learn.
7. Fire your readers for … not reading.
The big picture: my read rate was in the high 20s and low 30s. This made me sad.
Why it matters: Substack is not just a newsletter platform, so I wondered if our metrics influence our boosting. I.e., low read rates signal low-quality products.
So I dove into my stats and found non-readers were the problem.
Non-readers — they’ve been on my list for months, but have not opened a single email, are a free sub, and were imported by me.
Getting filtered — I was likely getting dropped in the spam can. So, emailed each directly, but I still didn’t get a reply.
So I fired them — the results are below.
Thank you for reading!
See you next month.
Zane
PS - Smart Brevity inspired the style of this newsletter
It’s a science-backed method of communicating information clearly.
Love it or hate it? → Let me know.
Its interesting you should mention dropping subscribers. Its clear to me, having shifted from platform to platform, that there is also a follow for follow culture even in newsletters. People who 'read' over 200 newsletters with no stars against mine. But what happens when they're dropped? Read ratio is up but is your reach down? FOMO on the one individual who spots your avatar in their long tail and subscribes. Does read ratio matter when the newsletter is free? Certainly subscription counts. The bigger the number the more likely people subscribe to find out what all the fuss is about. So yeah, on my mind but not causing issues right now.
Thanks also for the mention Zac. I would love to collaborate with someone, just waiting for an invite!
Hot take: read rates is a useless indicator, only the number of paid subscribers matters.
On this topic, congrats, dear Zane. 6 subscribers sounds good to me, here's wishing you many more.