What publishing on Substack is for
The point of publishing is to discover something that wants to come through in your voice.
The point of publishing is that there’s more than one form, more than one audience, more than one voice inside you — and all of those things are colliding at once inside a single publication.
The point of publishing is to know how to ground yourself in what you’re here to do with your writing — month by month, year over year.
The best way I know to use Substack is to bring what is most true and alive in your particular obsession — the thing that just can’t leave you alone — and organize it well enough that people can come along for the ride.
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The point of publishing is also to learn, over time, what degree of availability you actually have — to an audience, to a community, to the conversation.
There are newsletters I subscribe to where the comment section is almost silent, and the essays are so rich that silence is exactly right. There are newsletters where the whole point is joining other people to co-alchemize something that’s alive inside all of us.
That’s the direction The Publishing Spectrum is heading.
A place where the essays are enough — but the people are why you stay. The people are the reason you come into the chat thread. The people are the reason you learn to build your own editorial judgment, because they’re learning to build theirs too.
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The job inside traditional publishing — if editors were being honest with you — is to manage a confounding mix of market pressure and creative storytelling, and to meet an audience you get to know better month by month.
That’s a lot to hold.
Not everyone who writes on Substack will create a publication people will pay for. But a lot of you will write, and bring your life’s work into a space like this, and discover the writer you were always meant to be. You may find a literary agent here. You may find a circle of women who help you tell the story that becomes a book in four to six years.
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The point — the point I think publishing on Substack is ultimately here to make — is this:
It creates an opportunity for you to evolve as a writer inside your writing, and inside your capital-W Work in this life. And then to discover how it’s supposed to get back to others, if at all.
The point isn’t always monetization — gobs of fame and piles of money (though wouldn’t that be lovely?).
Sometimes the point is to continue becoming who you already are — and seeing it in different contexts. And deciding that even if no one ever listens or reads or shows up, that you are the most worthy recipient of your own writing magic.
✵ What I think sustainable publishing actually looks like on Substack ✵
In a few hours, rates are going up at The Publishing Spectrum.
What started as a free-range writing season for a first-time mom in the mountains in 2022 has evolved into a publication, a team of creative contributors and community giving one another its own shape.
We’re making space for building your skills and your editorial judgment — and for the lived experience of actually publishing on Substack.
If you've been thinking about upgrading, now is the moment.
Rates move from $10/mo and $99/yr to $15/mo and $150/yr at 12 p.m. CT today.
When you upgrade, you’ll keep the current rate for as long as you remain subscribed. I hope to hear from you soon!
Extremely useful and thought provoking - thanks!
This is so affirming, Amanda. And the graphic rocks.