Launch your Substack and grow your readership in this inspiring 4-week course.
Substack is an amazing platform for writers because it requires no design skills, it keeps you motivated to write, and it helps you grow your audience organically over time. Whether you want to share personal stories, share your expertise, serialize a novel, create an author newsletter, or simply provide a glimpse into the things you love, Substack can help you find readers and create community around your passion. If you want to earn money for your writing, Substack provides tools to do that too.
Course dates: Rolling enrollment. You will get your first set of lessons the moment you sign up.
In this course, you will:
- choose a subject for your substack
- Come up with a title and URL
- create your profile and logline
- determine your intended audience and theme
- set a writing and publishing schedule
- write one to two posts per week
- get feedback on your posts (1,000 words per week)
- learn how to make the Substack growth engine work for you
At the end of the course, you will have a professional-looking Substack with several completed posts, and you will be on your way to building an engaged audience.
What you get: 3 hours of video lessons, 18 written lessons, and ongoing discussion forums so that you can connect with the instructor and your classmates. New lessons will unlock each week. There are no live sessions, so you can engage with the lessons and complete your assignments on your own schedule.
When you enroll in Writing for Substack Plus, you will also get instructor feedback on your posts.
This course is for you if:
- You are a regular Substack reader and have been meaning to start your own or
- You started a Substack but rarely post or
- You are a blogger who hasn't yet used Substack or
- You created a newsletter elsewhere and want to migrate to Substack and
- You want to create audience and community around your expertise or your passion.
Here are a few Substacks created in the first iteration this course in February, 2023:
- Dear Fiction by Brooke Lea Foster
- Alma Genetrix by Alexander Lowe McAdams
- The Vinyl Room by Andres Celati
And the live-session Litcamp version of this course resulted in a San-Francisco centric Substack about Golden Gate Park, a newsletter about movies, and a delightfully illustrated newsletter about "medical mishaps"
- 1,017 Acres: Life in the Park by Susan Freinkel:
- Colleenie Watches Movies by Colleen Gonzalez
- Oops My Brain by Natalie Mead
Why I'm teaching this course:
I've been writing The Caffeinated Writer newsletter for a decade, in addition to my author newsletter. I also publish work by new and established writers through Fiction Attic Press. For years, I paid over a thousand dollars per year to send out my newsletters on Mailchimp. At the end of 2022, I realized the pricing model just didn't make sense, and I migrated all of my newsletters to Substack. I also created a new publication, The Wandering Writer, to share stories about writing and travel. I have been surprised and delighted by the motivation the Substack system provides, and by the way my audience grows organically without the use of time-consuming "lead magnets" and "marketing funnels." With Substack, it's all about the writing.
Among my audience, I notice a lot of subscribers have a "coming soon" page but haven't yet started their newsletter. I created this course to inspire you to start writing and hit the publish button.
Michelle Richmond's "Writing for Substack" course is superb. I had tons of ideas but zero structure in my head, and Michelle was an excellent guide...The lessons are very well structured, informative, easy to follow, and packed with excellent advice (that you don't get anywhere else) on writing in general and writing for Substack specifically. Plus, I have found Michelle to be extremely supportive, kind, welcoming, and inspiring. I can't recommend this course enough!
- Andres Celati, The Vinyl Room
Get started now!
Your Instructor
Michelle Richmond is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels and two story collections. Her books have been published in 31 languages.
She is the publisher of Fiction Attic Press and the founder of Fiction Master Class. She has taught in the Masters of Fine Arts programs in Creative Writing at the University of San Francisco, California College of the Arts, Bowling Green State University, and St. Mary's College of Moraga. She has served as Distinguished Visiting Writer at Notre Dame de Namur University and has designed and taught online writing courses for Stanford Continuing Studies.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are you ready to get started? Do you want to build a writing habit and engage new readers? Replace the "Coming Soon" page on your Substack with your first post, and start growing your audience today.