Since so many are asking how I grew my subscriber base, I’ll just answer right here: I have no idea. I just follow my interests where they lead, write about what I find, or I’ll have an idea for a personal essay, and I’ll write that, and that’s about it. I write around twice a month on average. I don’t have a specific day or time to publish. I use my own images I’ve shot or Adobe’s stock images, and yes, I already pay for a subscription for Adobe’s image gallery because I use Lightroom for my photography business. Essay-wise, I mostly stick to women’s health, books I love, and personal essays, but not always. Some essays take weeks. Others take a few hours. I never know until I sit down to write them. I follow JAMA and Eureka Alerts, as I often find science stories there that are intriguing. I pay rev.com to transcribe my interviews using a human transcriber, because that feels worth it to me. (AI transcriptions can be both amusing and horrible, and then you’re just doing the work yourself anyway because you have to check each word.) No one else works with me on this otherwise. It’s just me doing everything (except transcribing.) I like interviewing experts and putting these interviews in my stories, when appropriate. One other thing: I’m a published author with seven books to my name, so I already had/have a readership, which I’m sure helps. On my author website, deborahcopaken.com, I have a pop-up to sign up for my Substack. So far, that has produced 1180 new subscribers and counting, so around 1/10 of my subscriber base. And yes, I have to manually transfer each email address myself, because I have not figured out how to automate that. (Hey, I went to college with a typewriter and a crate of LPs! The fact that I can do any of this is a goddamned miracle.) So once a week, I’ll check the spreadsheet of new emails, copy and paste them, and load them into my subscribers. Anyway, since having written last week’s post I now have 10,193 free subscribers and 1156 paid, so, you know, slow and steady. Nothing viral or exponential. The fact that I can follow my interests, write about them, and get paid to do this has changed my life. I’m spending a lot less time pitching newspapers and magazines, then being disappointed when they don’t want to cover women’s health. I’ve even been assigned to write newspaper stories by editors who follow this Substack, and I’ve been told my work here has been instrumental to other journalists’ work. Last week, when the Washington Post was not allowed to endorse Kamala, because Bezos owns the paper and was afraid of a Trump presidency, I was really glad I get to work independently. And I’m grateful for the ACA, so I can have health insurance without working at a corporate job. I wish it were less expensive. America sucks on that front. I’m rambling here, but those are my thoughts. Oh, and whether or not a story goes behind a paywall is usually like this: science stories are free, personal essays are behind a paywall, but again, not always. And because I was a struggling single mother for so many years, I make sure to explain to anyone who can’t afford a subscription that I will happily offer a comp for one year if they need it, no questions asked.