Growing Genre Fiction on Substack
There's nothing I dislike more than writing about promoting your writing. But people have found parts of this helpful. So I'll leave this here.
So you thought that Eathel the Bastard was all just swordfights and moonlight trysts did you?
It’s all that and more. I’m going to add in a bit of what’s working for me in growing an audience for a serial adventure fantasy novel.1
This is based on a great talk/post earlier with The Brothers Krynn, Parrish Baker & Novak Masic. Future contributors to this article will be tagged like this up here.
Add in anyone you’ve met in sci-fi-romance-fantasy-whatever. I’ve been adapting it from the same note and adding to it.
A bit about me
My offering is an epic adventure fantasy novel.
While I think a lot of this can apply anywhere, your mileage may vary based on any number of things having to do with what you write about.
I don’t remember when exactly I started on Substack, but it’s been a little over a month as of this writing (2/21/2025).
In that time, I went from 0 to >100 single subs on a publication (“Eathel the Bastard”); currently at around 180 between Eathel and “Madta the Spy” (there is a third publications but it’s poems, so like five2).3
Edit 2/25/2025:
I am now very grateful and humble to announce that we are at 220 subscribers across the two publications, and all I'm doing is continuing to reapply the lessons here.
Edit 3/3/2025
As of this writing sitting at about 245 subscribers. 3[1] paid subscriptions at $5-8/per but most paid in annual (tysm katie, nico, ken and joe [comp]).
So, in the marketing-and promotion-focused “Genre: growth,” our one-and-only focus is going to be getting you paid subscribers with as minimal an effort as possible.
Just like a true 12 year industry veteran in sales and marketing.
…one who’s actually growing his very own genre fiction on Substack.
So you can actually see if he's benefiting you, based on whether he’s benefiting himself.
If he doesn't grow his subscriber base, I think I know what I'd do with that subscription.
Noting interesting new features like pinning this within the genre growth Substack publication.
Upcoming piece will be on training Meta AI models to take a chapter of your story and break it into several chunks and then used buffer. Today on a whim I decided to go from 0 to 15 scheduled posts within an hour; also, the perils of using open AI versus Meta for your social media marketing needs. I think the answer is there will surprise you. Especially if you've experimented with either one.
We also go over creating an AI Chatbot that is going to engage with people on your Instagram accounts. This is gonna be really cool and interesting. And I think a lot of these things are gonna surprise you.
The end of the day it's all about making you money. So even though this is a paid subscription designed to be temporary as needed.
For for $7.99/mo, you grow your publication at your own pace in a way that you're comfortable with and then you unsubscribe if you want to kind of rest at that pace or do your own thing from there.
Now, I'll tell you this: I think that they are gonna be a lot more interesting discussions like this one on AI that you're gonna wanna hang out for but it is all gonna be paywall from the jump.
This entire publication is right now. I only have my beta testers in here and paid subscribers, who want to get a jump on the competition for most valuable resource of all: the audience’s time and attention.
Growing Genre Fiction on Substack
So you thought that Eathel the Bastard was all just swordfights and moonlight trysts did you?
Overview
I write the serial novel here: stack.samliebl.com
I knew right away I wanted to build it onto my own website so I can completely control a community-driven almost wiki-like lore section and not format it according to Substack’s strictures.
In the future, I want to do things like “lore.samliebl.com” for those projects so that ultimately, it all goes back to my own “land,” as it were.
For my fantasy fans, I urge you to become freeholders instead of serfs!
Starting out, I had no social media presence.45
I use Substack tools to see which of my channels get me the most subscriptions and I double down on those.
Still weak on Twitter/X. It’s not that I don’t think I could get a lot of traffic from this site; it’s that I really am starting from absolutely 0. If anyone is willing to help me out on that platform, I will gladly return the favor, however I can.
Substack
I learned that I get the most engagement from posts that are about 1,200 long.
For fantasy fiction on Substack, that seems to be the way to go, and just release that all the time minimum once per week across two stories. (The “two stories” part refers to me specifically. I have two stories that I post updates to. I think no matter what you're doing, make it sustainable and consistent.)
If you find yourself having a DM conversation with another writer, or really anyone, that could be had publicly, have it publicly. Try to start a conversation around it in the Notes section of Substack.
Make your content evergreen.6 Evergreen content means that you put a lot of work into it on the front end, update it periodically when it makes sense, and just let it do its thing. You have to make it valuable and worth something. You'll notice that I am updating this post as new ideas come to me.
Social Media
I hype up my releases like they are movie releases. I pack my social media feeds with updates using the social media tool Buffer.7
I’m hosting my own podcast which you should join to talk about anything.
I am still trying to learn how to use Substack as a social media platform. I actually really don't like social media whatsoever. It's a means to an end.
I find people, strategically tracking certain hashtags, who I think will be excited and they usually are.
Visual collateral
My dream is to hire a real human artist, but because I'm a full-time writer, I write detailed AI image prompts and include them in my posts.
I strive to make them look interesting in cinematic and appeal to the audience I have in mind.
If you’re upset that people judge books by their covers (they do) then boy have I got news for you. People judge every post by its cover.
