Substack Notes Observations

Since I’ve been mulling over this a lot lately, I thought it was about time I posted a discussion about this here on Author Social.

Lately I’ve been examining Substack Notes as a platform, trying to see how the small but growing fiction world works on there. So far Substack notes is my only form of social media (for various reasons) and I’ve seen a lot of authors starting to migrate to it in the past 6 months I’ve been on.

Now, given that I deeply curate my feed, this could be entirely biased. But here is what I have observed so far (again, focusing on the FICTION world)

• If you write MG-YA fantasy in the vein of Tolkien or Wingfeather saga— that’s the place to be.

  Not only are there a lot of young adults (mostly female) on there hungry for clean epic fantasy books in the veins of those stories (seriously the LOTR fandom on there is… huge) but there are also a lot of homeschool MOMS on there looking for those stories for their kids. You write clean, “homeschooler” fantasy for teens? Go to Substack. That’s all they can talk about.

• There is a small group of hard sci Fi writers. We’re talking like space sci Fi and like the classic sci Fi stories that are super techy and such. This is a mostly male group, a handful of new adults and then some older men. Not as popular but it’s there.

• I’ve seen nothing of dystopians, which is disappointing to me bc I was hoping to find some more hopeful dystopian authors. Oh well.

• Contemporary stories are fifty fifty. I’ve seen a handful, usually YA cozy mysteries, and there was enough hype for me to think that there might be a larger potential audience there.

• Interestingly it’s mostly indie authors on there although a handful of Enclave authors have also popped up here and there (again all of them that same MG/YA clean fantasy crowd)

• I hang out mostly with the young adult/new adult crowd so I have not seen many requests for adult fiction of any genre, I’d be curious to know what other people have seen on that.

• There’s like two superhero writers I know so far, one who is VERY much in the vein of Marvel and the other is a more slice of life story about kids with disabilities gaining superpowers. But both get decent viewings.

Overall I really enjoy it and I find it to be a very sweet community once you find the people worth following. It’s not my niche audience (nor is it what I like to read) but I’ve made friends and who knows, it could shift again. Curious to hear y’all’s thoughts on what you’ve seen.