SUBSTACK ETIQUETTE FOR WRITERS
Are you engaging in bad faith? You might not even realise it.
Substack is in many ways a great leveller. Even established media figures here often struggle to market their own work, having always relied on other people or structures to do it for them. We try things.
Much of the practical and helpful advice for writers on Substack neglects to address the one central factor in constructive online engagement (on Substack and everywhere else) — good faith. Engaging with everyone from other writers to readers and those you seek to market your Substack to without treating them like a means to your growth.
You can read this week’s column on this idea in more detail as a general principle (not just on Substack) but here are some examples of foot-shooting instrumental behaviours which signal poorly to both readers and other writers and which I think should be avoided. Take what is of value to you (if anything) and leave the rest:
1)Ragesponding - writing responses to other writers’ work in order to piggyback on their platform or audience
Substack, and Notes especially, is a cosy, supportive community. More like a small room than a conference centre. If you think a writer is wrong and would like to write something in response to their work, don’t write a piece, share it on social media tagging them with hostility, and then hope they will become incensed and respond, thus pointing their readership in your direction. This is bad faith interaction. Message or email them. Give them a heads up like a person. Write a good faith article. They’ll probably be more likely to share your work (though that’s not a good reason to write something in the first place!)
2) Subscribing a person to your Substack without their consent. When this happens to me, I instantly unsubscribe and block the email address. It’s a horribly instrumental way to attempt to extract value from someone. Just drop them an email to ask first. The worst they’ll do is not reply, or say no. But they certainly won’t read your nonconsensual newsletter and come away filled with good will toward you.
3) Sharing another writer’s work while insulting or mischaracterising them in the hope of response/engagement/seeming clever. (ragebaiting)
(This isn’t Twitter) You’re attempting to grow at the expense of another person. No matter how bad you believe you’re making them look, you look worse.
4) Only restacking your friends’ work.
I get it. I have writer friends and I think they’re great. Sometimes they write such brilliant stuff that I have to share it then and there. BUT if you come from a smaller community of writers (as Substack can be), people can see who your friends are. If you are always sharing the work of the same handful of people and they are always sharing yours, you are using your readers as means to mutual elevation and lessening the value of your recommendations as writers in a community of writers. Recommend your friends’ work when it’s great, but branch out. Elevate young writers. Find writers whose work on a topic you thought you didn’t care about made you care about it. Share writers whose work makes you feel jealous and unaccomplished because you know your readers will be enriched by it. Curate your recommendations as a service to your reader (rather than a means of mutual growth for you and writer friends - there are ways to do that which don’t commodify your readership, like cross posting work that might have value to your reader base or embarking on other joint projects.
5) Using the recommendations feature transactionally. Again, this uses your readership as a means to an end rather than the end in itself and it undermines your judgement in the eyes of the reader.
Sometimes writers here message me something along the lines of ‘I recommended your Substack so can you recommend mine?’
No. Not unless I think it will have value for my own subscribers. The request presumes that my recommendations are transactional rather than genuine (which is insulting) - your free choice to recommend something does not generate a debt in someone else. Don’t give something only to get something, and protect your readers’ perception of your judgement and integrity.
6) Cold emailing another writer you don’t know to request that they give you something. A recommendation, a guest post, a contact email, whatever. This is overtly using someone as a means to an end and it never feels good. Maybe attempt to connect with them as a person first for its own sake.
7)Putting your Substack URL in the comments of another writer’s work. Their Substack isn’t your advertising platform. Commenting on their work, sharing your view or asking a question might initiate a dialogue with a writer whose work you like, or who you might like to work with. A relationship may grow from that. Going straight to using them as a sandwich board to advertise yourself is an instant connection killer.
There are others but this has got very long! Feel free to share any important ones I might have forgotten, or to share constructive tips you might have on growing while treating other writers and readers like ends in themselves. Growth is hard, and the internet is harder, but nobody is a means to an end. Kant was right about that, the old bore.
