Hello, Moon Arica. Thank you for your nice article about finding one's niche. In my case, your 3-question form doesn't seem to be relevant as I write chiefly bizarre surrealistic short stories. Thus I help noone but try to provide entertainment. To whom? This is extremely difficult to determine for it strongly depends on individual literary tastes. And so on with the next two questions. I imagine that my potential readers are very well educated but even that can be very misleading. I think this is the trouble every fiction writer has. One's niche is determined by trial and error with the competition no less strong than anywhere else. Hence the probability of defeat is very high.
One request to you. Please avoid the cliche "Forget about...". In 9 cases of 10 one of two things happens. Either the reader has not encountered what one is called to forget about, and then one simply shrugs. Or the thing to forget is known and cherished, in which case one wants to see specific strong arguments against it.
Again, thank you for your kind sharing of valuable thoughts.
Hello JKiii, thanks for following along on my Substack journey. I have dropped into cliche hole on the cliche part. Really appreciate your feedback on this, and I will write a follow up post on the questions you have asked here. I have written fiction stories before, but at that time, I haven't thought about attracting the right audience, it's now time for me to explore further as this works differently for fiction vs non-fiction.
May I know where do you publish your stories? May be worth to delve into your analytics to get a better picture.
Thank you, Moon Arica. Well, I'm just writing here on Substack. A few years ago I was also writing on Facebook but then closed my account there.
May I ask you a very silly question? What is meant by "newsletter" on Substack? I ask since, as far as I can see, only "Notes" and longer "Posts" are at users' disposal, no "Newsletter". So, what can one do (technically) to launch a "Newsletter"?
JKiii, there are so many different terms on substack, so I get your confusion. A newsletter is your publication, everytime you create posts, this gets sent out to your subscribers as an email. Think of it as a newspaper, each post on substack is an issue, but instead of physical form, it's in digital form. Let me know if you would like more info on this, I would be happy to help.
Thank you very much. I thought Substack provides some ways to organize, to group, "Posts" and "Notes" in some higher order units called "Newsletters".
What do you do if your posts naturally belong to two (or more) different groups and you want to let your subscribers have access to both groups? For instance, in my case I'd like to clearly differentiate from the outset between the short stories that are fully mine from those where I provide only "skeletons" and ask AI to fill the details. I would also like to have two other types of posts, one associated with my professional activity (quantum optics), and the last one containing pictures and images. Thus, I would be glad to organize all of them into four separate higher-order units.
Let me once more thank you for your kind patience and help.
2) Start 1 publication but create different sections for the different topics
I would suggest to take option 2, which is easier to manage and maintain. Subscribers are automatically added to each new section you create, but if you want to separate the subscribers for each section, you can do that too.
Take my publication as an example, Inspiration / Writing / KISS are 3 different sections that I created.
Posts: Subscribers receive them by email if they subscribe to you. All posts also show up in your publication.
Notes: It's like the social media of Substack, seen by both subscribers and followers, but subject to the substack algorithm. You can find a person's notes in the navigation bar of any publication, unless they disable it.
That was one thing that I struggled with and still do I'm sure I could niche down a lot more, but I just feel like I leave too many people out so as I write and solve people's pain points with options, they can choose. Maybe some specific group will stand out over another.. probably a little too early to tell, but I'm watching the statistics. thank you for the information!
Hello, Moon Arica. Thank you for your nice article about finding one's niche. In my case, your 3-question form doesn't seem to be relevant as I write chiefly bizarre surrealistic short stories. Thus I help noone but try to provide entertainment. To whom? This is extremely difficult to determine for it strongly depends on individual literary tastes. And so on with the next two questions. I imagine that my potential readers are very well educated but even that can be very misleading. I think this is the trouble every fiction writer has. One's niche is determined by trial and error with the competition no less strong than anywhere else. Hence the probability of defeat is very high.
One request to you. Please avoid the cliche "Forget about...". In 9 cases of 10 one of two things happens. Either the reader has not encountered what one is called to forget about, and then one simply shrugs. Or the thing to forget is known and cherished, in which case one wants to see specific strong arguments against it.
Again, thank you for your kind sharing of valuable thoughts.
With best regards,
JKiii
Hello JKiii, thanks for following along on my Substack journey. I have dropped into cliche hole on the cliche part. Really appreciate your feedback on this, and I will write a follow up post on the questions you have asked here. I have written fiction stories before, but at that time, I haven't thought about attracting the right audience, it's now time for me to explore further as this works differently for fiction vs non-fiction.
May I know where do you publish your stories? May be worth to delve into your analytics to get a better picture.
Thank you, Moon Arica. Well, I'm just writing here on Substack. A few years ago I was also writing on Facebook but then closed my account there.
May I ask you a very silly question? What is meant by "newsletter" on Substack? I ask since, as far as I can see, only "Notes" and longer "Posts" are at users' disposal, no "Newsletter". So, what can one do (technically) to launch a "Newsletter"?
JKiii, there are so many different terms on substack, so I get your confusion. A newsletter is your publication, everytime you create posts, this gets sent out to your subscribers as an email. Think of it as a newspaper, each post on substack is an issue, but instead of physical form, it's in digital form. Let me know if you would like more info on this, I would be happy to help.
Thank you very much. I thought Substack provides some ways to organize, to group, "Posts" and "Notes" in some higher order units called "Newsletters".
What do you do if your posts naturally belong to two (or more) different groups and you want to let your subscribers have access to both groups? For instance, in my case I'd like to clearly differentiate from the outset between the short stories that are fully mine from those where I provide only "skeletons" and ask AI to fill the details. I would also like to have two other types of posts, one associated with my professional activity (quantum optics), and the last one containing pictures and images. Thus, I would be glad to organize all of them into four separate higher-order units.
Let me once more thank you for your kind patience and help.
JKiii
There are 2 ways you can do this:
1) Start 2 publications with separate topics
2) Start 1 publication but create different sections for the different topics
I would suggest to take option 2, which is easier to manage and maintain. Subscribers are automatically added to each new section you create, but if you want to separate the subscribers for each section, you can do that too.
Take my publication as an example, Inspiration / Writing / KISS are 3 different sections that I created.
Difference between posts and notes:
Posts: Subscribers receive them by email if they subscribe to you. All posts also show up in your publication.
Notes: It's like the social media of Substack, seen by both subscribers and followers, but subject to the substack algorithm. You can find a person's notes in the navigation bar of any publication, unless they disable it.
That was one thing that I struggled with and still do I'm sure I could niche down a lot more, but I just feel like I leave too many people out so as I write and solve people's pain points with options, they can choose. Maybe some specific group will stand out over another.. probably a little too early to tell, but I'm watching the statistics. thank you for the information!