Not being an influencer on Substack

Aka what am I even doing here?!

I got an email the other day from Substack about how a famous TikToker found success on Substack.

Well no duh, I thought. This TikTokian already had a following when he showed up here. No wonder he gained a platform.

I’ve been noticing more of this lately: Substack emails about how famous influencers, journalists, writers, or personalities find success on the platform. In fact, Substack just announced a $20 million fund to boost growth for creators migrating to the platform.

Substack used to focus more on people like you and me: just random folks who enjoyed writing and who built a following from the ground up. They didn’t bring in a huge following or large notoriety. They were not George Saunders or Maggie Smith (both amazing writers who deserve the fame they have received, by the way)—they were just everyday writers building both a platform and an income stream through talent and a lot of hard work.

That seems to be changing, which makes sense. Substack makes money when its creators make money, so why wouldn’t they go after and highlight the big fish?

More money in their pockets.

—

We also seem to have reached a saturation point. There is a glut of writing in every category. And so many good writers! Within my own category—thoughtful Christian writing—I am inundated (in a good way!) every day with emails from the 115 newsletters I subscribe to. I went through and culled my list a while ago and still came out with 115 quality writers who are each doing what I am attempting to do: faithfully showing up and pouring out words that mean something.

It’s enough content to paralyze. I haven’t posted on here in weeks, primarily because I haven’t had anything to say—everyone else seems to say it better.

—

I started seriously writing online a decade ago now. It was May of 2015, and I created a Squarespace website. It was about a year before I started working on my first book—a book that would take me another seven years to write. I knew I wanted to be an author, knew I wanted to write for Christians, and knew I wanted to grow a platform because that’s what future authors did.

So, I did that. I went to conferences and learned that I needed to become famous, and the best way to become famous was to write consistently and court fake controversy on Twitter and have a website with my name on it and my headshot all over the place. I had to get as many people fired up about me as possible.

So, I did that. And I was miserable. My mental health was shot, and my ego would have a hard time fitting into a normal-sized rowboat (that’s a reference to The Office, for those uninitiated).

—

It’s here where two things happened: Wendell Berry and Substack. Wendell Berry entered my life in the same way, I imagine, my future wife will (and I’m only being slightly hyperbolic here). He threw open the curtains and revealed to me what it means to live and write intentionally.

Suddenly I stopped feeling the need to be a celebrity; rather, I felt the need to live within my limits—limits that included caring for my mental health and moving at a slower pace than most other online writers.

2019 arrived, and so did my discovery of Substack. Suddenly, out of the ether came this platform that promised me exactly what I was looking for: a place where I could put my writing and gain a platform in authentic, non-publicity-hogging ways. I slowly retreated from Twitter (I now only use it for following the Oklahoma City Thunder), and I never really started flying on Instagram. Instead, I poured my attention into crafting thoughtful essays that didn’t court controversy but broke open my life in all its complicated beauty.

And let me tell you, it felt good.

—

Here is where I’ll crack open my readership numbers for you and just be explicit:

This is my growth trajectory.¹ I floundered on Substack for a long while, trying to find my voice and my newsletter. I didn’t really know how I wanted to show up here. But then it clicked: I named the thing Slow Faith and started writing about the things I was really interested in: books I was reading, trends I was observing, narrating the Bible through Office GIFs.

I think I stopped trying so hard to find a theme and instead made my own interests and brain the theme. I wrote about what I was passionate about, and Substack started getting more and more advanced. It introduced recommendations and launched a writing group option: that’s where I met Sara Billups and found another voice navigating the publishing world with similar aims and aspirations. Suddenly, my audience really started to grow.

I am now—after ten years of writing online—at 1,544 subscribers and 1,974 followers. I am currently averaging about 30 new subscribers a month.

It is not crazy growth, I know that. But I’m okay with it! I’m telling you, doing this thing has been the best for my sanity, and my faith.

—

I am not a former member of a drug cartel and I was not raised in the rural hills of Arkansas in a family of twenty-five children. So selling a book will always be a difficult journey, and the journey I have chosen—limited and sustainable—will take longer than the fame-and-influence track. And that’s okay. It’s what I’ve chosen.

Substack used to focus on the track I’m on, but lately—at least, from their marketing emails—they seem to have chosen the other one, the one of quick fame and influence. And that’s okay. It’s what they’ve chosen.

But I am still here, writing sustainably and obscurely. It suits me, and I think it could suit you too. Come on in, the water’s fine.

—

If this has been helpful for you, you might want to join Sara Billups of Bitter Scroll and I this Tuesday at 8:00pm EST / 5:00pm PST. We are going to be talking about everything I mentioned in this newsletter. How do you grow a platform authentically? How do you write to be published while also writing because you enjoy it? Is it okay to charge people money for your words? We’d love to have you join us!

It’s $12, but feel free to put in SAVE20 for 20% off. If you want to go but cannot afford it, please email me at drewjbrown2@gmail.com and I can get you in.

---

1. I exited my Christian influencer phase with 492 subscribers, so I entered Substack with a little bit of a leg up. I didn’t start form 0.