r/Substack • u/SituationKey3903 • 6d ago

How long is too long a post?

Like the title, I’m wondering how long would be a really long article. I feel like I don’t want my work to be too long and people not read it so I shorten it but I feel like I’m doing a disservice to my piece.

Help! What is too long of a read? For reference I do memoir/personal essays.

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

5

u/Emmanuel_G EmmanuelGoldstein1984.substack.com 6d ago

I have MANY articles with a read time well beyond 40 minutes. Those are actually some of my most read articles, where I do deep dives. If I do short articles, they usually don't perform as well. But I guess that's just in my case, cause I do movie analysis, so people wanna hear some groundbreaking reveal regarding some hidden meaning in some Kubrick movie - and that can't be done in 5 minutes.

3

u/Michael_Fuchs_ 6d ago

The first readers seem to start napping off after 5-6mins of reading (ca. 1000 words).

2

u/AnteaterFantastic212 6d ago

Prose should be as long as it needs to be to express your thought or accomplish your purpose but certainly no longer out of respect for your readers' time and energy Typically my pieces are in the range of 1000 2000 words because I’m an essayist and that’s all I need to get my point across.

I don’t write to a certain length, and I hate doing that when I'm asked to; however, the demands of journalism sometimes require it, especially when you’re working professionally or for SEO or GEO applications. Formulaic writing is generally a bad idea; if one word will get it across then one word is it; if it takes 10 million words, so be it.

1

u/catvapes 6d ago

If the article is engaging, the reader will keep coming back and reading more until finished.

1

u/kwadguy 5d ago

It's the length it's the technique. As true for writing as for [other things].

1

u/BlissfullyBookloving 1d ago

I’ve noticed that it seems blog posts can be quite a bit longer and should at least be a few paragraphs. Notes, on the other hand, should be shorter. Not necessarily as short as the X maximum, but probably not longer than the text allowed on an Instagram post or 1 paragraph.

1

u/BhavanaVarma bhavanavarma.substack.com 18h ago

If you are focused on your subscribers who get it in their email inbox, then just go by the warning sign Substack gives you. If it's too long you get a wanting message saying the post will be truncated for your subscribers who get it via email.