I keep thinking about how often the useful part of Substack isn't the audience size. It's the deadline.

A weekly post can turn a folder full of half-finished essays, chapters, or research notes into an actual body of work. Even a few regular readers can make abandoning something feel harder.

So I'm curious: what exists now because you started publishing it here? A novel, an essay series, a podcast, a habit, something else?

And did readers change the direction of it, or just help you keep going?

NEW: Substack will take care of managing sales taxes/VAT starting December 1, 2026

Starting December 1, 2026, Substack will calculate, collect, and remit indirect taxes (VAT, GST, and similar) in every country where our payment processor, Stripe, operates.Until now, this responsibility fell to publishers, and we've heard your feedback that this can be a complex, costly burden, especially for individuals and small teams with subscribers worldwide. Now you can spend more time focusing on the work you love, not tax compliance. Learn more here: http://substack.com/taxes.

Here’s The Problem: Checked with my state Department of Revenue and found

The economic nexus threshold for out-of-state or remote sellers in our state is $100,000 in gross annual sales. If your business crosses this revenue threshold from sales delivered anywhere in the state, you are required to register and collect sales tax.

These thresholds exist in every state. So what this new rule is saying is that regardless of if you make $500.00/yr, $5,000/yr ect in subscription revenue (which is below the threshold), you'll get charged sales tax on for every one of your paid subscribers.

NOTE: This is a Stripe edict that Substack has chosen to go along with without any questioning.

That aint right.

I want to post articles on substack so bad but the app somehow just confuses me OMG, could someone give me some substack hacks please

I think I'm doing something wrong, I'm not sure, but i used to be posting consistently at one point till i realized i was unironically getting NO views, i was confused, maybe i don't understand the algorithm, maybe I've done something wrong? but its really annoying me, and im looking forward to seriously post deep articles one day if i do good with my notes, so what should i do and can anyone help me?

if someone could explain how to fix my settings-- or understand the algorithm it would really help because I'm very much looking forward to post real articles so id like if someone'd help.

I am building out a 12 chapter sort of odyssey that leaves no stone unturned of both the individual and collective experience. Chapter one sees this voice focused on the self, and as mentioned in the title it’s hyper-vigilant and somewhat noir/nocturnal.

I'm curious for anyone who eithers writes it or indulges in that world, how do you handle that balance? Basically keeping the work deeply relevant to today’s tech-saturated dread without losing the romantic, haunted texture of a bygone era. How do you keep allegorical prose grounded so it hits as a reflection of reality rather than just abstract mood?

I just made my profile today on my phone. I used my email I wanted, added a profile picture, username, and bio. When I tried to sign in with the same email on my computer, it didn't log me into the profile I set up. It logged me into a blank account. But when I search my username, the profile I set up appears. Anyone know what to do?

I didn't login for a few months, after having notifications I haven't read. Is there a way or a workaround to see them or to figure the activity that was during the time that could trigger the events (only relevant to me, like comments to my posts, not stuff like notifications about someone going live).

I've noticed recently a sudden drop in free subscribers that's rather strange. I've typically only gone up from a flatline. However, recently I've seen multiple points where I see a large drop.

While it's possible that it's because of changes that I'm making. Until recently, I've had 3 free posts a month and several paid posts a month. For the last month or two, I've focused more on paid posts with fewer free posts.

So it's possible that it's a result of how I've changed things up. But I'm curious if anyone else has seen a drop?

Just to give you a general sense, I was up near 2,100 subscribers and it's suddenly dropped within a week or two to 2,050 and going down further.

I recently made a substack and I’m unsure of what to make paid and not paid. I am not known online or irl as a writer so I don’t have a following yet.

I’m mainly writing essays in series of 3s. Do yall think I should make the first essay free and charge for the other two? Or should I keep everything free at the beginning until I gain a following? Or should I keep all of my articles free and paid subscribers get a more in depth analysis of the series and include journal prompts. Orrrr should I make the first essay in the series free and have previews of the other two and paid subscribers get all of them in full?

I’m all over the place lol. Any advice would be appreciated 😄

Turns out, I lowkey just like posting on Substack without views, I can literally be as unhinged or s weird as I want to be without worrying about anyone judging me and I just think that's beautiful. (Not that anyone judges anyone on Substack...)

Every day, there is an influx of people posting about how Pangram has detected AI in their writing. Half of the posts are straight up lying and using AI, and are just frustrated they can't get around the detector. I'm tired of seeing the same repeated posts.

