Growth for Non-Fiction and Poetry

And we haven't forgotten Fiction

I’m breaking my two-week hiatus right in the middle to ask you to help me help you.

Are You Frustrated?

Is Substack not proving to be what you’d hoped it would be? Are you having trouble getting the growth others enjoy?

Chances are, you’ve been trying to do this on your own, but things happen when you get help from others.

Let me use X as an example. I’m a long-time Twitter user, but interactive traffic just hasn’t been what it used to be. It’s been a desert. This week, though, I had a political tweet with good levels of interaction. 23 Reposts and 88 Likes. It’s not what I used to get, but for these days, its huge.

That wasn’t me. I had help, and I got that help because a big (one million followers compared to my 28 thousand) account was trying to get their new hashtag going. I used the hashtag. They retweeted me, and the tweet did well.

Right now, there’s an opportunity for you to help and be helped if you write non-fiction or poetry.

(Pay attention if you write fiction. Your opportunity will come soon.)

Book Promotion without a Book

Make mistakes while your small and no one’s looking. Do the thing. Make those mistakes. Fix ‘em, and do it again. Learn. Grow.

At the end of the month, we have our first book promotion through Bookfunnel. It’s a strategy that historically has worked well for fiction but has produced uninspiring results for non-fiction. Through community, we can change that, but it’s going to take people taking the risk and just doing the thing.

Make a Mini Book

Grab some poems or articles from your Substack. Make a cover in Canva. Your goal is a theme that promotes some aspect of your Newsletter, but if you don’t know how to do that, don’t worry. Just do something.

You can start an account at Bookfunnel or I can host the book for you.

If you’re going to open an account, I have article at Post Op about how to join a promotion. This first one is a little over a week, and will be followed by others.

We need your participation. The sooner the better.

When people decide to grab your book, they opt-in to your newsletter.

I’m currently in two promotions. My novel has brought me 83 subscriptions. My non-fiction mini-book has brought me 18.

Why the difference? It’s a lack of community behind the non-fiction efforts.

In fiction, you can have genre-specific offerings, but there’s not an ongoing strong presence for non-fiction at Bookfunnel. It can’t support those focused promotions.

We can change that, but it will require persistent participation. Once you’ve made your book, though, that just means joining promotions, sharing them in your newsletter and social media, and downloading your new subscribers.

Once you’ve set it up, it couldn’t be easier.

These initial efforts will be mixed-genre, but as participation grows, we’ll be able to offer focused promotions.

I go into more detail at postop.substack.com.

What Bookfunnel Is and How You Join a Promotion

And we’re building the communities there to support one another’s posts, network within our genres, and attempt all those things we can’t do on our own.

And if your non-fiction is in a betterment category like Self Help, Faith & Sprituality, Philosophy, Psychology, or anything related, we’ve opened a community just for you.

Join the effort. If you have questions, ask.

We can do this, together.

Until fiction returns a week from now,

I’m Thaddeus Thomas