How to find more readers for your books and get stacked with subs on Substack

The Author Stack sits at the intersection of craft and commerce, helping writers build more sustainable businesses that allow them to thrive while creating work that lights them up inside. We strive to give authors agency in a world that too often seems intent on stripping it away from them.

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One of the biggest problems that writers face is how to get more readers to their work. I’ve talked before about going paid on Substack, but how do you get a critical mass of readers to make going paid worth it?

I’ve spent my non-fiction career at the intersection of art and commerce, and one of my specialties has been mailing list growth. I’ve helped thousands of authors grow their mailing lists into sustainable businesses that light them up inside.

So, today I’m going to share with you my favorite and most effective ways to build your mailing list, whether that’s on Substack or somewhere else. Some of these will resonate more with you than others, and that’s how it’s supposed to be in the end. Hopefully, over time you can build more and more into your routine as time goes on.

Before I do, thanks go out to for inspiring this post through his Note last week.

Prelaunch your book or paid membership on Kickstarter/your website/Indiegogo

I am a launcher. I love focusing 100% of my attention on discrete marketing events for a fixed amount of time. I don’t do well with continuous dribbles of money. I like to turn the faucet on at full blast and then turn it off again soon after.

This is also how I acquire the largest percentage of my new readers. Yes, the people who buy whatever I’m selling sign up for my list, but I also offer free previews, workshops, seminars, webinars, and other content in service of the launch, which is how I get even more emails.

These launches happen outside of retailers where I can collect email addresses from my most loyal fans and segment my list by interest. You can do this on your own website, or with direct sales platforms like Clickfunnels, but I find Kickstarter works best b/c there is some organic reach there, too.

Even if you don’t have a “book” per se, you can still do a launch of a paid membership by having a 2-3 week launch event with special bonuses for joining.

Or you can have a sneaky launch by putting together a collection of your best posts and articles into a collection of essays like I just did on Kickstarter.

Everything in This is Not a Book was written either on Facebook, my old blog, or in emails between 2015-2022. Aside from the introduction, I didn’t write anything new for it and it still made me thousands of dollars.

I hired an editor and used Book Cover Zone to find a cover, plus deposit photos to find a nice chapter header image. It cost about five hundred dollars to put the book together, and I was absolutely floored by how many people wanted a totem of my best work collected into one place, even though every word had previously been given away for free.

I had already tried this several years ago with my book How to Become a Successful Author, but it was not nearly as successful because I didn’t put focused attention on it through a launch event. Instead, I just put it on retailers, and it did fine, but not nearly as well as the Kickstarter. Plus, I didn’t get those subscribers, which is key for long-term growth.

If you look at the campaign you’ll see backers could get a 1-year Substack membership for $75+, but even if you didn’t buy that, you effectively helped fund the newsletter by supporting the book. Additionally, dozens more people signed up to get a free preview of the book.

Maybe people don’t want to buy a subscription because it is a continuous commitment, but they are often happy to buy a book that is curated by you, even if it is close to the same price as a membership.

Even though I’ve run 30+ campaigns, roughly 1/3 of my buyers are new to me, and 80% of them sign up for my mailing list once the campaign is done.

Just be careful. You can’t just add people to your mailing list if they buy your book. You have to ask them if they would like to join in the post-campaign survey, and most people do.

If you want to learn more about this, then you can pick up the book I co-write with Monica Leonelle, Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter, from most major retailers.

Join paid group promos

If you're more passive in your marketing, then I would suggest you join some paid group promos on websites like Booksweeps, b/c they will then go out and find you subscribers passively without you doing much of anything.

Cards on the table, I run ad-based builders with Booksweeps, so I’m biased. Their social-based ones are good, but do require more effort. The ad-based ones allow you to simply pay the entry fee and get delivered a list once the promotion ends.

This is obviously less effective at conversion than somebody buying your books, but if you have a great automation sequence, then you can absolutely make this work for you.

You need an absolutely killer automation sequence to turn new readers into raving fans, along with a self-liquidating offer to help you bear the upfront cost, but if you can set these up, then this is really effective and easy. We teach you how to do all of this in our Direct Sales Accelerator.

