ALL ABOUT HOW SUBSTACK WORKS – IT’S ACTUALLY REALLY COOL (BOTH FOR READERS AND FOR AUTHORS)
A lot of you have asked me about Substack, and how it works; others seem confused by it, and a few have lambasted me for using it (so they clearly don’t understand that it’s free). So here’s how it works:
Imagine if you had the option to subscribe by email to your favorite Facebook person’s page and to get each of their posts directly in your inbox, without missing any, instead of having to rely on Facebook’s algorithms to show you their posts in your newsfeed or having to go and check regularly on their page.
That’s Substack. Only you don’t even *have* to subscribe.
Let’s call that favorite Facebook person “Jane”. So Jane has a Substack page just like a Facebook page. And if you want, you can just read her stuff whenever it turns up in your Substack feed, just like Facebook. If you do that, you are called a ‘follower’, because you are following her, just like here on Facebook. BUT if you prefer, you can choose to ‘subscribe’ to her Substack, and then you will get her posts in your inbox, so that you don’t miss any. With me so far?
Subscribing to Jane’s Substack is *free* for you. The only difference is you are getting her posts in your email and not missing any. If you do that you are called a ‘subscriber’. So now you are a subscriber and you are getting Jane’s posts directly in your inbox. For free.
But there is so much more. If she wants, Jane can also incorporate a podcast into her Substack account. She can also host private chats. She can also host live videos. She doesn’t have to do any of that, but she can if she wants to.
And if she wants to she can create part of her Substack as a private, members-only community. This provides privacy away from prying eyes, and keeps the trolls out. For this she can charge a small membership fee, and in exchange members get extra content, access to the private chats, her podcast, etc..
When you opt to join the members-only community you are called a ‘member’. So, subscriber = free; members = paid. Membership is *optional*. BOTH her subscribers and her members get Jane’s posts directly in the inbox.
In my case, both subscribers and members get my Notes from the Front articles, and members also get all of the related documents.
Put another way, *everyone* gets my updates about the court cases and the administration. That’s free, so you can subscribe to my Substack and you’ll get all of the vital updates in your inbox, *completely free*.
My private Notes from the Front community members (the one that is $5 a month) get the original source documents (court orders, transcripts, court documents, etc.) included with the articles that are landing in their inbox – they are the *same* article, but also include the source documents. The members also get access to the private chats, the podcast, etc..
Finally, you can access Substack through a web browser or through the Substack app (again, just like Facebook). If you download the app, you can also *listen to the articles*, just like an audiobook! (However, you *must* use a web browser on a computer to access the documents that I include for members – that’s because they are downloaded to your computer as PDFs.)
A lot of really smart authors are on Substack, and if you choose to give it a try I recommend Jay Kuo and Heather Cox Richardson. You may already be following them here on Facebook but, again, if you subscribe to them on Substack you’ll get all of their updates right in your inbox.
And you can subscribe to my Notes from the Front here (*for free* unless you choose to upgrade to the $5 a month to get the private chat, the documents, and the podcast):
https://annepmitchell.substack.com/subscribe
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