This Article is Poison to Readers

Can Substack be the Next Booktok? Should it be?

A tale of two social media. Twitter had a hugely active book community and a reputation for standing up to problematic books and authors. Publishers would just tell their authors to keep quiet and wait it out, that Twitter didn’t affect sales. Compare that to Booktok which has shaped modern publishing for better or for worse. It absolutely drives sales. The problem is whether Booktok is relevant to you with it being immaterial to certain genres, and impenetrable for many authors.

Enter Substack. What is its promise? What is its reality? Will it compare to TikTok and be able to drive the market, whether for traditional books or strictly Substack-accessible fiction? Will it be another Twitter with a big but ineffectual community?

The first difference is that Substack is a community of Author websites built around an email-marketing tool and now a shared social media. Tiktok became a place where readers could become stars and influencers. Readers are largely invisible here. That keeps the fiction side of Substack driven by self-marketing authors (who occasionally ask themselves if the platform will prove to have the same potential for fiction that it has for non-fiction.)

The salvation of Substack is the email-marketing list. If an author never justifies a paid subscriber base but builds up a loyal email following, she has a market for her books. Is that enough? Is that all we need to concern ourselves over?

This is where I hit the irony of Substack and the potential poison in articles like this one. Here’s our situation. We all want those invisible readers, but because they’re less likely to be engaged with Notes or to publish a Substack, the people we directly interact with are other authors. As we engage, we increase our visibility and can be found by readers. The issue is that writers on Substack are drawn to topics that readers couldn’t care less about. Do you think people who are just here to read care anything for a post like this? By focusing on other writers, we become more visible but less relevant to readers.

That’s a formula for a big but ineffectual community.

How do we become effectual with fiction readers? First, be reassured. When we ask how Substack can become the next Booktok, no one wants Substack to literally be Booktok. We’d be over there if that was what worked. The specifics of what they do and the pros and cons of their influence aren’t important here. What we want to understand is what readers gain from being a part of that community. I’ve figured it out and will provide the answer for members of my paid subscription… I kid. No paywall, but I think I know what Booktok gives them:

For certain demographics, Booktok allows readers to feel like they have these cool, funny, or flamboyant friends who are into the same things they’re into, and when they own and read the same books, they feel connected to these personalities, a connection that is further established by the serotonin rush we get from buying books. Plus, they get to interact with other book fans who are in that same position and so establish community relationships that are less parasocial than the ones they hold with the influencers. Add to that the addictive quality of flipping through short videos, and the audience is hooked.

Trying to imagine how this would look on Substack is taking my thoughts over to Youtube, where some authors found popularity with subject matter that appeals only to other writers. Only a few hit it big, and they tended to be young, attractive, and good in front of a camera, and at least one of those imploded when the first book came out and the person giving the writing advice… couldn’t write.

These success stories only had to push the author’s books, not transform an entire marketplace. This brings us back to the old adage that writers are readers. The goal in that case is to sell enough books to other writers to stir interest elsewhere and generate more book sales.

Off screen, I just sighed.

My fantasy for Substack is to get away from Amazon (etc.) for anything other than print books. In that fantasy, I’m a Substack fiction author whose site runs much like the non-fiction Substacks, offering free and paid material, and part of that paid material is access to more of my fiction, as Substack posts, web-native books, and downloadable eBooks. It’s a nice dream. There’s no evidence, one way or the other, that such a plan is viable. The best plan is build the auidence and see what triggers their interest.

Ignoring untested fantasy, what are some strategies and tools that are most likely to win?

Audio. Author-read fiction is likely to be a draw. We might not compete with the paid professionals, but we’ll be better than the AI. Substack will grow as a popular resource for short audio fiction, and via the podcast option we can broaden our audience.

Frequently-posted Short Fiction. Jimmy Doom drives a large, paid subscriber base by offering a story a day. Substack is going to have to introduce hashtags, however. Those long, tag chains are not a reader-friendly solution for themed days.

Killing Eve. We’ve seen the serial from the show’s creator in the leaderboards. That intrigues me. I have more mixed emotions about the coming of James Paterson. It feels like a bigger shadow to crawl out from under, but this could be what draws fiction readers to substack. If famous authors come but don’t share much fiction, even better.

Voice. If I said personality, that would scare most writers, but if I say “Writer’s voice,” you know what I mean. People get to know an author through the voice of their fiction. This is you-tube’s pretty face or Tiktok’s infectious personality; only, it’s writer friendly. How perfect is that?