A poll! Actually, 3 polls!
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
Happy August!
So I hardly ever do this, but for the past few months I’ve been seriously rethinking how I do my schedule, and the Substack schedule is part of that. I’m thinking of changing my posting schedule a bit, and I’d like your feedback on a few questions - whether you are a paid subscriber or a free one, & whether you’ve been here for a long time or just arrived.
Right now, I make one Substack post every week (except in special events like Autistic Reader month, or around a book launch). Half the posts are free and half are paid. I also do a Friday Chatter thread most weeks.
The benefits to this approach are: you get posts on a regular, predictable basis. Paid subscribers reliably get a little something extra.
But there are two drawbacks. The main drawback is that some things - like big announcements, promo posts, and anything related to Autistic Book Party - have to be free posts. So I can only do one every two weeks, and I end up with a big queue of these sometimes and Autistic Book Party ends up even slower than it needs to be.
The other is that I’m looking ahead in my schedule - especially to Jan-April 2024, when my teaching schedule is going to get heavier than before - and wondering if I can crank out good quality essays weekly if things get busier. It might be needless self-deprecation, but I feel like you’re already getting an uneven mix of good quality essays + weird mental health wibbles like last week’s, instead of solid good essays across the board.
Plus, I like a lot of what Substack does for its authors (I acknowledge it can be quite problematic in other ways) - but the business model of the average novelist on Substack is different from the business model of other Substack writers. There’s “pay me so that I give you the quality content you want on a regular schedule,” and there’s “pay me by buying my books; this newsletter will tell you when the books are out.” These are not incompatible but they’re two fundamentally different things, and I know not all my subscribers here are interested in the same one of them. You go into this assuming more content is better, but I’ve actually had people unsubscribe - especially after Autistic Reader Month - because I was giving them too much content at once!
So, what I’m thinking of doing is switching to the following model:
Paid subscribers get a certain number of essays per month (probably 2-3, which is the amount of paid posts I currently make), plus Friday Chatter threads.
Free subscribers get only the parts that aren’t essays: book news, updates, links to my stories, links to Autistic Book Party reviews, and maybe some signal boosts for other authors sometimes. These parts come out irregularly, whenever I happen to have something for you.
I’m actually pretty certain already that I want this model. It will give me enough flexibility to get you the most time-sensitive updates when I need to and enough stability to keep my paid subscribers happy. It will also make a sharper distinction between free and paid subscriptions, which I think will create more incentive for people to pay if they can afford it. But what I’m looking for from you - my subscribers of all stripes - is some advice about frequency.
So, I have three questions. Feel free to answer all three regardless of whether you are free or paid.
The answers to these polls will really help me plan. Thanks so much!