So, here we are, just under a month from my 3rd anniversary on Substack, and presenting the 250th post since that seemingly strange starting place. To be fair, and in the interest of complete transparency, this isn’t actually the 250th posting on my ‘Stack; it’s probably closer to my 255th, but I have deleted a small handful of posts over the course of my time here. By and large, these deletions have been made because they have been either A) rendered completely irrelevant, or B) make me cringe when I look back at them later on down the line.
The majority of the posts have been either chapters from longer fiction works or short stories in their entirety, or longer short stories broken down into smaller, more easily digested chunks. That’s what I do, I’m a genre wonk storyteller and I enjoy utilizing Substack as my playground for these works. Recently, I’ve presented a handful of new Amelia City stories through this venue, and I’ve been quite pleased with the end results. I’ve not seen a great deal of feedback or interaction on any of them, but this is chiefly down to my not having a sizable audience. I’ve never been a ‘big name’ creator, regardless of the space I opt to make material on, be it YouTube, Bitchute, Rumble, or here on Substack.
This is nobody else’s fault but my own, ladies and gentlemen. I’m not great at marketing myself, or getting word out about the work I have done over the years. I’ve been much more interested in getting the stories written, edited, tightened up, and then offered up for potential readers. However, I’m no longer cranking out material at the pace I did in my earlier years as a storyteller, and I am now starting to come around to the understanding that maybe I should take some time to actually, you know, promote the work that I’ve done.
After reaching 250 posts and coming up on my 3rd anniversary of activity on Substack, I think maybe it’s time that I took some of the advice that so many others on here seem to have been putting to good use, and start helping myself get some actual reach with my material. The first step in doing that is going to probably have to be reversing myself on a previous position, and gritting my teeth the whole way while doing it; I’m going to have to engage in using Notes.
I know, I know. ‘Josh, didn’t you do a whole screed not that long ago about how you hated the idea of Notes, that it reminded you of a watered-down Twitter clone?’ Yes, I did indeed say that, and no, I haven’t seen any evidence to date that I was completely wrong in that earlier assessment. But I’m also not blind to the effect that Notes seem to have had on some of the Stacks that are similar in tone and mission to my own. Those Stacks have grown, and continue to thrive, while I have floated at subsistence levels of readership for the entirety of my existence here on Substack. I may be a stubborn man, and yes, I am legally classified as a psychotic, but that doesn’t mean I’m a complete idiot. I see something that seems to work, and can at least justify to myself that it’s really not much different than using all of the other social media networks and apps that I engage with to try and promote my material.
It’s self-promotion purposes alone that saw me create a Truth Social account, after all. Say what you will, by all means, make your assumptions and heap on the ridicule and insults, I promise you I’ve been well prepared for it since signing up for an account over there. I know what the general public opinion is of Truth and its many users, and I’ve had a response or two folded up and ready in my pocket for a while now. At this point, I’m almost eager to pull them out and relay them to anybody wishing to make an issue of my having an account there.
My long-suffering friend Galen has tried for years to light a fire under my arse to get out there and really try to push my work into the public space, to do more than just write the material and float it out there. Many times he has asked me why the hell I don’t focus more time and effort on promoting or advertising my fiction material, and I’ve always responded to him with a kind of vague hand-waving about how the work itself is what’s important, not the business end of things. While he doesn’t exactly roll his eyes at me (at least, not that I can tell. I’ve been friends with the man for over a decade online, even though we’ve never met in-person), I can tell that this response annoys him, because in many ways, he has been one of my biggest cheerleaders for the entire time I have associated with him.
So, how am I going to ‘celebrate’ reaching the 250 posts/3 years mark here on Substack? Simple, really. I’m going to start spending more time trying to get the work shared around out there, and bring more eyeballs to the Stack, to hopefully give the many tales I’ve told a careful bit of reading and consideration. This would be especially helpful for “Ganges”, an original novel I published entirely and originally, and thus far, solely, on Substack.
Cheers to 250, ladies and gentlemen!
And here’s to many more entries in the weeks, months, and possibly years ahead. If, that is, Substack continues on that long. After all, this is the Internet; there’s no saying this thing will last forever.