For Authors and Publishers
Nothing sells books like a great Substack
When it comes to bookselling, a Substack offers the most targeted promotion a writer can have, precisely because it is not advertising: writers are speaking to their most passionate readers who have already expressed keen interest in their work.
Substacks sell books at every stage — from preorder to backlist
“An Ohio poet’s (decidedly feminist, undeniably lyrical) memoir is #3 on the hardcover nonfiction list…I can say this now without a doubt: We did this. Whether you preordered the book, requested it from your library, came to an event with friends, bought a copy or two or three for people you love, or just helped spread the word—thank you. I hadn’t even allowed myself to dream of this, but here we are.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that this happened because of Burnt Toast. You preordered, you regular ordered, you library-requested, you left reviews, you talked the book up on social media and in your group texts, you did this.”
“My book was first published in July 2021, and it continues to sell steadily every week. My editor credits my Substack for helping to drive continued sales. It’s sold just under 25,000 copies.”
How the Substack model works
You wrote it, you own it.
A direct line to your
biggest fans
Subscription publishing
made simple.
“I realized that the Substack transcends the book and that I had perennial evergreen things that I wanted to talk about. My readers helped me realize that.”
Start a Substack in just 5 minutes
Claim a URL and set up the basics of your publication: title, description, and upload any existing mailing list you may have. Don’t forget to add your book links.
Tell your readers how you plan to use this space in your first post and About page.
Recommend any writers you read and subscribe to, and connect with your peers already on the platform. Most writers will recommend you back and spread the word about your Substack.
Book author & Publisher FAQ
Writers use their Substacks to explore ideas, discuss their books, share their creative process and behind-the-scenes information with their readers, and even workshop with them ideas for future books.
Similar to social media, Substack provides a live, organic space where a writer can gather their most committed readers and continue the conversation about their books, long after the spotlight moves away from them after publication date. Comments and community tools encourage a sense of community amongst supporters.
Unlike social media, however, on Substack writers have a direct relationship with readers. Algorithms don’t decide who sees your work—posts are delivered directly via email. This means that while the average Instagram account sees an engagement rate of 1% to 5%, on Substack we see open rates in the 30% to 70% range, depending on the size of the mailing list. Book links in posts of Substack writers get click rates ranging from 5% to 15%, compared with the typical 0.08% to 0.1% on social media. After running an experiment with a bookseller, one Substack writer found that 26% of the readers clicking on her book link actually bought the book—another record-breaking number compared with book reviews from magazines and other outlets.
You will always own your content and your relationships with your subscribers and your intellectual property. We make it easy to import and export your archive, email list, and payments information to and from other platforms.
On Substack, writers can get paid instead of paying for an email newsletter. Substack is free to get started. We don’t make money unless you do. If you turn on paid subscriptions, Substack will keep a 10% cut of revenues for operating costs like tech development and customer support. When you turn on paid, Substack’s platform fee is 10%, and the credit-card payment processor, Stripe, also takes a fee, of 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction.
