Portal to Substack

An invitation to join a small cohort of writers learning how to build greater readership

We know Professor Heather Cox Richardson is a blazing star in the Substack Universe. Her “Letters from an American” has 1.1 million subscribers and she has helped people around the world better understand democracy.

Imagine for a moment, however, if her title had been:

Newsletters from an American.

Would those four letters have made a difference? “Newsletters” vs. “Letters?”

We’ll never know, however, it feels different; and her letters explaining our history in terms of our daily political world felt like she was talking to us individually over our kitchen tables. We feel comforted by her wisdom, her kindness, her treating us like we are her friends and she’s just sharing how she understands a world we are finding so confusing.

Mail received regularly in our email inboxes feels different from an article in a magazine trying to sell us stuff. Magazine articles (no matter how well written and researched) are “them,” “the media,” while email is part of “us.” (I know … the flood of email we receive is eroding this sense, but I still easily delete 2-300 emails a day as I look for a name I recognize on the From: line. I still think of my inbox as stuff written to and for ME.

Replacing “newsletters” with “letters”

When Professor Richardson’s use of “Letters” struck me, I decided it was a key to the tone I wanted to develop with my own “letters.” However, few of us writers in today’s world (even the ones as old as I am) remember hand written correspondence, letters written and mailed with a stamp to one person from one person. And, we can’t go back to those days; however; we can write as if we were writing to real people with real lives with a sense of sharing our own lives, our own hard earned wisdom, and our own joys and sorrows. It’s a style of writing I don’t see often any more but one reason I absolutely love Substack is that I’m finding that personal touch here on occasion.

For instance,

Mike Sowden

in his About page for Everything is Amazing writes:

Yes, some of this is about me chasing my own specific nerdy interests - and as the designated crash-test dummy for this newsletter, I will be putting myself through the most spectacular indignities on the path to hopeful enlightenment. If you occasionally learn something new and laugh at me for making a total fool of myself, I’ll be doing my job properly.

Mike writes about science, climate, nature, and anything else that catches his fancy. Even when I don’t exactly understand the science behind what he’s talking about, I read every word avidly, enjoying the jokes, the word play, the sense that I’m listening to a really good storyteller while the campfire shoots sparks into the night sky.

Mike also displays the generosity that I am finding is a characteristic of Substack writers. In the weekly Office Hours, writers with followings big and small show up and share their advice and the answers to questions that we come up against as we wind our way though the sometimes weedy trail of Substack. (Remember, Substack is a young company with a meteoric growth trajectory. It is revolutionizing the publishing industry and inviting writers to share the ride. The rapid development of new features sometimes leaves us gasping as we try to catch up.)

Invitation to join a FREE learning group … limited to 10 writers.

Fortunately, help is beginning to coalesce as frustration-reducing workshops are being offered such as those by

Writers at Work with Sarah Fay

. However, I’m finding I need the workshops plus a steady supply of best practices that provide me with examples of how, and why, different writers are using the many different elements of Substack.

I am planning a monthly series of best practice reports and a learning group process, based on a simple marketing model (shown above), all to be part of a paid subscription program aimed, primarily, at newer Substack writers with fewer than 500 subscribers.

If being part of the initial study group interests you, please email me at jwycoff@gratitudemojo.com. Requirements simply are a desire to better understand Substack and share the questions and answers you’ve found along the way. And, as a token payment for your generosity, you would receive Founding Member status for the year.

Here are first thoughts about what being in a cohort might look like after the initial cohort has tested and refined the process..

• 10 members per cohort

• Each cohort member would comp everyone in the cohort so that you could each see paid and free activities for each other

• As we study the Substack elements in the posts and reports, we would share how we’re using them

• We might develop a self-analysis process that all users could use to set their own criteria and evaluate themselves over time

• We would focus on Substack actions one at a time … such as using notes, gift cards, mentions and other subscriber building actions and share how they are working.

Thank you so much for being part of the Substack revolution and considering this possibility.

joyce