Fictionistas Summer Kickoff - Video Call

Last Wednesday’s Google Meetup was the most well attended video call in Fictionistas history, according to co-organizer

Jackie Dana

. It was truly fantastic to see so many new and familiar faces in the crowd.

For those of you who couldn’t join us on the call, you can catch up on our lively discussion on the recording. (Forgive any sound/video sync glitches. This was our first experience with Google Meet and the video quality isn’t quite at Zoom level.)

Noteworthiness

Much of the hour was spent discussing Substack Notes. And there was a plethora of differing opinions on the topic. 🙂 Those who are struggling with Notes or questioning how best to use it may benefit from the wisdom shared by their fellow Fictionistas on the call who seem to have figured it out. Or you may just decide it’s not for you when you discover that getting seen on Notes is “all about “who” likes and comments” on your posts. If someone with a big subscriber base engages with your post, all of their subscribers will see it, giving it more traction. It’s not an algorithm, technically, but for those with fewer big-name connections and fewer subscribers, it can feel like an uphill battle. Unless you’re willing to “play the game” as one writer suggested, by deliberately tagging the popular kids in your posts. 😎

Even if you’re not feeling particularly “cool” on Notes, it can still be a positive place to hang out if you’re willing to change your expectations a bit.

And if you’re not sure what the heck to do when you hop into your Notes feed, consider doing what

Simon K Jones

does:

“My rule of thumb is to think of it like a writing group. Basically, the people that I see on notes are {writers}. So, for me, it's like I've just gone to a group of 10, 20 people to talk about writing when I log in. Essentially, that's how I treat it. It's kind of like the professional peer network for Substack writers.”

If you don’t know who Simon is, I’m guessing you haven’t been on Notes lately. 😉

We kicked Notes around for a good 40 minutes, so there’s lots more info to gather from the discussion if you have time to watch the video.

Watchya reading?

We also wandered briefly into Substack’s new curated “Reads” email, which the group largely agreed was “missing the mark” in terms of suggesting content that actually interested them.

Money vs. Eyeballs

The last part of the meeting, we delved into monetization. As fiction writers, this a sticky subject. We all want people to value our time and our work, but making the switch to offering a paid subscription option can be intimidating especially when you have to consider what additional, or exclusive, content you’ll need to consistently create to keep paying subscribers happy.

Jackie Dana

offered some great insight on the “no paywall” approach to paid subscriptions, where a writer chooses to keep all of their content “free” and then makes readers aware that they can support the work, and the creator, by upgrading their subscription.

“…it’s an option if you have ‘paid’ on, and you're not getting the engagement on your paid content. If you only have 10 or 15 paid subscribers, which is probably about par or maybe even high for a lot of fiction, you're not going to get a lot of eyeballs on that fiction. I think most of us, probably, would rather have the eyeballs than the money if we're talking that few number of subscribers.

…if you have a good subscriber base but you're not getting the conversions, you might {consider} rethinking how you do that.”

Contribute to Fictionistas

If you want more eyeballs on your Substack, a byline on Fictionistas could attract new readers from inside this community of over 1,700 fiction writers (and readers). If you have an idea for a story, post, or project, you can email fictionistas@substack.com and let us know what you want to do.

Thanks to

Jackie Dana

and

Geoffrey Golden

for co-organizing this month’s meetup with me.

And thank you to everyone who joined in on the meeting! It was an absolute blast.

To our friends on the other side of the world, we will do our very best to schedule our next meetup during your waking hours!

Before you go:

And here are few useful links that were dropped in the chat during the meeting:

Fictionistas Feedback Thread: https://fictionistas.substack.com/p/fictionistas-workshop-thread/comments

Subscription Biz Newsletter: http://reidtandy.substack.com

Substack Discord: https://discord.com/invite/tVvnZfNMcC

Article on Bookfunnel and reader magnets: fictionistas.substack.com/p/how-to-build-an-audience

History of Stratechery Podcast: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/stratechery-with-ben-thompson

Send fiction announcements to TALESTACK NEWS: talestack.editor@gmail.com

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