I came to Substack in 2024, upon my editor’s suggestion. Or, to be more accurate, he told me I needed to build readership via social media. Sound advice. My 3rd novel, Fool’s Paradise, had just published. But at the time my entire online footprint consisted of LinkedIn. And that was leftover from when I was looking for a job.
Dutifully, I started a website and established a presence on the social media platforms preeminent in 2024. Substack was an afterthought. This strange site, operating on an odd business model kept popping up in comments. Being enamored of free stuff, I set up shop there. The rent was ideal.
It took a few months to find a comfortable rhythm. Following that prescient editor’s direction, I posted twice a week. Fiction on Tuesdays, Essays on Thursdays. That served, and still does. It can be mildly demanding to come up with verbiage to fill those slots. However, the discipline is beneficial. At the very least, one becomes a writer, regularly channeling whichever muse deigns to whisper in the ear. Once capturing ideas with a butterfly net and stitching them to the page is a habit, it tends to stick.
An underappreciated benefit of Substack is the libertarian, borderline anarchic, freedom to post whatever the writer wants. There are no restrictions on length, subject matter, language, spiciness, or, frankly, coherence. You don’t even have to care about your audience. Although, you probably should.
That freedom can be intoxicating if guzzled with abandoned. But the lack of guardrails allows me to range widely in terms of essay subjects. Thursday essays veer drunkenly between the mechanics and philosophy of writing, reviews of science fiction and fantasy tales, technology’s effects on history and society, obscure movies, and back again. Sometimes a weekly essay can be a slog. But usually, it’s a joy. Readers don’t seem to mind, so I’ll hold to this course until the edge of the world looms ahead.
A good formula for fiction Tuesdays proved a bit trickier to home in on. There’s an old saying: If I’d had more time, I’d have written a shorter letter. This applies to short stories, in spades. Crafting a good short story takes time, and concentrated effort. It’s akin to assembling a Swiss watch; lots of tiny, intermeshing parts which might sproing all over the work bench at the slightest wrong move. Cranking out one per week is a chore. At least for me.
The counterintuitive solution is to write longer stories. That is, novels. As it turns out, Substack is almost ideal for serializing novels. Speculative fiction writers differ from conventional authors in that we have to build our own worlds as settings for our stories. The word count to worldbuilding ratio is much more manageable for a novel than for the same weight of short stories. Similar situation for novellas and novelettes.
To that end, I have serialized 3 novels on Substack, with encouraging readership growth. At least, the majority of my subscribers open the darn things, and positive comments have so far outweighed nasty ones. Subscriber and follower counts follow a steady, rising trend. Albeit modest in total numbers. To employ a metaphor, my Substack isn’t Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It’s more along the lines of a shabby book shop on a narrow, twisting side street. There’s a musty odor inside, and a calico cat who watches you with predator’s eyes from a high shelf in the mystery section. When she isn’t curled up asleep next to the (typically empty) cash register. (Or would that be a simile? I get the two mixed up.)
Dragging the focus back to the topic of this post with a jarring squeak, some may have noticed that those 3 serialized novels are no longer up on my Substack page. That is because the first of them, Containment Protocol, will soon be released by Cannon Publishing, a small press noted for military sci-fi. The novel is currently in the final stages of the editing process. Containment Protocol is the story of an Abrams tank platoon sent through an interdimensional portal to another universe, where dinosaurs roam and roar. Tanks versus dinosaurs, with sexy, aggressive cavewomen added to the mix. What’s not to love?
Containment Protocol is the first of my Substack serialized novel to escape containment and achieve publication in the outside world. That, in my humble opinion, is worth celebration. 🥳🍾 Maybe that doesn’t warrant pink champagne on ice. More like a bottle of good beer, say Great Lakes Brewing Edmund Fitzgerald Porter. Unfortunately, external publication means Containment Protocol had to come off of Substack. Leaving the full text up online would likely constitute a legal issue, and is certainly poor marketing.
Likewise, the other 2 complete novels I’ve serialized on Substack, Planets 4 Sale and The School of Magical Engineering, are no longer posted. Planets 4 Sale, the tale of an interstellar con man, has been submitted to a different publisher. I await reply with a keen interest. The School of Magical Engineering, my 1st fantasy novel, will soon embark upon the submissions superhighway.
However, fear not. A 4th serialized novel will shortly launch upon my Substack. Just as soon as I get a few chapters ahead on it. Because, I don’t want to disappoint my subscribers and followers. Beyond Substack, I’m currently wrestling 2 other novels out of my head and onto the page. Several more novels are impatiently cooling their heels in my mental waiting room, paging through ancient, dogeared issues of Reader’s Digest and Highlights. I used to think I’d eventually run out of story ideas. Now, I think I’ll run out of time first.
And I want to share some encouraging news with all Substackers. At times it can seem as if you’re just typing into the void. But you get better at telling your stories with every keystroke. And that’s worth the effort. Remember, success is out there, however you choose to define it.
END.
Check out my published novels at:
nazcapress.com/product/smitty/NP/52/ (Smitty’s Guide to Interstellar Bartending, available for preorder now!)
https://histriabooks.com/product-tag/ray-tabler/
amazon.com/stores/Ray-Tabler/author/B09H62RZB9
And visit my website https://raytabler.com/ for Science Fiction You Can Enjoy!
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