Ha! I’m honoured! (And interested to see how this post feels to you and what it does)... I wonder what actions if any folks will take... who will click what? Who’s here for the chat?!
I’m drawn to your first and second questions at the end and I’ve enjoyed building up more understanding of your journey with books and your passions in writing here! 🦄✨
It feels pretty good. One issue with the bigger pasta is that they are hard to reference in conversation so it’s nice to be able to have a post where it just does the thing it says instead of it being part of a bigger effort somebody has to dig to find
Russell, I'm learning so much from you. I'll take this away especially: "There is intention behind everything I do here, too. I write widely read posts people want to hear so that I can deliver weirder, niche pieces that people need to hear." For me, at this point, my Substack is the most "for me" project I've ever had (although I think people are connecting with it too), and I think of articles I write for mainstream publications as a "one for the studio."
That makes sense! I guess my dig deeper question would be if you want to drive more people to read your more personal work by writing about broader topics sometimes as your “one for the studio” too. As a publisher, I have to my writer self aside and remind them they have not written a popular post in a while and if I want to draw people into my wider posts a broad, four quadrant, mainstream post is a great way to do that.
One way to do that is to take something popular in the worst and give an interesting twist that gives a different perspective. It’s a cheat, but then we do have a post about lessons in chemistry releasing tomorrow bc... it also works. Plus, I love that book.
I know what you mean. I think what I've been doing so far (intuitively) is injecting very niche topics into posts written with a general public in mind. But as I go along I'll try experimenting separating the 'weirder' stuff from the more 'mainstream' stuff. I like this idea and I think it'll work well for my specific topic (languages and language learning).
This is SUCH good advice. In the author ecosystem, I'm most definitely a Forest, and my writing tends to resonate with a pretty niche set of people who then end up loving everything I write. But I've been thinking a lot about how to cast a wider net without selling my soul (har har), which means "writing to market" at least in some ways. Working on that. Thanks, Russell!
This resonates with me. I also started with the weird! Sales were okay but nothing like as good as my recent, more commercial series. I've been wondering if I'm ever going to get back to my weird and this makes so much sense as a tactic - and gives me hope that weird will still be possible so long as I keep shoring up those outer rings.
Oooh, this is fascinating. And I can already think of writers where a bullseye overlay like this works--where they have a couple super marketable big name books, but my favorite work is their core weird stuff.
Same. There are authors even like Piers Anthony where I don't love Xanth but I love his incarnations of immortality books. Yet, people only wanted him to write Xanth cuz it was the moneymaker.
Exactly. And the Forest in me loves this idea, because it totally allows for me following all the weird and varied projects I want to do, even if one tree is standing up tallest making most of the money or whatever. I can still play with my weird little trees too.
First, congrats on your books. You are incredibly prolific. How many books do/did you write in a year?
Second, thank you for this observation and advice. You got me thinking.
I write mostly humor so when I think of something incongruous to a situation or one funny thing that actually happened I must write it down. I guess I can also call it Inspiration.
Ha! I’m honoured! (And interested to see how this post feels to you and what it does)... I wonder what actions if any folks will take... who will click what? Who’s here for the chat?!
I’m drawn to your first and second questions at the end and I’ve enjoyed building up more understanding of your journey with books and your passions in writing here! 🦄✨
It feels pretty good. One issue with the bigger pasta is that they are hard to reference in conversation so it’s nice to be able to have a post where it just does the thing it says instead of it being part of a bigger effort somebody has to dig to find
I want some of the bigger pasta 😋
Iol. Got it. Shorter posts, bigger pasta. :)
👌🏻
Russell, I'm learning so much from you. I'll take this away especially: "There is intention behind everything I do here, too. I write widely read posts people want to hear so that I can deliver weirder, niche pieces that people need to hear." For me, at this point, my Substack is the most "for me" project I've ever had (although I think people are connecting with it too), and I think of articles I write for mainstream publications as a "one for the studio."
That makes sense! I guess my dig deeper question would be if you want to drive more people to read your more personal work by writing about broader topics sometimes as your “one for the studio” too. As a publisher, I have to my writer self aside and remind them they have not written a popular post in a while and if I want to draw people into my wider posts a broad, four quadrant, mainstream post is a great way to do that.
One way to do that is to take something popular in the worst and give an interesting twist that gives a different perspective. It’s a cheat, but then we do have a post about lessons in chemistry releasing tomorrow bc... it also works. Plus, I love that book.
I know what you mean. I think what I've been doing so far (intuitively) is injecting very niche topics into posts written with a general public in mind. But as I go along I'll try experimenting separating the 'weirder' stuff from the more 'mainstream' stuff. I like this idea and I think it'll work well for my specific topic (languages and language learning).
Awesome!
This is SUCH good advice. In the author ecosystem, I'm most definitely a Forest, and my writing tends to resonate with a pretty niche set of people who then end up loving everything I write. But I've been thinking a lot about how to cast a wider net without selling my soul (har har), which means "writing to market" at least in some ways. Working on that. Thanks, Russell!
Yay! Yes, a lot of my advice is very Forest-y, even though I'm a Tundra. I'm glad it resonated.
This resonates with me. I also started with the weird! Sales were okay but nothing like as good as my recent, more commercial series. I've been wondering if I'm ever going to get back to my weird and this makes so much sense as a tactic - and gives me hope that weird will still be possible so long as I keep shoring up those outer rings.
Yay!!!
Oooh, this is fascinating. And I can already think of writers where a bullseye overlay like this works--where they have a couple super marketable big name books, but my favorite work is their core weird stuff.
Same. There are authors even like Piers Anthony where I don't love Xanth but I love his incarnations of immortality books. Yet, people only wanted him to write Xanth cuz it was the moneymaker.
Exactly. And the Forest in me loves this idea, because it totally allows for me following all the weird and varied projects I want to do, even if one tree is standing up tallest making most of the money or whatever. I can still play with my weird little trees too.
Thanks, Russell. This post definitely resonated for me.
Yay!!
this is an interesting method!
Yay!
I write what I would want to read, answering questions others may have. Other times it's I found this cool thing and I think you should know about it.
My stuff tends to be kind of ecletic.
cool!
First, congrats on your books. You are incredibly prolific. How many books do/did you write in a year?
Second, thank you for this observation and advice. You got me thinking.
I write mostly humor so when I think of something incongruous to a situation or one funny thing that actually happened I must write it down. I guess I can also call it Inspiration.
Some years I've written 12+. My longest streak was 20 books in 20 books.
Impressed emoji here.
20 books in 20 months I meant. It’s been a long day.
I figured. Hope you're caught up on sleep. 🙏🏻
I love short! Shorter, shorter 😊