45% Of Substacks Fail, And The Letter Fitzgerald Sent His Daughter
"Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to" ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sometimes you go looking for some tidbit, fall down a rabbit hole. Other times, you’re not even looking. It’s like the rabbit hole came looking for you. Like it needed someone to tell its story and oh hello human, you’ll do just fine.
Yesterday I stumbled across an analysis of Substack. I wasn’t looking for stats on Substack. It was in an email I subscribe to. The study said 45% of Substacks fail.
I’m not linking the study because it’s not the point. Just another forest of numbers to get lost in, and most of the data doesn’t even say anything useful. Stumbling across that study was just a catalyst for a message established writers have been saying to new and struggling writers for as long as there have been writers.
What they meant by “failed” in the study is that the writer hasn’t posted in over six weeks. I saw that and laughed. They scraped 75,000 Substacks and I guess my History of Women Substack is one of the “fails” because I haven’t posted in over six weeks.
Here’s what the study can’t and didn’t see.
That little “failed” Substack of mine has gained over one hundred subscribers in the last month and six this morning. Is that a fail? I don’t know that it is. But oops. They weren’t looking at growth, just at frequency. Frequency doesn’t mean much. Ask anyone who is writing daily on Medium or Substack and getting no traction.
In 1936, F. Scott Fitzgerald sent a letter to his daughter. Thank god there were letters written by hand back then because if he emailed or texted, we’d never have the ability to read and learn from his words eighty nine years later.
Her name was Frances Scott Fitzgerald and one day, she’d become a writer, journalist and columnist. She’d write for the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and more.
But in 1936, she was a fifteen year old girl that just wanted to write stories.
Like her Daddy did and like her mama did. Only child of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, the man who gave us The Great Gatsby. She’d sent her dad a story she’d written and he wrote back with gentle feedback saying it wasn’t good, but encouraging her to keep writing and learning.
October 20, 1936
Dearest Scottina:
[…]
Don’t be a bit discouraged about your story not being tops. At the same time, I am not going to encourage you about it, because, after all, if you want to get into the big time, you have to have your own fences to jump and learn from experience.
Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one.
If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.
[…]
You can feel the tender love in that, yeah? I like the way he explained that to her. The way he gently said toss that one, it’s not good. And then gave her some guidance.
Telling her we need to feel a thing so desperately that the way we feel and the way we say it become one. What he’s talking about is finding your voice as a writer.
Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one.
We all have to learn from experience.
There was one other interesting thing in that study. It said the smaller your readership, the more likely you are to be using Substack Notes. Apparently, if you look at the Substacks with under 5K subscribers, half of them are all over Substack Notes.
Erma Bombeck once said everyone walks around with “please see me” written on our foreheads with invisible ink or something like that, I’m paraphrasing.
It’s not new. Long before Substack, people who were trying to launch some kind of business or side gig, promote their writing or “market” their self-published book were doing the same but on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Shouting into the crowd. Look at me. Please see me. On that, Bombeck wasn’t wrong.
But if you look at the Substacks with 10K-20K subscribers, only 6% of them use notes. And of the Substacks with 50K or more subscribers, only 4% use notes.
It’s interesting isn’t it?
It’s like, once we find our readers, we don’t need to shout into the void. The minority who keep using it are using it for the right reason. Because they enjoy it.
Here’s the thing about writing. It’s timeless. Last month I read a book published in 1969. How is that different from someone reading a post I wrote 14 months ago? It’s not. To me, failure is when I scroll to the bottom of my settings page and hit the “delete this Substack” button. But of course, a scraper can’t see those, right?
When it comes to Substack, success and failure are not determined by when you last posted. They’re determined by whether you’re happy with the outcome.
If you’re not happy with the outcome, the best advice might be the advice Fitzgerald gave his daughter 89 years ago. If you have something you want to say, you have to find a way to say it that nobody else has ever found before.
When you do that, you won’t have to shout into the void. Trust me, other people will do that for you. Notes have the ability to go “viral” and get a lot of attention, that’s true. But for consistent growth, recommendations win any day of the week.
Starting over is what writers do. Delete a chapter. Toss a manuscript and start over. Learn along the way. No matter your results, you haven’t failed until you say so.
I’d love to know what you think...
If you like my writing, I also write on Medium
If your other newsletter is failing by these standards, mine must be dead in the water! I have 12 subscribers, hardly ever use notes (maybe I should?) and have been here over a year. But in my mind, I'm succeeding because I'm still here consistently chipping away, week by week
So resonates for me -- that ridiculous study and how wonderfully you wove in the letter from father to daughter, telling it to her straight, and concluded with success being defined by an individual. For years I felt judged inferior by a writer friend who has succeeded in traditional publishing and cannot fathom why it's taken me so long to finalize my novel. Now? Not so much. Different writers, different stories, different metrics. The muses clearly chose the right author to write this fascinating piece. Thank you!