What I’ve learned from one year writing a Substack newsletter

And how I plan to earn a living doing it.

It was one year ago that I finished researching my article No One Reads Books (and other truths about publishing), and determined that my best hope as an author was to create a platform for my writing.

At the time, I had no social media accounts and had just emerged from three years writing a novel when, in a fevered haze, I became like Amadeus in the final scene in his namesake movie — furiously determining that I would not allow my novels to die in Obscurity, but would find a way to put my art out into the world.

Thus began a year-long exploration of the creator economy and whether I might be able to use it to build an audience for my writing, and possibly even earn a living doing it. One year in, I believe my answer to both questions is yes, though I have crossed off several inaccurate hypotheses to get here.

Hypothesis: People value art

Conclusion: People value knowledge more

Having struck out with more than 100 literary agents and determined that mine was a novel better suited to a niche audience of 1,000 than a mass-market audience of 100,000, I turned to the creator economy to see whether I…