It’s a truth universally acknowledged in publishing that the tidiest of plans are always interrupted by the best of news.
After 20 years of editorial and audience work I’ve learned that the best laid plans are almost always asking to be uprooted.
Case in point. This month — July 2026 — the focus here in The Publishing Spectrum is data as a form of publication intelligence. I had all of my Chat threads scheduled out. I had all of my posts scheduled out. And then Substack made the news by releasing their MCP for bestselling publications.
If you’re not familiar, an MCP is basically a way to use AI to talk to your data. It’s the kind of experience I designed for folks inside SubSight — except instead of relying on CSV files, you can talk to your data live, every day.
All this to say: my best laid publishing plan got uprooted this month, and I’m grateful for it. Agility is part of laying out a publication well.
Since I just lived this one in real time, here are the three questions I use — and that I’d hand to any writer-becoming-publisher staring at a schedule that suddenly doesn’t fit the moment.
1. Is it newsworthy? Has something happened around your work that people should know about now — something that directly affects your publication topics, your expertise or both? If so, redesign around the event. The calendar serves the story, not the other way around.
2. Are you second-guessing because the piece isn’t ready? Is the resistance coming from a sense of incompleteness?If so, then pause, and hold the story for more germination time. The best storytelling moments benefit from telling you they’re incomplete. That hesitation is information.
3. Are you nervous about personal fallout or identity-adjacent issues, but, separately, you feel confident the piece covers what you want to say? In these situations, I advice to publish anyway, and carry on with the plan as originally laid out. Nerves alone are not an editorial signal — incompleteness is.
That’s the whole framework: news changes the plan, incompleteness delays the piece, nerves deserve acknowledgement and usually a small burst of editorial courage.
Which is a long way to say: our Publishing Spectrum Live session is moving to Monday, July 20 to make room for a live conversation with Mike Cohen.
Share your data, growth or Substack questions in the comments on that post — and tell me what you’ve always wondered about your writing and your subscribers. We’ll see if the data can help us find an answer.
If you're really stuck on your own publishing plan or have encountered a quiet audience lately on Substack, grab a free slot on Amanda’s calendar for an Editorial & Audience Review.
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