Please note, automation sequences are not something that you can do on Substack, so you would have to create a different account somewhere else to take full advantage of using this strategy effectively.

Organize an anthology

If you are somebody that doesn't like doing marketing at all, a very effective way to get subscribers is through organizing an anthology, either free or paid, and using the combined power of network effects to have all of you roll one boulder up the hill together.

Most people think the only outlet for an anthology is to put it up on retailers, but if you’re looking for subscribers you can just as easily gather writers for something you launch on a site designed to gather your email addresses, or even as a free lead magnet in perpetuity.

You would have to use something like Kickstarter or Bookfunnel where you gather the emails in order to make this work, but it can be very effective to have everybody market to their little audiences to create a big audience.

I launched my career curating anthologies through projects like Cthulhu is Hard to Spell and Monsters and Other Scary Shit. I already had some small projects and some success before these launched, but the anthologies took me to another level.

Yes, I used this method for fiction, but there is no reason you can’t do this for non-fiction. I’ve seen non-fiction authors who have tried to sell me into joining their sets for thousands of dollars, but you can absolutely do this for way less. You can also do this with course bundles, either for free or for one low price. I’ve been part of course bundles before and they usually net a couple hundred new subscribers and a very little bit of money.

Also, please note that I used the word “organize” and not “edit”. I did edit the first two of my anthologies, but I hired an editor for the last two I did, and now I have a publishing company that does basically everything for the series.

Join Bookfunnel and/or StoryOrigin

If you want to gather a lot of good readers fast, then one of the best singular investments you can make is to get a Bookfunnel account. Because almost every author uses Bookfunnel, and because they are very meticulous on how to vet readers before they can sign up, when you join one of their group promos, you can be almost assured they are real people who like to read. Also, because they are signing up directly for your book, there is a high likelihood they are in your ideal audience.

I personally don’t use StoryOrigin, but I know some authors love them and they also have group promos. I know the owners of both companies and they are good people. I just happen to know the owner of Bookfunnel better, so I know more about their backend.

These group promos require a little more effort because you need to send them to your email list and (preferably) promote them on social media, but I have gotten thousands of emails from Bookfunnel over the years and they often become my best readers. Just note, they do give you a unique link, and your reputation is tracked by their system so others can see it when they decide whether to let you into a promo, so you actually do have to promote to keep getting approved for the best promos.

Just like above you need a killer automation sequence and self-liquidating offer to make this work well, but it can be a great resource. On top of that, I use Bookfunnel to host all my books. like the one you see above, and read a lot of them on their app, too.

Form a book club around your genre

My friend Andy Peloquin and I started the Action Fantasy Book Club with 10 other authors. We offer a different author's book every month to members for free, but we're mostly promoting the book club.

We all chipped in some money and use that to get new subscribers. We collect all the emails and distribute them to the authors at the beginning of every month, then have a schedule for when we can add those readers to our list so they aren’t all bombarded at once.

Authors have to commit to marketing the book club for a whole year and agree to promote it at least once in their emails every month. In return, each author gets a highly curated list of readers that are interested in our niche genre.

Additionally, Andy and I are building the main list, which grows bigger every month and it becomes an asset that compounds over time. Since January, we’ve built a list of over 5,000 email addresses, and we add hundreds more every month.

I have watched this work successfully in several genres. Again, while this is fiction, there’s no reason why you can’t use this same strategy in non-fiction, or even journalism, to make it work for you.

Round robins

Elana Johnson introduced me to this concept. You work with 11 other writers and every month you each promote a different person’s work. Everyone cycles through the same list of people, so over the course of a year, you promote everyone else one time.

You don’t have to spend a whole year implementing this, either. I’ve watched authors condense this strategy into a “week of awesome” or have a themed promotion like “travel cozy mystery week” where they promote a different book every day of a hyperfocused week instead of spreading it out over every month of a year.

This strategy is much easier to organize than starting a book club, but you are not building a compounding asset that grows more powerful every year. Also, there’s no reason you can’t use both of these strategies with different groups of authors.

This would work wonderfully with Substack’s existing infrastructure, and a lot of writers already do this naturally. I follow dozens of writers who spotlight other Substacks through guest posts and backlinks every month, but doing it with intention would make it even more powerful.