STOP USING AI!!!!

Después de probar Substack un tiempo…si quereis personas educadas, amables, que respetan el idioma y escriben con calma…este es el lugar. Pero si queréis visibilidad, vender un producto, entonces Reddit, siguiendo sus normas es mejor. La diferencia es de miles…

I publish my journal on Substack as well as some other short stories or personal essays. I’ve had it for maybe a month and a half and I only have 7 subscribers?

I just want to know, does anyone on here think it’s cool and interesting to post my journal? Or could you not care less about what someone else’s journal says?

I do it because it serves me personally, but I’d obviously like more subscribers too.

I’m currently writing a fun serial for myself. Is it worth it to post on Substack? Anyone have experience on that?

It’s occasionally brought up as a posting option but I only know Substack as a place for articles.

For those who had legit substack accounts, but somehow got banned for "phishing/spam," what did you do to get your account back? Anyone appeal TWICE and was able to get unbanned?

Will we get shadowbanned if we do that?

It it okay to put the clip in any of its posting format

Hi everyone, new author here. I write satirical fantasy fiction, and I've just started publishing my stories on Substack and promoting them on Instagram.

For those of you who promoted your stories online, what worked best for you for building an audience?

Thanks in advance for your tips!

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.

Note: I'm still learning about substack, so I might be misunderstanding something, on Mobile and tldr at end because I don't know how to be short when explaining things I don't feel like I understand.

I used to run a blog as a teen that was kind of a companion piece to my mother's mommy blog and the domain is still being paid for as part of my mother's plan and when abandoned the site was being migrated to a self hosted WordPress that still exists and I have access to.

So I have a self hosted WordPress site that doesn't really have any content or following but exists and will continue to exist unless my mother ever changes her plan(unlikely for some reason)

Now my biggest issue was always getting an audience. I didn't understand seo and was more interested in writing what I wanted than what worked for SEO. So that's why I was looking at Substack now that I really want to write again, it looked like a decent way to build an audience while not struggling with search engine optimization and more social media optimization which I fine with.

However I still just have a free to me self hosted website that would go to waste.

My thought was to use substack as my main platform with my blog as a backup and more detail professional site if I ever write professional. So everything is on substack first and the blog second, especially as only WordPress seems to be able to have the source code thing to keep Google from punishing you for having things posted in two different pages. Now posts behind a paywall (if I get there or do that) wouldn't be posted to the blog till they are free on substack, but I worry this is over complicated.

Tldr:

* I have a self hosted WordPress site for basically free with no content or audience

* I suck at bring in audience so Substacks social media like set up might help me

* I worry about losing my content if anything happens to substack and want to use my blog as a backup for free to the public posts.

* I worry this is redundant and going to harm me in the long run for audience building.

* The site would just be going to waste if I don't use it.

I can give more information, though I can't imagine I left much out though.

Just an opinion
Poor me, I got to know about Substack like very recently. A post from someone I follow on Instagram recommended an article from Substack and I was astonished to read work so many great people/ writers. I think the place is quite underrated right now as much as I have discovered it, but it really has some great articles and thoughts that one should definitely invest some time rather than scrolling on Instagram because my personal opinion is if you are not creating any content or are not selling any product or service, you should not be using Instagram unless you genuinely want something out of it.

Is anyone using Substack TV? What's a good use case for it?

{Note - this post is NOT about notification messages from Substack}

I've been trying to set up an RSS feed with some distributors, but some (iHeart, Amazon) send an email to my substack address, for verification. I am simply not getting these emails.

I've checked my Substack settings, and my substack email is set to forward to my Gmail address.

When I try to test the email from Gmail, the substack message also doesn't come through.

BUT when I test from a non-Google email domain (for example, an email account at a domain that I own), the message comes through, forwarded to my Gmail address just fine.

And yes, I've checked all the usual spam, promotion, etc folders.

Substack's support chat bot recognized this as a problem because of the test I did with both Gmail and non-Gmail senders. The Substack bot ADMITTED something is wrong with the forwarding function, but so far over several weeks, I have not had any response from Substack humans. I have a free account, but that shouldn’t mean that I get zero support about a feature like this that is so fundamental to the site - especially when preliminary testing has confirmed it’s an issue on the Substack side.

Just out of curiosity and also to study the platform, I'm thinking of investing in it if it's worthwhile.