Spotlight your Substack!
One of the heartening things about starting this project has been its potential to cast a light on the really good writing of indie Substacks. Particularly those writers early in their Substack journey and just starting to build out their audience.
This has since proven to be the case. We now have almost 2000 highly engaged readers and every single guest featured so far has reported a boost in their subscriber numbers!
However, given the popularity of this project we now have a several month long waiting list for our weekly guest spot. (Please don’t let this stop you from pitching and submitting. We operate on a first come, first served basis, so the sooner you pitch, the sooner you’ll be able to feature.)
In the meantime, we have plenty of other ways for you to get your writing in front of new readers.
Let’s go through them one by one.
1. Monthly Subscriber Writing Roundup
On the first Monday of every month, we feature a collection of links to great writing from our subscribers. Subscribers are be able to submit one link to an article they posted on their own Substack to be featured in our roundup.
You’ll be able to do this each and every month, so it will provide a more regular opportunity to get your writing in front of our audience. It will also give us all even more great pieces to read!
2. BTMU Fiction Corner
The Books That Made Us is all about celebrating fiction, so with that in mind paying subscribers have the opportunity to share their short stories with the BTMU audience. We host a different guest short story once a week.
For rules and how to submit, please see here.
3. Recommendations Rotation
Similar to what Substack Reads does each week, The Books That Made Us uses Substack’s “Recommendations” feature to recommend some of the great Substacks written by our subscribers, on a rotating basis.
Founding Subscribers will be recommended by BTMU for an entire year.
4. BTMU Community Chat
Community is everything here on Substack, and we have created a little space where we can talk to each other in real time more easily. This is a space for us to share our writing, growth tips, and reading recommendations with one another.
These four features are for paying subscribers only. It’s very cheap — £3.33 a month (~$4USD), or less than a £1 for each of the four features. You can pay in your native currency too, to make things easier.
So, if you’d like your writing to feature in our Monthly Subscriber Writing Roundup, share your fiction with our audience, to be Recommended by The Books That Made Us, or to join our Community Discord, then I invite you to become a paying subscriber today.1
To be clear, the opportunity to guest post will always remain open to anyone, regardless of whether you’re a free subscriber, paid subscriber, or not even a subscriber at all! Quality of writing is our only criteria for a guest post on BTMU.