You can also supercharge this strategy by adding in the recommendations that subscribers see after they sign up for a Substack. It would be relatively easy to cycle through different writers each month with a few minutes of work.

You really need to trust the other writers will deliver, though. Don’t agree to promote somebody else unless you are absolutely sure they can deliver the goods.

Exhibit at conventions

Even after 200+ events, I can still get hundreds of subscribers at conventions. If I really push, I can get 400-500 new subscribers at a big convention. Just know that it’s very hard to get a ton of subscribers and also make a lot of money at a convention, so you should choose one or the other as your success path going into an event.

Getting lots of subscribers at a small convention works best if you have something awesome to give away. I used to go around to other booths before the convention floor opened, ones I knew were good sellers, and put together gift bags of their most popular work. Then I would do a free raffle at the end of every day for people who signed up while the floor was open.

I generally only use this strategy at slow shows, farmer’s markets, and conventions with lower-than-normal foot traffic. Using this strategy, I could get 50-100 subscribers a day even at a show with very low attendance.

Even if you don’t do a giveaway, it makes sense to have a tablet to take down emails for people who aren’t ready to buy yet. If somebody is about to walk away without purchasing, simply ask them if they would like to sign up for your list so you can send them some free samples of your work. Especially at bigger shows with near-constant foot traffic, this strategy works really well.

If you’re speaking at a convention, even if you’re not exhibiting, then I highly recommend bringing a clipboard, or two, that you can pass out during your panel to gather emails. Just clear it with the other speakers before you just pass out a clipboard to avoid looking rude.

We did this at 20books Vegas last year and ended up with 400-500 new emails after all our panels. At the beginning of each panel/workshop, we stated that we had additional, targeted resources that we would send after the convention to people that signed up. Each list was hyper-focused on the topics we talked about, and they converted very well into paying students.

The great thing about conventions is that attendees have self-selected to be there and are very likely to make the effort to read your work. They are motivated to learn more about the topic of the convention, so if you choose the right ones then you can really get far.

Just know, you likely need to be an outgoing sort, or amazing at design in order to make this work well. If you just sit behind a table or stay silent on panels the whole time, then you’re going to have a bad experience and waste your time. If you want to learn more about conventions, you can pick up our book, Get Your Book Selling at Events and Signings.

Set up your website to encourage subscribers

One of the biggest mistakes writers make is that they don’t have a prominent way to sign up for their email list on their website.

Your site needs to feature a prominent giveaway at the top of the homepage and the footer of every page. Even if you don’t have a book, a collection of your best posts, or some other resource needs to be available to people first thing when they reach your site.

If you go to my website, I get 20-50 new subscribers every month just from having a big header with a lead magnet, and a footer that offers a free book to everyone.

I know the scholarship is all over the map when it comes to having personal websites, but I’ve always believed it was essential to have a “home base” where everyone who types in your name into a search bar can find you easily.

I recently lost my Facebook account for reasons and went searching all my friend’s websites to sign up for their email list. It was a dismal experience. Out of 100 or so websites I visited, I only found an easy way to sign up for their list on a few of them. I was very motivated to join their email list, and I literally couldn’t do it. What a waste of my time and theirs.

Most people are coming to your website to either read your bio, buy your books, or sign up for your email list. Make it easy for them.

Get your back matter right

If you have books, then the one inch of space after the book ends is your prime real estate to get people to take an action. Are you sending people to your list? Are you using your organic reach to sell the next book? Are you getting them to an offer on your website relevant to their interests? 

Most authors do none of these things. Others do too many of them. Readers are generally only able to perform one, and only one, action. Don’t overwhelm them, but do take advantage of that space by sending them somewhere before they come down from their book high.

If you have a Substack, does every post point back to a relevant offer on your website? When you do interviews on other platforms, are you saying “Check out my Substack” or are you saying “If you’re interested in this topic, then I put together a special bonus about this topic, which you can find by heading to this special link?”

The first one is okay for the few people who fall in love with you during the interview, but the second one is going to send the people you convinced to learn more on the topic to download your additional resources. Here is one of my best ones. 

