by Angelique Fawns
One of the most daunting questions every author faces is: How do we get our words out into the world?
If you’re like me, you look at the careers of Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, or Kelley Armstrong and wish for that kind of success. A rabid fan base, movie and TV deals, and that most elusive of all goals: a full-time, profitable fiction writing career. But the truth is, those careers are the product of decades of hard work, timing, and luck. Most of us can’t bank on a bestseller falling from our fingers tomorrow.
So the real question becomes: What can we do right now to grow our platforms and share our writing?
I’ve been exploring different options since 2018, and after years of trial and error, I finally found the tool that works best for me: Substack. It might not be the tool for everyone, but it has provided me with an easy way to finally showcase my short stories and serial fiction. Other writers swear by Medium and Wattpad, and I’m hoping to learn more about them as I continue my writing journey.
Escaping the Gatekeepers
Like many indie authors, I wanted to find a way to share my stories without handing all my power—and my earnings—to gatekeepers. That’s not to say I don’t believe in traditional publishing (I have my first novel on sub with an agent right now, hoping to sell it to the Big Five). But if there is one refrain I’ve heard from all the successful authors I’ve interviewed, it’s that you must have multiple streams of income.
Self-publishing on Amazon seemed like a solution at first, but (for me at least) that quickly turned into a way to lose money fast. You don’t just upload your book and wait for readers to appear. It’s a screaming crowd of millions, and unless you pay the “algorithm gods” for ads, your work could sink into oblivion.
I needed something different: a platform where I could control my own content, connect directly with readers, and not go broke while doing it.
The Serial Fiction Route
There are other platforms that are free to distribute your work. I tried Patreon at first, and I know it works very well for others, but I was not able to get any traction on it. Like, literally, I had fewer than 20 followers. My issue was discoverability. At its heart, Substack is a newsletter provider. But it’s grown into something much bigger—a haven for writers, journalists, and creators of every kind. What I found intriguing (though it was off-putting at the start) was how writers can monetize their work right away. When I first joined, I turned on paid subscriptions almost as an afterthought. I wasn’t sure anyone would actually click that button. To my shock, people did—some simply because they liked my work and wanted to support it. That kind of generosity floored me.
Taking the Leap
I moved from Mailerlite to Substack for my newsletter when my follower base crested 1,000. (That’s when Mailerlite began charging users; they’ve recently lowered that number to 500.) There are other free platforms, such as Medium, but their email/newsletter system is tied to their ecosystem. My email list was full of names of people who weren’t Medium members.
I joined Substack in March 2024 with my thousand names. As of today, I have over 2,600 subscribers. My current content focuses on researching the short story markets and posting no-fee, paying short story calls, but I recently expanded my content into posting serial fiction. My followers aren’t as enthusiastic about my fiction as they are about my short story research, but I am hoping to find more readers who do.
Researching the markets is fun, and I feel like I’m providing a service for the community, but my goal is to be a WRITER. So, every Wednesday, I now publish a new 1,000-word chapter of my ongoing space opera, The Chronicles of Roxie Vega.
An author will never be “discovered” if their work isn’t out in the world. The best novel ever created will molder sitting on your hard drive. So far, I’ve been very happy with the response. Followers comment on the content, and the instant feedback is fabulous. I might not have tons of readers yet, but this experiment has just begun. At least I’m seeing some traction, whereas my free fiction was read by maybe one person on Patreon. My open rates on my short stories are closer to 1,500 or 2,000 on Substack.
Making It Work
Part of what gave me the courage to try serialization was seeing other writers succeed with it. I remember watching a TED Talk by Elle Griffin, who talked about how she serialized her novel Obscurity. Though I listened to that talk almost a year before I tried my own serial fiction, I kept thinking about it. I started looking at Wattpad and Medium, but wasn’t sure how I could find an audience.
The setup phase of Substack isn’t entirely intuitive, so it took longer to get it going than I had anticipated, and the “tags” that you assign to content are nothing like hashtags on other social media. Instead, a “tag” is a way to organize content on your landing page.
As a Canadian writer, I’ve had no issues using Substack’s Stripe-based payment system, but I’ve heard from other creators who aren’t as fortunate. Stripe isn’t supported in many countries, which means international writers outside its network can’t get paid or monetize their newsletters directly.
Substack’s openness to nearly all viewpoints has also drawn criticism, especially after reports that extremist newsletters were operating on the platform. Some writers left in protest, while others see it as the price of creative freedom online. The majority of the content and interactions I’ve had on Substack have been positive and supportive, but I do respect that others may have a different opinion.
Even if I never find huge monetization with my serial experiment, the worst-case scenario is having a complete novel at the end of this process. Beyond getting our words into the world, just creating them consistently is a challenge. Committing to posting 1,000 words a week means I must (at a minimum) write those thousand words. Motivation!
Could Serial Fiction Work for You?
For me, Substack has answered many of the questions I used to struggle with. I was spending so much money trying to create a platform for myself, but making nothing. Paying for newsletter hosting, paying for podcast hosting… Now I have a platform that is free and even pays me a little.
Another issue was visibility. How do you find followers in an oversaturated world of talented authors all hoping to capture reading eyes? Substack’s community talks freely in the “Notes” area, and I have found new writing and reading friends by commenting on the posts of others. I’ve had followers tell me that I should try Medium, and I might branch out as I get more established. I still often feel like I’m screaming into a void, but at least I know a few people can hear me now. If you are sitting on the fence about putting your words into the world, there is no time like the present. Why not try serial fiction?
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Angelique Fawns is a journalist and speculative fiction writer. She began her career writing articles about naked cave dwellers in Tenerife, Canary Islands. After selling her first story to EQMM, she fell in love with weird fiction, which is ACTUALLY stranger than non-fiction. You can find her lurking at @angeliquefawns on X, blogging about upcoming calls at https://angeliquemfawns.substack.com, or gazing into the abyss, hoping it stares back at her. Over 100 stories published. Find some in Mystery Tribune, Amazing Stories, and Space & Time.