Without driving yourself crazy try to think about every post as its own little book release.
All I mean by that is generate some cover images and put them on stuff. A picture of the sky that you took with your phone is better than no picture at all.
More on visuals
I'm a big believer in taking advantage of the fact that human beings are very visual creatures. In my own experience, images have drawn me into stories that I wouldn't have otherwise been drawn into.
So, with that in mind, creating engaging images is a priority for me.
Check out the pictures here. These were generated to promote my stories.
A note on ‘character cards’
For whatever reason, people seem to really love these:
I call them ‘character cards.’ Frankly, I like them too. They were inspired by some promotional artwork for a Neuromancer graphic novel that never came to be. I don’t have any of the rights to the images, but they won't be hard to find if you Google them.
It's a fun exercise to do. You describe a lot about what your character is and his vibe or her attitude towards things. And you get a kind of like collectible trading card sort of thing.
Here are some more. I do them for characters (which to me includes horses) and various world-building concepts like the nigh-impenetrable leg-and underside armor (called eçirumplex) of the fantastical “Teran destrier.”
Ok, so how do I do that?
Putting it into practice
Just by way of example (visuals):
Parrish Baker thank you for assenting to being a guinea pig from the terrific story “Fallen from the Stars.”
I just straight up copied Parrish’s wonderful story about the intersection of human beings, AI, the world, leaving it and what it means to exist at the intersection of all of these.
Then, I plugged it into an image generator (Dall•E, Free).
Got a response, didn’t like it, so conversationally instructed the image generator to do what I wanted it to do
Attached would be an image I would use to promote it if this were my story.
This took all of ten minutes and I created nothing except entering the content I wanted my machines to work on.
This is not Parrish’s style—the images of the trees and the stars were beautiful by the way, those in your original post.
Parrish’s aesthetic is way bigger than this. See the real character/cover art:
I'm not saying I can do better than the above. The above is a work of freaking art. That is the cover—not the one that I told a machine to do.
All I'm saying is this took me all of 10 minutes, and I think it probably increased my chances of getting people to click on the story.
As a side note, and you can see from the real character art that Parrish gets this, I advise focusing in on the characters. It’s more personal, intimate and people can see themselves in it.
It looks like a graphic novel—and graphic novels are easier for people to enmesh themselves into than pure words…what can I say? I’m a visual creature too.
I say this is a writer and someone who holds reverence for the written word.
Further ways to make AI your bitch instead of your ‘competition’
Don't even get me started on all of the ways “AI,” so-called, is not anything that writers should be worried about. That’s another article.
Personally, I use various AI tools at different parts of the process; most of that’s on display here. If the tools used me, instead of the other way around, you would be able to read it very quickly in my work.
For example, you can also use built-in tools like Safari summarizer to generate blurbs easily about scenes that you've written; again, from Parrish (this is copy-and-pasted verbatim and reads like a professional summary):
Seong Hee-young, a crew member, prepares for arrival at a new planet, grappling with cultural differences and the weight of isolation. As the ship descends, Hee-young receives a gift from NABI, the ship’s AI, and faces a threatening transmission from the Falcon Four, a foreign vessel.
Can you help?
Let’s talk more, because I want to help other writers.
I want to learn new strategies myself.
Take a look at my Instagram—it’s on my profile Sam as are all links.
Besides the app itself, that’s been my main traffic driver so far. On Insta, I started out at about 1000 followers and I’ve doubled (>2,000) that over the past month as I’ve grown my Substack, at the time of this writing. After the app itself, the main sources of my new traffic are:
Facebook (that’s my profile—but there’s a page called “Eathel the Bxstard” because Facebook wouldn't let me put ‘bastard’ in the name. That’s ultimately where I’m trying to drive traffic.
There’s Twitter/X, as mentioned above, but still nascent.
I may have to do an entire other article on how to target your audience. Just be aware that finding the people that want to read your stuff is a key ingredient of everything here.
And god do I love my poetry subscribers. I really do. It’s just that poetry—I don’t think—will ever do big numbers.
I don’t know if this is good or not. It certainly is to me. If you have done or can do better, become one of the contributors to this article so we can all benefit.
I was on Linkedin, where I had ~1,000 followers. This is mainly from my former life as a corporate employee. Although I am sharing with former colleagues what I'm doing, it has not driven much traffic.
Upon reflection, the assertion that I had no social media presence doesn't really hold water. I had over 1,000 followers on Instagram before I started Substack. I may change this outright, but because these were all for my poetry and very literary type accounts. And not necessarily tied into the straight up fantasy that I'm promoting. Make of that what you will.
I dislike the word ‘content’ to describe what what we fiction authors do on this platform. Or any platform. However, with writing like this, I think it’s ok to call it ‘content.’
Not affiliated with or benefiting from recommending Buffer. There are many equivalent tools. This is just the one that I used in my marketing days. I'm more familiar with it.
Can I ask quelque chose? What program do you use for your images?
Already following you on Instagram and in Bluesky. If you want to be featured in my Sunday Castle festival of links (fantasy, sci-fi and horror), just tell me and I am adding Eathel the bastard next Sunday.