There will be many times more people that want to learn more about a topic than fall in love with you during an interview, so using the second strategy will net you more email addresses and give you more readers to convert them into paid subscribers.

Even if you are a fiction author, you should be driving people back to the most relevant book with your content marketing. Even if you only offer a sample of a book, giving readers a specific call to action that is hyper-targeted to their interests will work better than just giving them a general website to check out.

The more specific and direct you are with your organic traffic, the more success you’ll have in turning casual readers into subscribers. The more directed you can be in your marketing to those people, the more of those subscribers will turn into buyers.

“Go wide” with your work

Yes, you publish your work on Substack, but even if you only engage with people on Substack, then there’s no reason why you can’t distribute your content across the internet and point readers back to Substack if they want to form a deeper connection with you.

If you have more time than money, then you can make a hit list of social platforms that give the best bang for the buck in your genre and post to them yourself. I do recommend waiting around for an hour after you post just in case people have commented so you can help juice the algorithm to your advantage.

If you have more money than time, you can hire a VA to cross-post for you on different platforms.

If you write fantasy, then Royal Road and other serialized fiction apps are great for getting exposure and funneling people to somewhere else they can support you. If you write romance, then you can use sites like Radish to expand your reader base.

If you write non-fiction, simply posting the content (not a link) on social media will drive people to your site as long as you provide a strong call to action. No, it’s probably not a ton of traffic at any one time, but my business partner talks about pennies in the bank, and that is what you’re doing by going wide with your content. These little things compound over time, but it does take a significant amount of time to see the momentum build using this strategy, so it’s better to use this in tandem with other strategies on this list that can help you grow faster.

Generally, doing interviews with other websites and creators, doing swaps of your stories to each other’s audiences, and generally being in as many places as possible so people can find you the most places is an effective long-term strategy, even if any single piece of content doesn’t move the needle much by itself.

I get people finding my work every day from work I put out years ago, which is kind of like past Russell being kind to future Russell, and above all, one of the chief principles in my life is to always try to be kind to future Russell.

That said, I am all about conserving energy these days. I don’t have active profiles on any social media platform, and don’t post on other sites. I have a mailing list, and I do interviews surrounding some of my bigger launches. Otherwise, I’ve cocooned myself to protect my precious energy, so if this sounds like a lot and it doesn’t resonate, that’s okay.

Interacting on other posts and being helpful

Often, the best marketing is simply being pleasant, courteous, and helpful on other people’s posts. This isn’t about spamming your content, or just saying “Cool!” It’s about having genuine and interesting deep interactions that help make people’s lives better simply by you being part of it.

This method doesn’t “scale” well, but one of my favorite pieces of startup advice is that in order to scale you must do the unscaleable. Even to this day, I still make most of my best connections during spontaneous, one on one interaction with people. In fact, this whole post was inspired by one.

I am confident that I make great books and write best-in-class articles, so by simply interacting with people and exposing them to my general vibe, I know the right people who resonate with my message are going to find something they like and check out my work. If they don’t, that’s okay. I still had a nice conversation, which has the benefit of making life less miserable just by the fact that it happened.

Using this as a “growth strategy” really only works if you have a strong voice, and if you do it with no expectation of results. It seems like doublespeak to say that the only way to have results is to not expect results, but it’s also true. You have to do this simply for the love of helping people and being a generally interesting human that exists trying to add light into the world that is too often filled with darkness.

If you start interacting with people expecting them to like or follow you, it’s going to be a really bad time for you. People are very good at discerning genuine reactions from a marketing tactic. However, if you can just do this because you want the interaction, and you have a great ecosystem, then you’ll be pleasantly surprised with how far this simple bit of advice can take you.

In fact, the best marketing is usually simple. It is augmented by a sometimes complex backend, but the actual act of marketing is pretty simple. It’s interacting genuinely with people in interesting ways, and building connections with them that resonate through time.

The Author Stack sits at the intersection of craft and commerce, helping writers build more sustainable businesses that allow them to thrive while creating work that lights them up inside. We strive to give authors agency in a world that too often seems intent on stripping it away from them.

We have hundreds of articles in our archive, along with fiction and non-fiction books for paid members.

If you are not a paid member, you can read everything with a 7-day free trial, or give us a one-time tip.