Why I Moved My Newsletter to Substack (And What I Learned)

This month the Mystery Review Crew is so excited to have a guest post from Author Carmen Amato on why she moved her newsletter to Substack.

My author newsletter was my everything. My primary connection to readers. My plot testing zone. My Number One marketing asset. 

Until the email newsletter service I used to host it tripled the price.

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A little background

I’m Carmen Amato, an ex-CIA intelligence officer enjoying a second career as a mystery and thriller author. Starting with CLIFF DIVER, my Detective Emilia Cruz series follows the first female police detective in Acapulco as she confronts drug cartels, official corruption, and Mexican machismo. I’m also the author of the Galliano Club 4-book historical fiction series and several standalone thrillers.

After taking a course from book marketing guru Tim Grahl about 7 years ago, I launched the Mystery Ahead newsletter. Every other Sunday, Mystery Ahead delivered 3 sections prefaced with a hashtag: a #topsecret recent news update, an #excerpt of what I’m writing now, and a #review of a mystery to enjoy while waiting for my next book to be released.

My email platform of choice was aWeber because of its easy-to-navigate site and competitive price. The service allowed me to create “drip” campaigns (email sequences) that delivered emails at preset times, send documents to subscribers, group subscribers into subsets, and cull subscribers who didn’t open emails. 

The number of subscribers grew slowly but steadily due to:

• An invitation to subscribe in the end matter of all my books,
• Multiple website forms, and
• Giveaways that enticed readers to sign up included the Detective Emilia Cruz Starter Library, a list of 25 favorite international mystery series, a short course on how to write a mystery series, and more. Each was delivered automatically by aWeber after a reader subscribed using a form specific to that giveaway.

Dipping a toe in the Substack app waters

By 2024, my email list growth had slowed. Readers seemed less interested in free downloads.

My friend David Bruns (PROXY WAR, THREAT AXIS, etc) moved his excellent Two Navy Guys Debrief to Substack and seemed pleased with the newsletter platform. Substack does not charge a fee to use, gives Substack writers the ability to charge readers directly for a newsletter, and provides a repository in the form of a mini-website environment so back editions of your Substack newsletter are always available to readers.

I decided to conduct an experiment.

I would duplicate my Mystery Ahead newsletter on Substack, then see which version grew faster: the original aWeber-hosted or the new Substack version. A day later, https://mysteryahead.substack.com was born.

I duplicated a handful of Mystery Ahead newsletters but struggled with the design and Substack’s confusing functionalities. Only 10 people subscribed, most of whom I knew were just being nice because they were already subscribed via aWeber.

The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. I stopped the experiment.

A few months later, aWeber announced that prices were going up. Waaaaay up.

Cannonball into the deep end

The new cost was prohibitive. My author business couldn’t take that big of a hit. 

I decided to follow David and Jeanine and go all in with Substack. 

This meant I had to:

• Transfer 12 different subscriber lists (one for each lead magnet) from aWeber to Substack,
• Remove all proprietary aWeber forms from my website, 
• Decide what to do with all the lead magnet content I’d developed over the years.
• Update all the website pages that are listed in the back of my books, 
• Solve the frustrating design issue, and
• Get past my initial confusion and learn how to use Substack to full effect.

*Gulp*

First, the subscribers

I downloaded a dozen subscriber lists as Excel spreadsheets from aWeber and uploaded them to Substack. Each list contained several hundred email addresses.

After the hamster wheel had stopped spinning, I was shocked to see that 20% were rejected. 

Later, with the help of data scientist and thriller Author L.M. Whitaker, I was able to find the rejected addresses and resubmit. Out of several hundred emails on that mailing list, one was accepted. 

Lesson learned: The tradeoff for getting a free newsletter host was the loss of hundreds of email subscribers. Oddly enough, my open rate hardly dropped at all, and no one has called to complain about their missing newsletter. So maybe Substack’s bots are smarter than I thought.

What about the lead magnets?

Substack delivers your newsletters to email addresses but nothing else. All you get is the option to customize the Welcome page (landing page) a reader sees after subscribing to your newsletter.

After I updated the website pages previously devoted to the various lead magnets, like the Detective Emilia Cruz Starter Library, I created a new Freebies page, housed all the various lead magnets there, and put the link on the Welcome page.

Now, subscribers get access to ALL my free stuff instead of just the one thing that enticed them to subscribe. They must click the link and retrieve it, as the content isn’t pushed to them the way aWeber did.

Lesson learned: Rather than an enticement, the freebies are now a reward to introduce the Detective Emilia Cruz series to readers who come to the Mystery Ahead newsletter from inside the Substack ecosystem rather than from the back pages of the books. 

The a-ha moment

Remember my first foray into Substack? I was obsessed with making Substack’s emails identical to emails sent via aWeber and couldn’t do it. Plus, I expected emails to look exactly the same on the Substack platform as they did in my inbox. They didn’t.

This was making me crazy until, finally, the light went on:

• Substack prompts you to add pre-set headers and footers for emails in the Settings dashboard of your publication. 
• These email presets are only for newsletter emails. They don’t appear anywhere else, including when the newsletter post appears on your publication’s mini-website. 

I felt like yelling “Eureka!” Of course, I had set up preset email headers and footers. 

Lesson learned: To solve the problem, I stopped using preset headers and footers and added them manually instead. Now, the newsletter that appears in someone’s email inbox and what appears on the Substack platform are the same. No matter where you read the newsletter post, every version is identical.

Another website? Sort of.

All your newsletter editions appear on your publication’s mini-website inside Substack at the same time they are emailed to subscribers. The site can be individualized, but don’t expect too much. You get to upload a publication header and logo and choose text styles, background color, site layout, and a few other minor tweaks. 

Extra Pages: A nice surprise is the ability to create extra pages on your publication’s site. These are basically simple posts that are listed in the top-level menu. Two words of warning, however: 1) No fancy design options whatsoever, and 2) Once published, these pages can’t be edited.

Custom Links: You can also create custom links to send readers outside Substack, such as to your author website, a book sales page, another social media platform, etc. They are also listed on the publication menu.

Hero post: You can pin an introductory post to the hero section. By default, your latest post lives there, but having an intro post in that spot helps visitors know what to expect and encourages them to subscribe. If you don’t want to send this as an email, simply choose to publish but not send. When it’s live, pin it to the top. My hero post is “Heart of the Mystery,” and it dishes on my first career as a CIA intelligence officer and introduces readers to my second career as a mystery author, as well as my books.

Fiction teasers: A scrappy community of fiction writers, mostly in the sci-fi, romantasy, and fantasy genres, is serializing fiction on Substack, sort of like Wattpad. I have serialized one short story from the Detective Emilia Cruz Starter Library, which now lives on my publication site for anyone to access. Basically, it’s a free sample of my work.

Lesson learned: I wanted the Substack site to mimic my author website, which is made with WordPress, but the options are too limited. But just by adding new menu items, a hero post, and fiction stories, it is a billboard for both the newsletter and books. 

Mining for new subscribers 

When my newsletter was hosted by aWeber, I had to actively hunt for subscribers. Where were they? Facebook, Goodreads, swaps with other authors, etc. The Substack network gives you ways to find subscribers within the platform itself.

Topics: Surf through Substack’s topics list to find publications similar to yours, leave comments on their posts, share posts from those publications, and otherwise engage with readers who might like your publication, too.

Notes: This Facebook-style environment allows you to post to the general Substack audience. Introduce yourself and your publication by sharing post links as well as additional content that aligns with your publication and attracts your ideal reader. 

QR code. In the Setting tab of your publication’s dashboard, Substack gives you a unique subscriber QR code as well as a simple signup form to drive subscribers. The QR code is customized for your publication and looks great on business cards, in book end matter, etc.

Lesson learned: There’s a catch to growing on Subtack. Readers get a choice to turn off email delivery and just read publications they’re subscribed to via the platform’s “inbox” tab. It’s an all-or-nothing option. There’s no ability to choose a few Substack publications you want emailed to you and access others via the platform. So, there’s a danger of your newsletter posts getting lost in the clutter.

Pay to play . . . or not

Substack gives you multiple options to charge subscribers, but your publication can also be totally free content. Google’s search engines tell me that there are more than two million paid Substack subscribers. There are millions more who are on the platform and read newsletters like mine, which do not cost anything to read. 

In addition to many free publications, I subscribe to two that are paid publications: CrashOut Media from narco journalist Ioan Grillo in Mexico and ConspireCreative from author coach Sharon Woodhouse.

Lesson learned: For a paid version of a Substack publication to be successful, it should provide unique content, solve a problem, or offer valuable advice. Mystery Ahead is entertainment. I have toggled off the option to ask subscribers to pay. I expect someday Substack will charge free publications a fee for using the platform.

The Substack challenge for authors

Mystery Ahead is still my primary connection to readers. My plot testing zone. My Number One marketing asset. Substack is a new way to build it, but I have to be smart about how I use the platform. 

It’s too easy to spend a lot of time on Substack, browsing publications, engaging with other Substack authors, and trying to come up with Notes content when I already spend too much time on Instagram and other social media platforms. Given that there’s just one of me, is trying to build on Substack worth the time it takes away from other author tasks? Only time will tell.

My traditional audience isn’t on Substack. According to Backlinko, Substack has 20 million monthly users and is growing rapidly, but its readers are significantly younger than my target audience. With the most popular publications being about technology, science, current events, and how to make money writing about writing, I still need to look outside Substack for mystery lovers.

What do you think? Are you interested in moving your newsletter or starting one on Substack? If you need advice about setting up your publication, email me at ca****@*********to.net.

Be sure to check out Mystery Ahead at https://mysteryahead.substack.com and tell me what you think. 

Thanks to Mystery Review Crew for the guest post opportunity, and Happy Stacking!